Algunas observaciones sobre el léxico y la sintaxis del “español quipu”

This paper comprises a first linguistic description of a series of Andean texts from the 16th century. These texts were edited by Pärssinen & Kiviharju (2004, 2010) and published in two volumes entitled Textos Andinos. According to the editors, the texts are transcriptions into Spanish of a series of inca and colonial time quipus. This textual material constitutes an early example of Andean Spanish, which has not been subject to previous linguistic study. Our linguistic analysis of the two volumes of Textos Andinos shows that the texts are best thought of as a textual continuum rather than a specific text type. Our analysis permits the identification of at least five textual levels: in one end are the texts which seem very close to their supposed quipu origin; in the other end of the continuum we find texts which show a textual structure which adhere closely to the administrative Spanish language of the 16th century.