This contribution concerns once again the name of Chan Chan, the largest pre-Hispanic city in the Americas. Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino has recently argued that the name should be etymologized through a combination of Quechua, which had a weak and short-lived presence on the Peruvian North Coast, and Aymara material, a language which had no known presence there at all. In addition to this major flaw, I discuss further problematic aspects of the proposal. Each of these would suffice to cast considerable doubt on the proposed etymology, but in conjunction they make it advisable to reject it outright. Instead, I continue to defend a methodologically conservative and cautious posture that I have already advocated in my earlier contribution to the topic

This paper makes accesible a new transcription of Richard Spruce’s vocabulary of the Sechura language. Collected in the mid-19th century by the British botanist, it constitutes one of only two sources of data for this language of northernmost Peru. A comparison of the original with previously published versions shows serious errors in transcription, in particular in those of Otto von Buchwald and Jacinto Jijón y Camaaño. The article also discusses the probable circumstances of data collection and the publication history of the hitherto known version, and concludes with some first observations on the significance of Spruce’s wordlist for elucidating the linguistic history of the region, in particular with regard to the question of the linguistic situation at Olmos.

This contribution concerns once again the name of Chan Chan, the largest pre-Hispanic city in the Americas. Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino has recently argued that the name should be etymologized through a combination of Quechua, which had a weak and short-lived presence on the Peruvian North Coast, and Aymara material, a language which had no known presence there at all. In addition to this major flaw, I discuss further problematic aspects of the proposal. Each of these would suffice to cast considerable doubt on the proposed etymology, but in conjunction they make it advisable to reject it outright. Instead, I continue to defend a methodologically conservative and cautious posture that I have already advocated in my earlier contribution to the topic

Esta nota hace accesible una nueva transcripción del vocabulario de la lengua de Sechura recolectado por Richard Spruce. Elaborado a mediados del siglo XIX por el botanista inglés, constituye una de las solo dos fuentes para esta lengua del extremo norte del Perú. La comparación del original con versiones publicadas anteriormente hace evidente graves errores de transcripción, particularmente en las versiones de Otto von Buchwald, y Jacinto Jijón y Camaaño. La nota también discute las probables circunstancias de la recolección de los datos y la historia de la publicación de las versiones anteriormente conocidas. Por último, concluye con primeras observaciones sobre la relevancia del vocabulario de Spruce, especialmente acerca de la situación lingüística en el pueblo de Olmos.

Este artículo facilita comentarios onomásticos y etimológicos acerca de la ciudad prehispánica de Chan Chan en la costa norte peruana. El escrito se centra específi camente en los nombres propios Chan Chan y Chimú, que de modo parcial compiten uno con el otro. Se discute ambas denominaciones desde sus aspectos formales, semánticos y etimológicos. Luego, el artículo también considera un nombre posible de una de las estructuras arquitectónicas dentro del complejo urbano.

This paper makes accesible a new transcription of Richard Spruce’s vocabulary of the Sechura language. Collected in the mid-19th century by the British botanist, it constitutes one of only two sources of data for this language of northernmost Peru. A comparison of the original with previously published versions shows serious errors in transcription, in particular in those of Otto von Buchwald and Jacinto Jijón y Camaaño. The article also discusses the probable circumstances of data collection and the publication history of the hitherto known version, and concludes with some first observations on the significance of Spruce’s wordlist for elucidating the linguistic history of the region, in particular with regard to the question of the linguistic situation at Olmos.

This contribution concerns once again the name of Chan Chan, the largest pre-Hispanic city in the Americas. Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino has recently argued that the name should be etymologized through a combination of Quechua, which had a weak and short-lived presence on the Peruvian North Coast, and Aymara material, a language which had no known presence there at all. In addition to this major flaw, I discuss further problematic aspects of the proposal. Each of these would suffice to cast considerable doubt on the proposed etymology, but in conjunction they make it advisable to reject it outright. Instead, I continue to defend a methodologically conservative and cautious posture that I have already advocated in my earlier contribution to the topic

Although the author of the first grammatical and lexicographical documentation of Quechua, Domingo de Santo Tomás, does not mention anywhere in his extensive works the dialectal and geographical basis of his work, it is commonly assumed that it is an extinct Quechua dialect of the central coast of Peru. In this paper, I review the arguments supporting this dialectal identification and discuss some problematic aspects that are known but worth emphasizing. In this context, I offer an exhaustive discussion of the Lexicon, or Vocabulario de la lengua general del Perú by Santo Tomás, specifically the vocabulary related to the sea. Based on the extensive documentation of expressions belonging to the maritime semantic field (references to the sea, marine life, fish, fishing, navigation) found in the Lexicon, or Vocabulario de la lengua general del Perú, we can conclude that the Quechua desc...

Este trabajo intenta reconstruir la situación idiomática en la costa norte del Perú alrededor del primer contacto con los europeos. Las fuentes utilizadas incluyen testimonios tempranos en documentos europeos, la toponimia y datos lingüísticos propios. La reconstrucción que ofrezco difiere de algunos trabajos anteriores realizados sobre el tema. Algunos aspectos que subrayo son la imposibilidad de trazar deslindes lingüísticas claras en el antiguo Piura; el entrelazamiento lingüístico entre costa y sierra como elemento definitorio del norte; la afirmación del alto Piura como parte de la zona nuclear del mochica; y la naturaleza cándida y cuestionable de la alegación de una extensión del quingnam al sur hasta Lima.