The Amazon Basin: Linguistic Areas and Language Contact

Abstract

The chapter focuses on area diffusion and linguistic areas in the Amazon Basin, one of the linguistically most diverse regions in the world. The long-term history of language interaction in the linguistically highly diverse basin of the Amazon Basin has been marred by a large scale language extinction and obliteration of contact patterns. At present, the Vaupés River Basin area is the best established linguistic area. Linguistic and cultural features of neighbouring languages in the Upper Rio Negro region, and in the basin of neighbouring Caquetá and Putumayo, point towards possible areal diffusion in the past. The Upper Xingu region is a well-established cultural area; however, given its relatively shallow time depth, its status as a linguistic area is questionable. A number of other regions within Amazonia show traces of possible language contact with inconclusive evidence in favour of long-standing areal diffusion. A number of pan-Amazonian features are shared by genetically unrelated, and often geographically remote, languages. These may well reflect traces of linguistic contact that can no longer be recovered.

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