Peruvian Amazonian Spanish Uncovering Va

Peruvian Amazonian Spanish

Uncovering variation and deconstructing
stereotypes∗

Rosa Vallejos
University of New Mexico

Some linguistic structures found in Amazonian Spanish tend to be associated
by and large with a rural variety spoken by people frequently depicted as
indigenous. However, direct observations indicate that most of these features
are pervasive among speakers across the social spectrum. What, then, are the
parameters of linguistic variation in Peruvian Amazonian Spanish? Is there
any social and/or linguistic meaning associated with the attested variation?
This paper looks at data from ten monolingual speakers, five born and raised
in Iquitos, and five born and raised in Kokama indigenous villages. The
linguistic variables examined are: i) permutation j/f, ii) possessor/noun
number agreement, iii) double possession, and iv) genitive fronting. This study
concentrates on one social variable, place, which is found to significantly
impact language use. City-‐speakers emphasize or downplay their category
membership through the quantitative manipulation of markers; village-‐
speakers show less variability in their language use. In addition, certain
possessive constructions seem to be undertaking specialized functions.

Keywords: Amazonian Spanish, language contact, variation

1. Introduction
The Spanish spoken in the Peruvian Amazon has received little attention in Spanish
linguistics. This regional variety diverges notoriously from pan-‐Hispanic patterns in
various respects. Some intonation contours and morphosyntactic patterns are so

∗
I owe a debt of thanks to a number of people for helping me along with this project. My greatest
thanks go to the PAS speakers in the communities and in Iquitos who have contributed to this study.
I benefited from discussions with Vsevolod Kapatsinski, Naomi Shin, and Christian Koops. I am also
grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. None of them is to blame for the
shortcomings that remain

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salient that they are commonly used to portray Amazonian people in mass media.

Peruvian Amazonian Spanish (henceforth, PAS) is often thought to be a transitional
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variety generated by speakers for whom Spanish is a nonnative language (Solís
Fonseca 2009:326). Moreover, these speakers are frequently depicted as
uneducated, rural, and indigenous (see, for example, Lipski 1994: 322-‐327).
However, direct observations indicate that most of the Amazonian features that
could be considered representative of PAS are pervasive among speakers across
the social spectrum.
What, then, are the parameters of linguistic variation in PAS? Is there any
social meaning associated with the attested variation? This paper begins to address
these questions by looking at the distribution of four linguistic variables among ten
Spanish monolingual speakers. While five speakers were born and raised in the city
of Iquitos, the biggest city at the core of the Peruvian Amazon, the other five were
born and raised in three indigenous villages where language shift from Kokama1 to
Spanish has taken place. The variables under examination have been reported in
previous studies on PAS (see, for instance, Escobar 1978; Caravedo 1997, 1999;
Barraza de la Cruz 1998; Ramírez 2003). These include i) the permutation between
j/f (fumar > jumar ‘smoke’), and a family of three constructions that convey
possession: ii) possessor / noun number agreement (su casa / sus casa ‘their
house’), iii) double possession (la casa de Miguel / su casa de Miguel ‘Miguel's
house’), and iv) genitive fronting (su casa de Miguel / de Miguel su casa ‘Miguel's
house’). The database for this study consists of lists of words, carrier phrases,
elicited sentences, and spontaneous conversations collected through original
fieldwork. The social variable that has a significant impact on the distribution of all
linguistic variables is place. That said, in this particular scenario, place should be
understood as a complex variable. It cannot simply be geographical locality, but a
set of shared identities and linguistic experiences shaping language use. This paper
subscribes to the view that collective and individual identities are understood as
relational and constructed, as opposed to fixed and innate (Eckert 2000; Labov
1972, 2001). That is, identity is continually being constructed through encounters
with similarities and differences within other people, discourses, and places.
Linguistic experiences are at the core of identity construction (Mendoza-‐Denton
2002), and investigating identity allows inclusion of speakers' attitudes and beliefs
in the explanation of language variation.
This study focuses on the distribution of features that are part of a
monolingual variety of Spanish. Questions related to the contact-‐induced origin of
these “anomalous” patterns belong to a different discussion; yet hypotheses are
suggested regarding the possibility that particular constructions show substratum
influence from indigenous, local languages.

1 Also known as Kukama-‐Kukamiria.

Peruvian Amazonian Spanish 427

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2. Local context
The term Amazonian Spanish implies the existence of a variety of Spanish

spoken in this area of the world. Amazonia extends through nine countries of South
America. In four of those countries – Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela –
Spanish is the official language. Spanish in the Amazon, however, coexists alongside
many other local languages. The Amazon Basin is characterized as highly diverse,
with about 300 languages belonging to twenty or so language families plus more
than two dozen genetic isolates (Dixon and Ainkhenvald 1999; Queixálos 2009). As
studies on the Spanish spoken in these regions are still scarce, the question as to
whether there are isoglosses that spread to the whole area that could define an
Amazonian variety cannot be answered at this point.
Spanish in the Peruvian Amazon has been in contact with local indigenous
languages since Europeans arrived in the area. Spanish was brought to the
Peruvian Amazon in different waves, starting in the first half of the sixteenth
century. One of the periods that had lasting effects took place during the time of the
Jesuit missionary presence in the Upper Amazon (1637-‐1768). During that time,
indigenous populations were forced either to join large farming communities
(haciendas), live in slavery, and accept the reductionist system administered by the
missionaries, or to move away from their homelands to escape subjugation by the
whites. The mission settlements or reducciones brought together different ethnic
groups, a scenario that calls for a common language. Around 1768, when Jesuit
missionaries were expelled from the area, there were more than 40 reducciones
with about 18,000 Indians living in mission settlements (Solís Fonseca 2002). From
chronicles (Maroni [1738] 1988:168-‐169; Chantre & Herrera 1901: 637; as cited by
Michael 2014), we know that Jesuits promoted Quechua as the principal language
of evangelization in what is the modern-‐day Peruvian Department of Loreto. Late in
the Jesuit period, Omagua, and its closest sister Kokama, were used as a tool for
evangelization (Maroni [1738] 1988. pp: 168-‐169; as cited by Michael 2014), hence
the relevance of Kokama and Omagua in unveiling the mysteries of PAS formation.
Later colonization waves that brought more Spanish speakers to the Amazon would
include campaigns promoted by the government to colonize the forest, such as the
haciendas in 1853, rubber extraction around 1885, and oil exploitation around
1970. In addition, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Brazilian Portuguese
speakers were also present in rural and urban areas of the Peruvian Amazon (Solís
Fonseca 2002). Without a doubt, this long history of intense contact contributed to
the formation of the Spanish spoken in this region.
The Kokama villages and the city of Iquitos are located in the department of
Loreto. According to census data from Peru’s Instituto Nacional de Estadística e
Informática (INEI 2007), Loreto is characterized by having the largest indigenous

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Amazonian
population in the country. It hosts an extreme linguistic diversity, which
includes about 23 languages divided between eight language families (Tupí-‐
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Guaraní, Zaparoan, Tucanoan, Arawakan, Jivaroan, Kawapanan, Panoan, Peba-‐

Yaguan) and about six isolates (Candoshi, Tikuna, Yagua, Taushiro, Urarina, Cholon)
(Solís Fonseca 2002, 2009; Queixalós 2009). Despite this highly diverse context, the
speakers of all of these minority languages represent only about 3% of the total
Peruvian population. This fact contributes to the increasing social pressure to learn,
and ultimately shift to, Spanish.
In the last decade, there has been a significant decrease in children learning
the local indigenous languages as their first language. According to INEI (2007),
between 2004 and 2009, almost 4% of children in the region of Loreto underwent
first language shift (See Figure 1). These numbers demonstrate that Spanish has
already become the dominant language in the Peruvian Amazon.

FIGURES 1: LORETO: IN WHICH LANGUAGE DID YOU LEARN TO SPEAK?
2004 2009
0.3% 0.2%
8.1% 4.7%
Spanish Spanish
Native Native
lg. lg.
91.2% 95.1%

3. Features of PAS
As previously indicated, PAS has received little attention in Spanish

linguistics compared to Andean Spanish (see, for instance, A. M. Escobar 1992,
1997, 2005, 2011; Klee and Ocampo 1995; O’Rourke 2005; Sánchez 2004; Zavala
2001; among others). Some information about PAS can be gleaned from
dialectology studies, which typically distinguish between three major varieties of
Spanish in Peru: the Coastal variety, the Andean variety, and the Amazonian variety
(Escobar 1978; Ramírez 2003; Calvo Pérez 2008). However, not all dialectologists
agree with this tripartite distinction. While Escobar (1978) groups Amazonian
Spanish with the Coastal variety, Ramirez (2003) groups it with Andean Spanish,
arguing that many features were imported from the Andean region to the
Amazonian region via multiple migratory waves. An in-‐depth examination of PAS
will contribute to an understanding of the processes of dialect formation in the
region.


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The phonological traits of PAS include the permutation between voiceless
labiodental fricative [f] and velar fricative [x], and the affrication of palatals [y] and
[λ] to become [ʤ] (Escobar 1978, 1981; Caravedo 1995; Ramírez 2003). The
permutation f/x together with the monophthongization of certain diphthongs (i.e.,
cuota > cota ‘quota’) and the diphthongization of certain vowels (i.e., falta > jualta
‘fault’) constitute a subsystem unique to PAS (Ramírez 2003:29-‐30). In addition to
the morphosyntactic features examined in this study (double possession, genitive
fronting, possessor-‐noun number disagreement), other traits of PAS include leísmo
and loísmo (Escobar 1978; Caravedo 1997); double marking of direct objects (e.g. me
lo junta una bolsa de lechuga ‘He picks it up a bag of lettuce for me’) (Barraza de la
Cruz 1998:47); and lack of agreement in copula constructions (e.g. sus procesiones
era bonito ‘Their processions were beautiful’) (Barraza de la Cruz 1998:93). Another
important feature of PAS is its prosodic structure (Escobar 1978, García 2011, Koops
and Vallejos 2014).
4. A quantitative study
Apart from some phonological and morphological traits, little is known about
PAS compared to other Spanish varieties. This lack of in-‐depth studies has, in part,
triggered a series of assumptions about PAS. To some extent, one of the motivations
for the current study is to examine whether some of these assumptions hold. One
common assumption is that the features that depart from pan-‐Hispanic patterns are
associated with limited fluency in Spanish among bilingual speakers, with Andean
Spanish, with transitional varieties, or with vernacular Spanish spoken in informal
situations by people of lower social status (Ramirez 2003; Solís Fonseca 2002,
2009). For instance, when referring to the Peruvian Amazon, statements such as the
following are often reproduced in textbooks: “The Amazonian region contains a high
proportion of individuals for whom Spanish is not a native language” (Lipski 1994:
322). While within Peruvian Amazonia an estimated 90% of indigenous people are
rural (Solís Fonseca 2009:306), and there are still several pockets with high rates of
monolinguals in local indigenous languages, Spanish is already the dominant
language in cities, midsize towns, and even some indigenous territories, as
discussed in §2. To a great extent, national and regional ideologies echo this view in
associating some linguistic variables with a certain “Amazonian persona” and this
“exotic” region. The way in which Amazonian people are portrayed in national mass
media contributes to the perpetuation of these ideologies (Jara Yupanqui 2012).
While identity is fundamentally created by how other people construct you, it is also
produced through your consideration of similarities to and differences from others.
Thus, this study aims to explore whether these insights and opinions about language
varieties complement patterns of distribution in the use of language.

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4.1. Indicators, markers, and stereotypes
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Direct observations indicate that some common assumptions about
Amazonian
Spanish are driven by stereotypes rather than scientific study. Labov
(1972) classifies linguistic variables into three categories: stereotypes, markers,
and indicators. Indicators are dialectal variables that distinguish social or
geographic categories but little or no social import is attached. They indicate group
membership, and do not figure in variation across the formal/informal continuum.
Markers and stereotypes are variables that carry social significance. They are
related to social groupings and stylistic variation. The difference between markers
and stereotypes lies in the level of consciousness: “stereotypes are subject to meta-‐
pragmatic discussion, while markers are not” (Eckert 2008: 463). Also, stereotypes
are stigmatized and need not conform to reality. In other words, stereotypes,
markers, and indicators correlate with speaker awareness of forms. While markers
and stereotypes show evidence of style shifting on the formality continuum,
indicators do not. Note that these categories are not static: with time, indicators can
become markers and later, stereotypes.
But then, why would speakers be more aware of some variables than others?
Trudgill (1986) suggests that when we come in contact with speakers of other
dialects, we notice some features in our speech because they differ from the way
other people talk. According to Trudgill, linguistic and social principles can predict
salience in any given speech community. The salience of a variable is due to one of
the following factors: (i) it is stigmatized by sections of the larger community, (ii) it
reflects a change in progress, (iii) it is phonetically distant from the corresponding
variant, or (iv) it involves phonological contrast.2 The notion of salience proves
useful to explain some of the patterns that emerge in PAS.
As mentioned earlier, direct observations indicate that even though some
PAS features appear to be more frequent in rural villages than in cities, they are in
fact found among speakers across the entire social spectrum. That is to say, these
“anomalous” patterns are choices available to monolingual speakers of Spanish. The
question is then, under what circumstances and with what frequency do speakers
choose to use one pattern over another? Thus, the study presented in this section
looks at four Peruvian Amazonian Spanish features found in monolingual speakers
and aims to answer the following questions:
• What are the parameters of linguistic variation in Peruvian Amazonian
Spanish?
• Is there any social and/or linguistic meaning associated with the attested
variation?

2 However, whether these principles are reliable predictors of salience or not has been challenged
(see, for instance, Kerswill and Williams 2002).


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4.2. Speech communities and sample of speakers
This study looks at the Spanish spoken by monolingual speakers born and
raised in two different speech communities: Kokama villages and the city of Iquitos.
As shown in Table 1, despite their differences in population, the linguistic makeup
of Iquitos and a typical Kokama village is quite similar: in both places Spanish is the
dominant language.

TABLE 1: LINGUISTIC MAKE UP OF KOKAMA VILLAGES & IQUITOS CITY
VILLAGES IQUITOS (INEI 2007)

Population 150 -‐ 400 Population 159,023
Spanish 93% Spanish 99%
Kokama 5% Quechua 0.2%
Quechua/other 2% Indigenous lgs. 0.2%
Foreign lgs. 0.1%

An estimated 120 Kokama villages are located on the upper Amazon River
and several of its major tributaries, including the Huallaga, Marañon, Ucayali,
Nanay, and Itaya rivers in the Peruvian departments of Loreto and Ucayali. A
number of Kokamas now reside in cities such as Iquitos and Yurimaguas, and
midsize towns like Lagunas, Nauta, and Requena. Although the Kokama ethnic
population is estimated to be 20,000, the Kokama language is seriously
endangered. Only about 1,000 elders speak the language fluently. The natural
process of language transmission was interrupted about five decades ago, and the
vast majority of the population has already shifted to Spanish (Vallejos 2010).
Five study participants are originally from three Kokama villages: Dos de
Mayo, from San Pablo del Tipishca lake located along the Marañon River, and San
Martín del Tipishca and Nuevo Arica, along the Samiria River. The communities of
fieldwork are indicated by red dots in Map 1. The first village is about 15 hours
away from the city of Iquitos by boat, the other two are about 19 and 20 hours
away, respectively. In the three villages, as in every other Kokama village,
community members shifted to Spanish about five decades ago.
Speakers of Kokama are scarce, and certainly none of them are monolingual
in Kokama (Vallejos 2010). The Kokama villages in this study have access to radio,
but not to television or the internet. The three villages offer primary education (K-‐
6), but only San Martín del Tipishca has secondary education (7-‐11). Participants
from Nuevo Arica and Dos de Mayo attended high school in a neighboring Kokama
village. The Kokamas travel regularly from villages located along navigable rivers to
their closest cities such as Iquitos and Yurimaguas, as well as mid-‐size towns such

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Map
1: Location of the Kokama villages and the city of Iquitos (Vallejos 2014: 46)
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as Nauta and Lagunas. All the participants in this study have visited Nauta and
Iquitos multiple times. Two of the Kokama villages, San Martín del Tipishca and
Nuevo Arica, are located within the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve, where the
presence of foreign tourists is common.
Iquitos is the biggest river port on the Amazon River in Peru and the main
urban center in the region. The city is surrounded by suburban districts such as
Belen, Punchana, and San Juan.3 In Iquitos, 99% of the population declare
themselves as Spanish speakers (INEI 2007). And although Iquitos attracts
immigrants from rural villages, only 0.2% declared themselves as knowing another
local language. Usually, young people from rural villages come to work and study in
Iquitos. Because the Kokamas speak Spanish, it is relatively easy for them to
integrate into the life of Iquitos compared to members from other ethnic groups.
Kokama villages will henceforth be referred to as Village and Iquitos as City.
Ten participants were selected for this study. A summary of the sample is
presented in Table 2.

3 If we include the inhabitants of these districts, the total population is 406,340 (INEI 2007), more
than the double that of Iquitos itself.


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TABLE 2: SAMPLE
SPEAKER GENDER AGE EDUCATION
1 M 37 advanced
2 F 41 advanced
CITY 3 F 38 advanced
4 M 19 high school
5 F 17 high school
6 M 38 advanced
7 M 35 advanced
VILLAGE 8 F 34 advanced
9 F 17 high school
10 F 18 high school

Within their respective communities, the participants have interpersonal
ties of different types and strengths — i.e., the persons to whom an individual is
linked are also tied to each other to varying degrees. Here, I report the results for
ten speakers, five born and raised in the Kokama villages and five in Iquitos. In
terms of formal education, four of them were either seniors or about to finish high
school, while the other six had degrees in teaching or nursing.
Various types of data suitable for the phonological and morphosyntactic
studies were collected from these ten speakers. The interviews took place in the
communities of the participants — that is, in the Kokama villages and in Iquitos.
The data collection strategies are explained in detail within each study.
4.3. First study: Permutation of j/f
The rationale for selecting this phonological feature for study is its relatively
unique distribution in the Amazon compared to other features (Ramírez 2003).
This permutation occurs under clear phonological conditioning: [x] > [f] occurs
preceding diphthongs (as seen in (1)), [f] >[x] preceding back vowels (2). A related
phenomenon is [f ] > [ɸw]~[xw] preceding front vowels (3).

(1) x à [f~ɸ] / -‐ua, ui, ue
juicio [fuisio] ~ [ɸicio]
juane [fuane] ~ [ɸane]
juego [fuego] ~ [ɸuego]

(2) f à [x] /-‐o, u
forma [xorma] ~ [horma]
conforme [konxorme ] ~ [ koŋhorme]
fumar [xumar] ~ [humar]

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(3)
f à ɸw /-‐a, e
falta [ɸwalta] ~ [xwalta]
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enfermo [enɸwermo] ~ [enxwermo]

Henceforth, this phenomenon will be referred to as j/f permutation
following Spanish orthography.
4.3.1 Data collection and methodology for j/f permutation
To study the j/f permutation, the following twelve target words were
elicited:

(4) j>f f>j f>fw
juerga formación falta
juicio conforme fallar
juane perfume Fernando
juego fumar enfermo

These twelve words are frequent in discourse and were recognized by all
participants of this study. They were spread within a list of fifty words to reduce
priming effects. Three modalities of data were collected using the list of fifty words.
For the first task, speakers read the list of words in isolation, repeating three times
each. For the second task, speakers inserted the target word in the following carrier
structure: “Dije la palabra __ también.” For the third task, speakers produced
spontaneous sentences with each test word. The rationale for this methodology is
that naturalness and attention to speech varies among the three tasks (Gibbon et al.
1997:99-‐101). When producing words in isolation, speakers are focused on the
target words themselves. Carrier phrases are more natural than words in isolation,
particularly in speech rate, but the influence of phonetic and linguistic context on
the target words is controlled. Sentences produced spontaneously are rich
phonetically and contextually, and the attention tends to shift from the test word to
the overall meaning of the sentence. At this time, there are not enough tokens from
spontaneous connected speech, data that would be located towards the end of the
naturalness continuum and therefore expected to correlate better with minimal
attention to speech.4 The number of tokens collected in the three tasks is
summarized in Table 3.

4 Direct observations suggest that in conversations among friends the permutation to the divergent
pattern is frequent. This pattern is also manifested in written language. It is common to find people
that represent this phenomenon orthographically (i.e., enjuermo, jumar, fane) in informal


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TABLE 3: DATA FOR PERMUTATION OF j / f
WORD CARRIER SENTENCE
360 120 120

4.3.2 Results for j/f permutation
The results of the permutation j/f in the village are given in Table 4 and Figure 2.

TABLE 4: PERMUTATION j/f IN VILLAGE & CITY
CITY VILLAGE
n % n %
word 13 / 360 4 71 / 360 20
carrier 7 / 120 6 27 / 120 22.5
sentence 14 / 120 12 29 / 120 24

FIGURE 2: PERMUTATION j/f IN VILLAGE AND CITY
30
25
20
word
15
carrier
10
sentence
5
0
city j/f village j/f

The first finding reflected in Figure 2 is that the rates of permutation among
the three tasks are not significantly different in both city-‐speakers and village-‐
speakers. This holds true for both changes, j>f and f>j, so the results have been
collapsed into a single score. Yet the rates for city-‐speakers show more variability
from task to task compared with the rates for village-‐speakers -‐ the difference in
city-‐speakers’ rates for carrier and sentences is near significance (carrier vs.
sentence for city: χ2 (1)=2.33, p=.1266). The second finding is that there is a
significant effect of place of origin. That is, city-‐speakers employ less divergent

communication, such as in social media. In this paper, however, study of the j/f permutation is
limited to spoken language.

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patterns
than village-‐speakers (city vs. village (words: χ2 (1)=40, p<.001; carrier: χ2
(1)=11.76, p<.001; sentences: χ2 (1)=5.23, p=.022)).
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Overall, city-‐speakers use the divergent, stigmatized patterns in more

restricted settings and with more variability among the three modalities. The fact
that city-‐speakers produce fewer permutations when producing words in isolation
than when creating complete sentences suggests that they show certain degree of
sensitivity to attention to speech, which is in accordance with direct observations.
This suggests that for city-‐speakers the j/f permutation could be considered a
marker, in the sense of Labov (1972). Iquitos speakers show evidence of style
shifting with respect to this phonological feature, and it could be hypothesized that
data from speech events located towards the lower end on the formality continuum
would show a higher number of permutations. This is also consistent with Jara
Yupanqui’s (2012:453) findings that Spanish speakers in Iquitos are well aware of
the features associated with PAS, as well as their stigmatization. In contrast, village-‐
speakers use higher rates of divergent patterns with minimal variation among the
different modalities; this suggests that, for them, the divergent patterns are instead
indicators of their community of origin.
4.4. Second study: morphosyntax
As indicated in §3, there are a number of “anomalous” morphosyntactic
patterns attested in PAS. This second study focuses on three linguistic variables
that convey possession. These are: possessor-‐noun number agreement (sus canoa),
double possession (su canoa de Miguel), and genitive fronting (de Miguel su canoa).
While the last two features have been widely documented for other Spanish
dialects, including Andean Spanish (Lipski 1994:322-‐327; Calvo Pérez 2008:195-‐
196), the first trait, reported also by (Barraza De La Cruz 1998:56), seems to be
unique to the Peruvian Amazon region.
These morphosyntactic patterns were selected because they form a sort of
‘network’ of constructions for a functional domain, in this case the functional
domain of possession. By examining them jointly, it is possible to capture the fact
that they share important properties but differ in certain ways, including their
degree of productivity. In analyzing these patterns, some of the parameters that are
considered include: the semantic property of the possessed and the possessor,
physical versus metaphorical possession, and temporary versus permanent
possession.5 These parameters have been found to be relevant in possessive
constructions crosslinguistically (Nichols and Bickel 2011).

5 The meaning of a possessive construction involves three main elements: two entities (the
possessor and the possessed), and a relation between them, the possessive relation. Consider: (a)
Miguel's sister; (b) Miguel’s book; (c) Miguel’s head; and, (d) Miguel’s identity. The interpretations of
(a-‐d) differ in important ways. In (a) the possessor is Miguel, the possessed is some woman, and the


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4.4.1 Data for morphosyntactic study

The corpus for this study consists of two types of data: sociolinguistic
interviews and posts with their respective comments from one blog.6 The aim of
using and comparing the data from the blog and the interviews is to find out
whether or not the distribution of speech patterns that the locals themselves
associate with Amazonian Spanish (on the blog) matches what we find in spoken
language (in the interviews). The number of words per type of data is presented in
Table 5.
TABLE 5: DATA (NUMBER OF WORDS)
Village: interviews 23003

City: interviews 26135
Blog 31034
Total 80172

This particular blog was chosen because of its popularity among Amazonian
people. The posts collected for this study received a large number of comments
expressing positive and nostalgic feelings towards both the content of the posts and
the type of language being used. The commentators who no longer live in the
Amazon repeatedly praise the author por escribir como hablamos en nuestra tierra
(for writing the way we speak in our homeland) and for transporting them back
into the Amazon. The posts and the comments not only use features associated
with PAS but also contain meta-‐linguistic discussions about these features, as in the
following excerpts from four different people:
(5) a. como tú no escribe nadie, te felicito porque nos diviertes con esa forma
regionalista y singular de expresión de nuestros pueblos[...]. ‘Nobody writes like

relation holding between Miguel and the woman is the sibling relation. In this case, the possessive
relation is lexically contained in the relational noun sister. In (b), book is not a relational noun; the
relationship between Miguel and book can be construed in different ways. Miguel could “own” the
book because he wrote it, he bought it, he was temporarily assigned it in class, etc. The possessive
relationship between Miguel and book is alienable as he can transfer the ownership of the book to
someone else. In (c), Miguel and head have an inalienable relationship because Miguel cannot
transfer the ownership of his head to someone else. In (d), identity is an abstract notion, a construal
that cannot be literally possessed (Barker 2011).
6 The blog consulted was called Mashita jergón (mashita ‘friend, buddy’; jergón ‘poisonous snake’). I
accessed this blog in January 2012. This blog is no longer available on its original site; the author
now posts on Facebook and Twitter.

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you, I commend you for entertaining us with the regional and singular
expressions of our people.’
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b. tienes la chispa para contarnos miles de historias...siempre te leemos en

cualquier sitio donde vive un charapa. ‘You have such a way of telling thousands
of stories. Wherever there is a charapa, you are read.’
c. leí tu columna y la verdad que me da gusto que todavía existan personas como
tú que aun difundan nuestra identidad. ‘I read your column and it is such a
pleasure to find out that there are still people like you that spread our identity.’
d. gracias por recordarnos los dialectos y costumbres de nuestra tierra, me reí
mucho con mis hijas y les expliqué el significado de cada palabra. ‘Thanks for
reminding us about the dialects and customs of our motherland; I laughed a lot
with my daughters and explained to them the meaning of each word.’

The second set of data comes from sociolinguistic interviews conducted with
the same ten speakers described in §4.2. These are freewheeling unscripted
interviews. The participants engaged in a conversation with me; the first topic was
introduced by me (e.g., main events taking place, their high school/college experience),
and after that the participants took the lead for the most part. The lengths of the
interviews range from 35 to 65 minutes.
The hypothesis at play is that the blog might reflect an overuse of PAS
features to mark an alignment towards Amazonian identity. In other words, this
usage would reflect what the blog author and the readers posting comments think
is characteristic of PAS. It has been suggested that the construction of self requires
both explicit and implicit action and thought (Cerulo 1997). It involves stressing the
similarities or shared attributes around which group members coalesce. In this
view, identity is the product of personal choice. Individuals actively decide to adopt
or stress certain attributes. These attributes are, in this case, linguistic traits in use.
Given the positive expressions towards the language used in the posts, the use of
particular features in the posts and the comments, and the meta-‐linguistic
discussions, the findings from the blog will provide additional evidence for the role
of certain grammatical structures as indicators, markers or stereotypes. In contrast
to the blog, the interviews will show how the linguistic patterns are actually used.
4.4.2 Possessor-‐noun number agreement

In spontaneous speech, there is often a mismatch between the possessor
pronoun and the possessed noun with respect to number. That is, the possessive
pronoun agrees in number with the possessor, not the noun being possessed. The
possessors – ‘villagers’ for (6) and ‘protesters’ for (7) – were introduced in previous
utterances.
(6) los he visto emocionados para elegir a sus delegado
‘I saw them excited to elect their delegate’ (Speaker 8)


________________________________________________________________________________________________________

(7) hasta ahora el presidente del Gobierno Regional no ha escuchado sus pedido
‘Up to now, the governor has not heard their petition’ (Speaker 3)

For this study, three different constructions were coded. In two of them, the
possessor pronoun agrees in number with the noun it modifies; in the third, the
possessor pronoun is plural, but the possessed noun is singular. The coded patterns
are given in (8). The fourth possibility —singular pronoun and plural noun, [su
casas]— has not been attested. The results for the first variable —possessor-‐noun
number agreement— are given in Table 6 and Figure 3.

(8) a. su casa (singular possessed)
b. sus casas (plural possessed)
c. sus casa (divergent pattern)

TABLE 6: POSSESSOR -‐NOUN NUMBER AGREEMENT
CITY VILLAGE BLOG

N n % n % n %
sus casa 32 3 2 9 10 20 5
su casa 572 123 75 68 78 381 86
sus casas 87 37 23 10 12 39 9
TOTAL 691 163 100 87 100 441 100

FIGURE 3: POSSESSOR-‐NOUN NUMBER AGREEMENT
100 89
75 78
80
60 sus casa
% sus casas
40
23 su casa
20 10 11
2 4 7
0
city village blog

The first finding reflected in Figure 3 is that in the three settings, the
divergent pattern, [sus casa], is rare, although slightly more frequent in the villages
(10%, compare to 2% in the city, and 5% in the blog). Second, the village is not

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different
than the city with respect to the use of the divergent construction (village
vs. city for sus casa (χ2(1)=3, p=.083)). However, the blog is significantly different
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
than both the city and the village with respect to the use of the divergent

construction (blog vs. city for sus casa (χ2(1)=12.56, p<.001); blog vs. village for sus
casa (χ2(1)=4.17, p=.041)). Third, the city is significantly different than the village in
proportion of construction use for su casa / sus casa (χ2(1)=5.86, p=.015). Also, the
village and the blog are significantly different in proportion of construction use for
su casa / sus casa (χ2(1)=3.98, p=.046). However, the city and the blog are not
significantly different in proportion of construction use for su casa / sus casa
(χ2(1)=0.99, p=.317). In other words, the use sus casa / su casa in the blog
resembles its use in the city, but not in the village.
Because of the striking asymmetry in the percentage of use of the three
possessive constructions, particularly the higher rates for [su casa] compared to
other two patterns, their distribution was explored more closely. Studies of
linguistic typology have shown that possessive patterns are often conditioned by
the semantic properties of both the possessor and the possessed noun (Nichols and
Bickel 2011). Thus, the possessed item was coded for the features abstract /
concrete and count / mass. The referent of the possessor pronoun was coded for
singular / plural.7 In the corpus for this study, the semantics of the possessed item
is not a strong predictor; however, the referent of the possessive pronoun is. The
results are given in Table 7.
TABLE 7: REFERENT OF POSSESSIVE PRONOUN (SG/PL)
sus casa su casa sus casas

n % n % n %
SG Possessor 2 6 493 86 58 67
PL Possessor 30 94 79 14 29 33
Total 32 100 572 100 87 100

Two things need to be highlighted from Table 6. First, the construction [su
casa] is used much more frequently than its plural counterpart [sus casas], with a
ratio of 6:1. Second, the referent of the possessor pronoun in the divergent pattern
[sus casa] is plural 94% of the time. In the following paragraphs, I elaborate on each
of these two findings.

7 This coding follows Hopper and Thompson’s (1980) notion of individuation. Referents which were
mass, non-‐ referential, indefinite were coded as collective. For example: gente ‘people’, todos
‘everyone,’


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A qualitative analysis of a significant number of tokens of [su casa] suggests
that this construction might be undergoing functional extension. Approximately
30% of the instances do not necessarily convey literal or metaphorical possession
but a relationship of “closeness” between the referent of the possessor pronoun and
the noun.8 That is, the possessor pronoun adds a subtle sense of care: the
“possessed” item matters to the “possessor”. This is illustrated in (9) and (10),
excerpts from one of the interviews and the blog, respectively.
(9) [le digo:] explícame qué vas a hacer, que pues tantas cosas quieres hacer. Él
quiere hacer su casita, su granjita, su cerro, su agua…
‘[I tell him:] explain to me what are you going to do, how many things you
want to do. He wants to do his little house, his little farm, his hill, his
water…’ (Speaker 2)

(10) [el día de fiesta] se tiende el mantel chuya-‐chuya, y todos ponen ahí su juane,
sus tamales, su chorizo, su cecina, su arroz baleado, su frejolito huasca, su
yuquita frita, su chicharrón y de ahí todo el mundo agarra y come.
‘[the day of the celebration] the shiny clean blanket gets extended, and
everybody puts there their juane, their tamales, their chorizo, their dry-‐
steak, their rice, their beans, their fried manioc, their pork, and everyone
takes from there and eats.’ (Blog)

In (9), a mother explains that her son needs to make a miniature model of a
ranch for a school project. Her son wants to add way too many things to the model.
In this context, the use of su to introduce every item inserts the idea that the child is
somehow attached to having all these elements in “his ranch;” he does not want to
compromise even one of them. In a similar vein, in (10), the pronoun su introduces
the idea that the “possessed” items – traditional foods, in this case – have a special
significance for the “possessors.” Note that replacing the possessive pronouns in (9)
and (10) with definitive articles to follow more normative patterns would take
away those functional subtleties. These innovative nuances of the [su noun]
construction would fit well within the possession functional domain of PAS.9 Given
that [su noun] does not necessarily convey a genitive relationship, “true”

8 Possessive pronouns convey several relationships besides possession. For instance, in sentences
like su avión aterrizó ‘His plane landed,’ the plane is not (necessarily) his property; in regresó a su
país ‘He when back to his country,’ country is a construal that cannot be actually but only
metaphorically possessed.
9 One reviewer wonders if this type of usage is only attested in PAS, or whether similar uses can also
be found in Andean and Coastal varieties. I am not aware of studies that could answer this question;
however, personal but anecdotal observations suggest that this could be the case in the Andes.

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possession
would be more likely to be expressed by the double possession
construction, [su POSSESSED de POSSESSOR] (for more details, see next section).
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
As for the second finding, in 94% of the tokens (30/32 tokens) the referent
of the pronoun sus in the construction [sus noun] is plural. That is, in this particular
construction, the pronoun does not agree in number with the noun it determines as
in pan-‐Hispanic patterns, but instead with the entity that the pronoun sus makes
anaphoric reference to. Examples in (11) and (12) are from interviews, and in (13)
from the blog.
(11) cuando regresen ya pues van a podé comprar sus bote ya
‘When they come back, they will be able to buy (each) their (own) boat’ (Speaker
8)

(12) los demás maestros que se han sacado diecisiete por ejemplo, no es sus
conocimiento.
‘The other teachers who have gotten sixteen, for example, it’s not their (own)
knowledge’ (Speaker 7)

(13) me cuentan que ha tenido diez hijos de distintos padres y la majadera les
llamaba por sus apellido.
‘I was told she had ten children from different fathers, and the silly one used to
call (each of) them by their (own) last name.’ (Blog)

In the context for (11), the referent of sus is ‘workers’ employed in the jungle
by oil companies; in (12), the referent is ‘the other teachers;’ and, in (13) the
referent is ‘ten children.’ In all these examples, [sus noun] conveys distributive
possession. Distributive possession denotes that the possessed items are distributed
over individual possessors rather than owned collectively by a group (Mithun
1999: 89). Thus, in (11), the construction [sus noun] entails that each worker will
be able to afford to buy his own boat; in (12), the knowledge clearly belongs to each
teacher. Example (13), from the blog, is particularly remarkable. In the context of
the post, the author uses the [sus noun] construction to tell a joke about ten kids in
the same household, each with a different last name.10 The point to be highlighted
here is that the divergent pattern appears to be taking on a new function, that of
conveying a specific type of possession.
The question is, then, what motivates this innovative construction? A
hypothesis to consider is substrate influence from local indigenous languages. For

10 Barraza de la Cruz (1998: 56) provides an example of this pattern, which is interpreted as a sort of
distributive numeral. The author explains that the interpretation of a sentence like Les hacía andar
de sus cuello ‘(The cat) would take them (kittens) around by their neck’ would be that “the cat
would take her kittens around one by one by their neck” (my translation).


________________________________________________________________________________________________________

instance, in Kokama, the substrate language of the villages under study, phrasal
possession is expressed by word order [NPOSSESSOR NPOSSESSED] (14a), and possessive
pronouns preceding the possessed noun [PROPOSSESSOR NPOSSESSED] (14b-‐c) (Vallejos
2010: 207-‐208). Note that in Kokama the possessive pronoun does not agree in
number with the possessed noun. Number is controlled by the entity to which the
pronoun makes anaphoric reference. That is, (14c) is the exact structural parallel of
[sus casa].
(14) a. Mixiri ɨrara ‘Miguel’s canoe’
Miguel canoe
b. ra ɨrara ‘his canoe’
3SG canoe
c. rana ɨrara ‘their canoe’
3PL canoe

As for the functional side of the construction, although Kokama has a
different distributive construction, (14c) can receive both a distributive
interpretation (each member of the group has his/her own canoe), as well as a
collective interpretation (the canoe is owned by a group). In addition, several
languages spoken in the region express possession via interrelated strategies,
including possessive classifiers, obligatory possessed nouns, and distributive
markers, among others. The alienable/inalienable distinction – the ability to
dissociate the referent of the possessed item from its possessor – is found in
Resígaro (Allin 1976; Bickel and Nichols 2011), Yagua (Payne and Payne 2012),
Bora-‐Miraña (Seifart 2005), and Tikuna (Montes 2004), among others. Distributive
markers are pervasive in Amerindian languages, including Quechua. They can be
associated with nouns, adjectives, numerals, possessives pronouns, and most
commonly with verbs (Mithun 1999: 89). However, as explained in §2, given the
extremely complex substrate in the area, trying to trace the source of both the
structure and function of these innovative constructions to specific language(s)
might be a challenging quest.
4.4.3 Double possession and genitive fronting

This section examines two interrelated phenomena: double possession and
genitive fronting. The first pattern consists of marking the possessor twice, by
means of the possessive pronoun and the genitive phrase – [suj POSSESSED de NPj] –
as illustrated in (15) -‐ (17). This phenomenon can be expanded in a recursive
fashion, as shown in (16); schematically: [sui POSSESSED de [suj POSSESSEDi de NPj]].
Also, note in (17) that double possession interacts with the “anomalous” pattern
explained in the previous section. In this particular example, the possessive
pronoun (sus) agrees in number with the possessor NP (esos maestros), not the
noun being possessed (vicio).

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(15)
su primer colegio de mi mamá
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
‘Her first school of my mom’ (Speaker 2)

(16) con su hermana de su promoción de Amalia
‘Her colleague of her classmate of Amalia’ (Speaker 3)
(17) casino, eso son sus vicio de esos maestros; yo me doy cuenta por ahí cuando se
van enseñar, paran borrachos mayormente, con sus casino
‘Poker card, those are their vice of those teachers; I notice when they go to
teach over there, usually they stay drunk, with their poker card’ (Speaker
10)

The double possession construction is found throughout Peru (Escobar
1978, A. M. Escobar 1992, Cerrón Palomino 1981, among others), as well as beyond
Peru, in Yucatan Spanish (Klee and Lynch 2009:137). Double possessive
constructions for third-‐ and second-‐persons to convey courtesy date back to
medieval Spanish (Pozzi-‐Escot 1972). For Rodriguez Garrido (1982) the current
pattern is nothing more than the maintenance of an archaism, whereas for Lozano
(1975) it is the result of transfer from Quechua. Yet, others recognize that it may
have multiple motivations (Granda 1999).
In the genitive fronting construction, the genitive phrase is moved to the
front of the possessed phrase: [de POSSESSOR su POSSESSED]. This feature has been also
attested in Andean Spanish (Calvo Perez 2008: 195). Note in (19) that the
possessor can consist of conjoined prepositional phrases.
(18) de mi papá sus hermanos viven en Lima
‘My father’s, his brothers live in Lima’ (Speaker 2)
(19) tanto de mi mamá como de mi papa sus padres han nacido en San Martín
‘Both my mom’s and my dad’s, their parents were born in San Martín’
(Speaker 9)

Importantly, the genitive phrase does not occur fronted without the
possessor pronoun. That is to say, constructions like de mi papa la casa have not
been attested. This suggests that, in this construction, the preposition de introduces
the possessor and the possessive pronoun is the linking element between the
genitive phrase and the possessed element. In consequence, when speakers want to
specify the possessor by means of the genitive phrase [de noun], they choose from
three constructions, given in (20). The results of their distribution in the database
for this study are given in Table 8 and Figure 4.
(20) a. la casa de Miguel (conservative)
b. su casa de Miguel (double possession)
c. de Miguel su casa (genitive fronting)


________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The findings reflected in Table 8 and Figure 4 are the following: first, city,
village, and blog are significantly different from each other with respect to double
possession construction use (χ2(2)=30, p < .0001). This pattern, [su casa de Miguel],
is less frequent in the city (21%) and much more frequent in the blog (69%).

TABLE 8: DOUBLE POSSESSION & GENITIVE FRONTING
CITY VILLAGE BLOG
N n % n % n %
la casa de Miguel 83 51 75 13 48 19 28
su casa de Miguel 72 14 21 12 44 46 69
de Miguel su casa 7 3 4 2 7 2 3
TOTAL 162 68 100 27 100 67 100

FIGURE 4: DOUBLE POSSESSION & GENITIVE FRONTING
80
70
60
50
la casa de
% 40 Miguel
30 su casa de
Miguel
20
10
0
city village blog

Second, the distribution of [la casa de Miguel] is the opposite of [su casa de
Miguel] in the blog and the city. The pattern [la casa de Miguel] is the most frequent
in the city (75%) and the less frequent in the blog (29%).
Note that city, village, and blog are significantly different with respect to the
use of the conservative possession construction (χ2(2)=30, p<.0001). Third, the use
of the conservative pattern versus the double possessive construction is different in
the city and the blog, but not in the village (conservative vs. double possessive (city:
χ2(1)=21.1, p < .0001; blog χ2(1)=11.2, p=.001; village: χ2(1)=0.04, p=.84)). Fourth,
the use of the genitive fronting construction in the city, village, and blog is both rare
and not significantly different (χ2(2)=0.28, p=.86).
One point to be highlighted is that among all the “anomalous” patterns
discussed here, genitive fronting is the most salient and highly stigmatized. This
feature together with intonation is used in mass media to portray castellano

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charapa.
11 This stereotypical view also emerges in common jokes which
supposedly represent Amazonian ways of speaking. 12 Thus, a noteworthy result of
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
the current study is that, contrary to popular belief, genitive fronting is not very

frequent in spoken usage. In fact, it is the least frequent of all among the three
possessive constructions examined. Also, note that use rate of the double
possessive construction in the blog is much higher than in both village and city. The
higher rate of use of this pattern is a clear example of the quantitative manipulation
of a linguistic feature to emphasize their category membership in the Amazonian
social group.
4.5. Correlation of innovative patterns
After having examined each of the four linguistic variables (§4.3 and §4.4), the
next question is whether or not these constructions correlate with place. Figure 5
presents the results for correlations between innovative patterns and type of data
set (city, village, and blog).
FIGURE 5: CORRELATION OF INNOVATIVE PATTERNS WITH PLACE
80
69
70
60
50 44
city
%
40
village
30
22 21 blog
20
10
7 5 7
10 4 3 2
0
de Miguel su sus casa permutation su casa de
casa j/f Miguel

11 One recent example of mass media’s use of the genitive fronting pattern to portray Amazonian
Spanish is seen here: in April 2013, a song produced in the Peruvian Amazon became a YouTube
sensation receiving more that 4.5 million hits in only a month. This song is entitled Agüita de coco
‘Water of coconut (coconut milk).’ A national broadcast television did a report about this
phenomenon; the report, also available in YouTube, was entitled Del coco su agüita ‘Lit. Of the
coconut, its water.’
12 One popular joke is: ¿Cómo dicen leche los de la selva? De la vaca su jugo ‘How do Amazonian
people say milk? ‘Of the cow, its juice.’


________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Among the innovative patterns discussed in this paper, the use of genitive
fronting [de papa su casa] and the use of possessor-‐noun number disagreement [sus
casa] are the least frequent. In fact, they are rather rare constructions across the
board. In contrast, the permutation f/j and the double possession constructions
show higher rates of use, and their distribution is significantly different in the
village and the city. Finally, the overuse of the double possession construction in
the blog does not match the patterns of distribution found in either the city or the
village.
5. Discussion
The primary motivation for the series of studies presented in §4 is to examine
whether certain general assumptions about Peruvian Amazonian Spanish hold. The
divergent patterns found in this variety have been associated with limited fluency
in Spanish among bilingual speakers, with Andean Spanish influence, or with
vernacular varieties of Spanish spoken in informal situations by people of lower
social status. Yet direct observations suggested that these previous assumptions
are not accurate, and that the patterns found in Peruvian Amazonian Spanish are in
fact found among both monolingual and bilingual speakers, in formal and informal
situations, in people with limited or advanced formal education, and among
younger generations and adults. Thus, the goal of this paper, which focused on
monolingual speakers of Spanish, was to determine (i) what the parameters of
linguistic variation in spoken Amazonian Spanish are, and (ii) whether there is any
social and/or linguistic meaning associated with the attested variation.
As for the question of parameters of linguistic variation, it was found that
place plays a role in the use of some linguistic features. Monolingual Spanish
speakers raised in Kokama villages and those raised in the city differ in their
choices of linguistic patterns. Village-‐speakers have higher rates of three patterns
that have come to be associated with Peruvian Amazonian Spanish: permutation of
f/j, double possessive constructions, and possessor noun number agreement.
Conversely, city-‐speakers have higher rates of variants that are more common in
the rest of Peru and that are also typically associated with prestige varieties. These
findings might be explained by two interrelated facts. First, people from the city
have more exposure to prestige varieties (i.e., social media, interaction with
outsiders, travel outside of the Amazon). Awareness of cultures outside the region
has provided speakers in Iquitos with an opportunity to experience a wider variety
of different sociolinguistic patterns. Second, features associated with PAS are a
target of derision. As a result, people are aware of the stigmatization of particular
traits and, consequently, use less stigmatized patterns. For instance, Jara Yupanqui
(2012:453) found that residents of Iquitos are aware of “the particularities of the

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Spanish
spoken in this area which is largely the result of the metapragmatics of
‘others’ (e.g. limeños).” An interesting finding of the present study is that the use of
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
the most salient and stereotypical features associated with PAS – genitive fronting –

is not only rare in spoken language, but also does not differ between city-‐speakers
and village-‐speakers.
An additional finding is that members of both speech communities do not
pay the same level of attention to the phonological variable. While city-‐speakers
show some variability with respect to the permutation j/f under different language
modes (word in isolation, carrier frame, and sentence production), village-‐speakers
show minimal variability. Based on these results, it could be hypothesized that data
from spontaneous conversation would show a clearer impact of “attention to
speech” in the city than in the village. In the city, the relevance of attention to
speech ––ultimately, casualness and formality–– lies in its effect on speakers’ self-‐
monitoring, hence on their ability to avoid stigma (Labov 2001). In the village, the
j/f permutation has certain immunity from conscious suppression.13 This finding is
not necessarily surprising, as in some close-‐knit communities, such as the Kokama,
the entire village might be viewed as one community of practice, in the sense of
Eckert (2008). This point would be worth exploring in future works, as a recent
study found that access to formal education and exposure to urban varieties allow
speakers from rural contexts to develop a greater metalinguistic awareness and to
differentiate between urban versus rural linguistic features (Jara Yupanqui and
Valenzuela 2013: 60).
The second question explored in this study is whether or not any meanings
are attached to the conservative and innovative variants. As for social meaning, the
overuse of the double possession construction and the extended use of the
permutation of j/f in informal settings seem to index regional identity. The usage of
these features could be answering the question of what it means to be linguistically
identified as Amazonian people. Although the use of the double possession
construction in the blog (69%) matches neither its use in the village (44%) nor in
the city (21%), the blog’s overuse of this feature to emphasize their linguistic and
social differentiation and to portray an Amazonian persona suggests that this
feature is associated with regional identity. Speakers make claims about their place
in social space by either emphasizing or downplaying their category membership

13 One of the reviewers suggested that the city speakers’ awareness of the j/f permutation could
have been the result of exposure to written language. But all the participants, city and village
speakers alike, had access to at least eleven years of formal education. Thus, while literacy skills
could indeed impact certain phonological patterns, in this case it does not seem to have had much of
an effect. Furthermore, the target words are frequent in discourse and all the participants could
recognize them.


________________________________________________________________________________________________________

through the quantitative manipulation of features that are perceivable in the public
sphere. This is not surprising, as it has been found that variables historically linked
with geographic dialects can take on interactional meanings based in local and
regional ideologies (see, for instance, Eckert 2000). These traits index socially
important loyalties, not simply geography.
Yet the fact that city-‐speakers self-‐monitor the permutation of j/f shows that
it is an indexical cue associated with in-‐group informal conversation. When
producing words in isolation, they use permutations only minimally, whereas when
producing sentences, they display higher rates of permutation. This is consistent
with the idea that phonological variables are the most salient features for the
speech community members themselves as well as for outsiders. Phonological
variables tend to be more frequently implicated in style-‐shifting than
morphosyntactic variables (Trudgill 1986), yet salience of particular variables may
be different for different social groups (Kerswill and William 2002).
In addition to social meaning, there seems also to be linguistic meaning
associated with the attested variation. On the one hand, it was found that the
divergent pattern with respect to number agreement, [sus noun], appears to be
undertaking a dedicated function, that of distributive possession. In the database,
this construction is consistently used to indicate that the possessed item belongs
not to an individual but to a collective. On the other hand, the extensive use of [su
noun] compared to its plural counterpart raised questions as to whether or not the
possessive pronoun in that particular construction indicates any kind of genitive
relationship. A qualitative examination of a number of examples revealed that the
possessive pronoun does not necessarily express only possession, either literal or
metaphorical; rather, it injects a sense of closeness between the “possessor” and
the “possessed.” This new function of the [su noun] construction fits well with the
fact that, in this variety, the genitive phrase is generally added to express “true”
possession, resulting in the double possessive construction. It was hypothesized
that these functional extensions might be indicative of substrate influence, as
grammatical categories such as alienable/unalienable possession, possessive
classifiers, attributive markers, etc., are common in several Amazonian indigenous
languages spoken in the area. This hypothesis would need to be tested in future
studies.
6. Conclusions
This paper examines the use of four linguistic variables (permutation j/f,
possessive-‐noun number agreement, double possession and genitive fronting)
among ten monolingual speakers of Amazonian Spanish from two demographically
different social settings; a Kokama village and the city of Iquitos. Contrary to
common misconceptions, these constructions are not associated with specific social

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groups
but found widespread among speakers from the entire social spectrum. The
results presented here show that in spoken usage certain correlations with both
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
place and attention to the speech event seem to exist. Interestingly, the use of

genitive fronting —one of the most salient and stereotypical features associated
with PAS— is rare in spoken language among both city-‐speakers and village-‐
speakers.
Social and/or linguistic meanings appear to be emerging for some linguistic
constructions. First, the manipulation of the permutation j/f and the double
possessive construction suggest a relation between these particular variables and
an Amazonian persona associated with both regional and national ideologies with
this “exotic” region. The overt manifestations and emphasis of patterns that are
perceivable in the public sphere are contributing to identity construction. Second,
two constructions that consist of divergent patterns are undertaking dedicated
functions. In the database for this study, the construction that displays a mismatch
in number between the possessor pronoun and the noun it specifies consistently
conveys distributive possession, whereas the possessor noun construction conveys
closeness and affection towards the possessed item.
The data discussed in this study leads to questions related to language
contact. Are the patterns found among monolinguals in the Peruvian Amazon also
found in the Spanish spoken by Kokama/Spanish bilinguals? Are the patterns in
Amazonian Spanish due to substratum influence from Kokama or any other local
language? These are some of the questions that would need to be explored in larger
corpora for this variety of Spanish.
References
Allin, Trevor. 1976. Grammar of Resígaro. Summer Institute of Linguistics. Peru.
Barker, Chris. 2011. Possessives and relational nouns [Chapter 45]. In Semantics: An
international handbook of natural language meaning, ed. K. von Heusinger, C.
Maienborn, & P. Portner, 1009-‐1130. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
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Author’s address:

Rosa Vallejos
MSC03 2130, Department of Linguistics
Humanities Bldg. 526
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131

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Peruvian Amazonian Spanish

426 Rosa Vallejos

Peruvian Amazonian Spanish 427

The term Amazonian Spanish implies the existence of a variety of Spanish

428 Rosa Vallejos

As previously indicated, PAS has received little attention in Spanish

Peruvian Amazonian Spanish 429

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(see, for instance, Kerswill and Williams 2002).

Peruvian Amazonian Spanish 431

VILLAGES IQUITOS (INEI 2007)

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than the double that of Iquitos itself.

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Peruvian Amazonian Spanish 435

360 120 120

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Peruvian Amazonian Spanish 437

4.4.1 Data for morphosyntactic study

Village: interviews 23003

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4.4.2 Possessor-­‐noun number agreement

Peruvian Amazonian Spanish 439

CITY VILLAGE BLOG

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sus casa su casa sus casas

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Peruvian Amazonian Spanish 443

4.4.3 Double possession and genitive fronting

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people say milk? ‘Of the cow, its juice.’

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Peruvian Amazonian Spanish 453

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4.4.2 Possessor-‐noun number agreement