Linguistic and social constraints on minority language variation: The case of the uvular phoneme in Chanka Quechua

In the Peruvian Andes, social norms require progressive Western practices for formal situations, while traditional Andean customs suggest familiarity, even inadequacy. These ideologies transfer onto language use: in Andean linguistic ideologies, Spanish, the majority language, is standard speech and Quechua, the minority language, is non-standard (Zavala 2014). Such a perspective disregards possible Quechua-internal variation, and the dearth of variationist studies on Quechua propagates this perception. To open the discussion, the present study observes variable deletion of the uvular phoneme in the Chanka variety of Quechua, considering linguistic and social factors. Analyzing Quechua using typical variationist methodology is complicated by ideologies considering it a non-standard and monolithic language. Majority language-internal variation is often defined based on deviation from standard forms, usually disseminated through education and identified comparing formal and informal speech. As irregular Quechua teaching in schools began only a decade ago (Carbajal Solís 2011), few speakers are literate in Quechua. This means most speakers lack access to a standard variety, even though Chanka has a nationally standardized orthography. Therefore, to determine variable forms, the present study considers the orthographical representation and speakers’ access to it. Following Kroch and Small (1978), a Chanka radio program allowed for a clear distinction of grammatical ideologies between hosts and in-studio guests. The current project compiled a spoken corpus of a program from Andahuaylas, Peru. The uvular phoneme was selected as a representative sociolinguistic variable for quantitative analysis for two reasons. First, it always appears in writing, though it is described as in “free variation with zero” in three suffixes (Parker 1966; Cerrón-Palomino 1987; Soto Ruiz 1976). Second, Quechua-literate speakers consider non-deleted forms more formal, indicating social conditioning. The multivariate analysis contemplated morphological, phonological, and social factors. Results demonstrate linguistically and socially conditioned variation in Chanka. Uvular deletion was confirmed to be morpheme-specific and variable, occurring only in exhortative /– rqu/ and past tense /–rqa/. Though phonologically similar, these two suffixes (>160 tokens each) exhibited drastically different rates of uvular deletion: almost 100% versus 13%, respectively. Overall, deletion in both was linguistically conditioned by how many morphemes followed the uvular: more following morphemes favored deletion. Thus the exhortative, occurring early in the verbal template and often before several suffixes, showed higher deletion. But the tense suffix, occurring late in the template with three following morphemes maximum, was less likely to appear in deletion-favoring environments (Myler 2014; Parker 1969). Additionally, deletion is conditioned by complicated social relationships. Hosts and guests had significantly different rates of deletion for past tense (10% vs. 33%, p<0.02), contradicting Kroch and Small’s assumption (1978) that both groups exhibit similar forms. This disparity reflects the guests’ lack of access to standardized Quechua ideologies as compared to Philadelphia English. Chanka-speaking guests, welcomed regardless of education, often lack Quechua literacy, whereas hosts’ speech reflects knowledge of orthography gained through professional schoolteacher training.