Differential Object Marking in Aymara. A linguistic contact-induced phenomenon from Spanish.

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the contact-induced processes underlying the Aymara Object Marking system. Specifically, it focuses on the expression of Direct Objects (DO) in the oral discourse of Aymara-Spanish bilingual speakers. The analysis encompasses two diatopic Aymara varieties, namely, the La Paz variety (Bolivia) and the Muylaque variety (Peru). In contrast to previous descriptions of DO marking in modern Aymara (Hardman et al. 2001; Hardman 2001; Coler 2014), this study demonstrates that Aymara bilingual speakers utilize three different DO markings in their oral expression. These markings include the accusative, nominative, and dative/allative cases. The findings of the analysis suggest that the observed variation can be attributed to the intensive contact with Spanish, which exhibits the well-documented phenomenon of Differential Object Marking for animate and definite DOs while employing zero marking for all other cases. Based on quantitative results, it is argued that Aymara bilingual speakers have begun to adopt contact-induced strategies for marking DOs in Aymara.