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The analysis of recordings from Chuquisaca, a dialect of Southern Quechua, an indigenous language spoken in the Andean regions of Bolivia and Peru, as well as linguistic training of local collaborators involved in language revitalization.

The core activity of this project will be to document storytelling and conversations with speakers of Quechua (quh) in rural highlands Chuquisaca, Bolivia. We will create the first digital collection of such narratives from this relatively undocumented variety at the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA) consisting of 60 interviews of children and 25 of adults video-recorded, transcribed and translated to Spanish with the collaboration of Bolivian researchers in 2016 and 2018. During the fellowship term, we will analyze and publish findings based on these interviews to illuminate theories of how languages are acquired, lost and changed. Chuquisaca lies near the southern extreme of the linguistic area that produced Standard Colonial Quechua (quz/quh). Cuzco Quechua is the prestige variety which has been documented for over 500 years, whereas Bolivian varieties have rarely received attention (Durston 2007, Mannheim 1991). Quechua is now ‘definitely endangered’ in this region as intergenerational transmission is increasingly abandoned in favor of Spanish, even within this rural and relatively well-preserved variety. (Edited by staff)