Contrasting linguistic ecologies: Indigenous and colonially mediated language contact in northwest Amazonia

Abstract

This paper investigates the dynamics of multilingualism and the linguistic outcomes of contact involving indigenous languages in the northwest Amazonian Vaupés region. Despite points of continuity, a significant contrast exists between the processes and products of multilingual interaction among indigenous groups and that involving colonial entities. While indigenous interactions have tended to involve language maintenance, grammatical diffusion, and limited lexical borrowing, contact between indigenous and European languages has tended toward more code-switching, lexical borrowing, and large-scale language shift. These findings illustrate that attention to differing linguistic ecologies, with their associated social and cultural dynamics, is crucial to understanding the mechanisms and outcomes of language contact, and that we must be cautious in projecting the patterns of one context upon another.