Abstract
After presenting some basic genetic, historical and typological information about Quichua, this chapter outlines the quantification patterns it expresses. It illustrates various semantic types of quantifiers, such as generalized existential, generalized universal, proportional, definite and partitive which are defined in “The Quantifier Questionnaire”. It partitions the expression of the semantic types into morpho-syntactic classes: Adverbial type quantifiers and Determiner type quantifiers. For the various semantic and morpho-syntactic types of quantifiers it also distinguishes syntactically simple and syntactically complex quantifiers, as well as issues of distributivity and scope interaction, classifiers and measure expressions, and existential constructions. The chapter describes structural properties of determiners and quantified noun phrases in Quichua, both in terms of internal structure (morphological or syntactic) and distribution.
We thank the other members of the 2012–2013 UCLA Quichua group: Mike Galant, Vania Kapitonov, Yun Jung Kim, Natasha Korotkova, and especially our consultant, Dr. Emilia Chuquin. We are indebted to those scholars of Quichua who precede us, especially Peter Cole. We also thank Edward Keenan, Peter Landerman, Denis Paperno, Cristina Guardiano, and an anonymous reviewer for additional helpful comments and suggestions. Any errors are ours and ours alone.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
See Sánchez (2010: 236ff.) for a bibliography of linguistic work on the Quechuan languages.
- 2.
See Gómez-Rendón (2008) for a discussion of linguistic variation among Ecuadorian Quechua languages.
- 3.
Cole’s grammar (1982) contains a number of comparisons between Imbabura and other Quechuan languages, but none of these involve quantifiers.
- 4.
The terms “topic” and “focus” for -mi and -ka go back at least to Cole (1982: 65). -Mi has been claimed to have “validator” or evidential properties (Cole 1982; Korotkova 2013) but these characterizations are not relevant to the present discussion. (-Mi proves to be important for our analysis of quantifiers, as we discuss in Sect. 2.3.2 below.)
- 5.
The first-person singular object marker -wa appears e.g. in (80); non-third-person subject markers appear in many examples, beginning with (7) below.
- 6.
- 7.
For Cole (1982: 92), -naju (which he relates to an earlier Quechua reciprocal suffix -naku) is a single morpheme expressing “joint” action rather than a plural progressive combination, and this suffix may co-occur with progressive -ju “in emphatic contexts” only (1982: 196). Perhaps the suffix has been reanalyzed as bimorphemic in Dr. Chuquin’s dialect: for her, the girls and ‘we’ in (2) must be singing progressively and need not be singing together, although the singing must be simultaneous.
- 8.
As readers who know Spanish will recognize, there are many borrowed words in Quichua; here we identify the sources only for borrowed quantifiers. A special use of borrowed quantifiers is described in Sect. 8.6.
- 9.
This sentence (as well as (7)) was provided in the context of a story our consultant told, detailing how to make corn beer. At this point in the narrative the corn had already been definitely identified.
- 10.
These adverbials can co-occur with objects marked with accusative -ta (67b). Furthermore, such adverbs are distinguishable from attributive adjectives—and D-quantifiers—which do not take case-marking unless the nouns they modify are elided. See also Hastings (2004: 200–201).
- 11.
Kazi is from Spanish casi ‘almost’, ni is from Spanish ni ‘nor’ (especially as used in expressions like ni siquiera ‘not even’), and uras is from Spanish horas ‘hours’. The construction in this phrase is discussed in Sect. 3.4.3.
- 12.
This word appears to be a loan from Spanish viaje ‘trip’.
- 13.
Our consultant Dr. Chuquin pointed out that when a number, such as kinsa ‘three’, is present in examples like (31), shuj seems to behave as a “filler,” contributing no meaning.
- 14.
Shuj may not precede the numeral ‘one’, which remains a puzzle.
(i)
*Shuj
shuj
gallitas-ta-mi
miku-rka-ni
one
one
cookie-acc-foc
eat-pst-nfut.1sg
Intended: ‘I ate one cookie.’
- 15.
It is puzzling that shuj may additionally precede only one of Quichua’s universal D-quantifiers, tukuy but not kada or gulpi:
(ii)
Shuj
tukuy-lla
warmi-kuna
papa-ta
miku-rka.
one
all-lim
woman-pl
potato-acc
eat-pst
‘All the women ate a potato.’
(iii)
*Shuj
kada
warmi-mi
papa-ta
miku-rka.
one
every
woman-foc
potato-acc
eat-pst
Intended: ‘Every/each woman ate a potato.’
(iv)
*Shuj
gulpi
warmi-kuna-ka
shamu-rka.
one
all2
woman-pl-top
come-pst
‘All the women came’
- 16.
Kinsala may be etymologically related to kinsa ‘three’.
- 17.
Wakin + -pi becomes wakimbi by way of two phonological rules. Stops are voiced following a nasal, and nasals assimilate to the place of articulation of the following consonant.
- 18.
‘Anything but…’, ‘nothing but…’, and so on are expressed similarly.
- 19.
Gulpi (not discussed by Cole 1982) appears to be a loan from the Spanish noun golpe ‘blow’, but the semantics of this etymology are not clear to us. (Peter Landerman (p.c.) has suggested a possible connection with Spanish de golpe ‘suddenly, all of a sudden’.) We have less data on gulpi than on tukuylla, and the ‘all’/‘every’ comparisons below address only tukuylla. However, gulpi occurs in one very unusual construction, discussed in Sect. 4.2.3 below.
- 20.
A similar construction with the A-quantifier use of chawpi ‘half’ is in (112) below.
- 21.
The related verb chawpina ‘to divide into parts’ does not obligatorily mean to divide in halves:
(v)
Tanda-ta-ka
kinsa
pidasu-kuna-pi-mi
chawpi-rka-ni.
bread-acc-top
three
part-pl-loc-foc
divide-pst-nfut.1sg
‘I divided the bread into three parts.’
- 22.
This sentence was suggested by Cole’s example (283) (1982: 74).
- 23.
(138) confirms explicitly that ‘me’ is the object of yali-na, since it includes the (generally optional, as shown by (136)) first-person singular object suffix -wa.
- 24.
Cole (1982: 61) describes such clauses as “adverbial”.
- 25.
- 26.
Occasionally yali-j is heard as yali-y, with an alternative nominalizer -y.
- 27.
Cole (1982: 66 (225); glosses adapted) cites the following extremely complex construction which also appears to involve semantic D-quantification:
(vi)
ñuka-ka
ashtawan
yali-j
aycha-ta
miku-ni
[kan
1sg.pron-top
more
pass-nmlz
meat-acc
eat-nfut.1sg
2.pron
tanda-ta
miku-j]-ta
yali-shpa
bread-acc
eat-nmlz-acc
pass-rl.ss
‘I eat more meat than you eat bread.’
(Cole argues that this is literally ‘I eat more meat, surpassing [the amount to which] you eat bread’.) Dr. Chuquin has alternately accepted and rejected this sentence on different occasions, but is unwilling to volunteer similar structures (e.g. ‘I eat more apples than you eat oranges’) or to think of any examples where she would use VERB-j-ta yali-shpa. We will therefore not consider examples of this complexity here.
- 28.
The only incorrect option is to put ashtawan last.
- 29.
-Pura (presumably from Spanish puro ‘purely; only; exactly’; not mentioned in Cole 1982) also occurs on nouns and pronouns.
- 30.
It is grammatical to use puka-lla in (165), but the sentence loses its exclusive meaning. In that case the sentence means that Maria likes ‘somewhat red’ apples. This is the weakening meaning of –lla on adjectives, as mentioned above.
- 31.
In Spanish, clock time is expressed with the feminine articles la or las and a numeral. These are frequently phonologically adapted in Quichua: for example, lawna ‘one o’clock’ in (179a) is from Spanish la una.
Works Cited
Bochnak, M. R. (2011). Two sources of scalarity within the verb phrase. In Arsenijević, et al. (Eds.), Studies in the composition and decomposition of event predicates (pp. 99–123).
Carlson, G. (1987). Same and different: Some consequences for syntax and semantics. Linguistics and Philosophy, 10, 531–565.
Cole, P. (1982). Imbabura Quichua. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.
Faller, M., & Hastings, R. (2008). Cuzco Quechua quantifiers. In L. Matthewson (Ed.), Quantification: A cross-linguistic perspective (pp. 277–317). Bingley: Emerald.
Gómez-Rendón, J. (2008). Typological and social constraints on language contact: Amerindian languages in contact with Spanish. chapter 6 (pp. 169–193). PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam.
Haspelmath, M. (1997). Indefinite pronouns. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hastings, R. E. (2004). The syntax and semantics of relativization and quantification: The case of Quechua. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Linguistics, Cornell University.
Ioup, G. (1977). Specificity and the interpretation of quantifiers. Linguistics and Philosophy, 1(2), 233–245.
Jelinek, E. (1995). Quantification in straits Salish. In E. Bach, E. Jelinek, A. Kratzer, & B. H. Partee (Eds.), Quantification in natural languages (pp. 487–540). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Kapitonov, I. (2013). I see anything: Indefinite pronouns in Imbabura Quichua. Ms.
Keenan, E. L. (2012). The quantifier questionnaire. In E. L. Keenan & D. Paperno (Eds.), Handbook of quantifiers in natural language (pp. 1–20). Dordrecht: Springer.
Keenan, E. L., & Paperno, D. (2012). Introduction. In E. L. Keenan & D. Paperno (Eds.), Handbook of quantifiers in natural language (pp. v–viii). Dordrecht: Springer.
Korotkova, N. (2013). Quichua validators: between evidentials and modals. Ms., UCLA.
Landerman, P. (2013). A summary overview of the Quechua linguistic family. Handout.
Lewis, M. P., Gary F. S., & Charles D. F. (Eds.). (2015). Ethnologue: Languages of the world, Eighteenth edition. Dallas: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com
Martin, C. (2012). Adjectives, adverbs, topic, and focus in Quichua. Ms.
Martin, C. (2013). DP structure and quantification in Quichua. Ms.
Matushansky, O. (2010). Same problem, different solution. Ms, Utrecht University.
Partee, B. H. (1995). Quantificational structures and compositionality. In E. Bach, E. Jelinek, A. Kratzer, & B. H. Partee (Eds.), Quantification in natural languages (pp. 541–601). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Postal, P. (1966). On so-called pronouns in English. Monograph Series on Language and Linguistics, 19, 177–206.
Sánchez, L. (2010). The morphology and syntax of topic and focus. Minimalist inquiries in the Quechua periphery. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Stassen, L. (1985). Comparison and universal Grammar. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Tellings, J. (2014). Only and focus in Imbabura Quichua. In Proceedings of BLS 40, pp. 522–543.
Tellings, J. (2015). Expressing identity in Imbabura Quichua. In J. Pasquereau (Ed.) Proceedings of SULA 8, pp. 89–104.
Vieira, M. D. (1995). The expression of quantificational notions in Asurini do Trocara: Evidence against the universality of determiner quantification. In E. Bach, E. Jelinek, A. Kratzer, & B. H. Partee (Eds.), Quantification in natural languages (pp. 701–720). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Weber, D. (1989). A grammar of Huallaga (Huánaco) Quechua. Berkeley: UC Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Abbreviations Used in the Glosses
Abbreviations Used in the Glosses
1 | 1st person | 2 | 2nd person | 3 | 3rd person |
acc | accusative | ben | benefactive | caus | causative |
coord | coordinator | def | definite | dim | diminutive |
dist | distal | foc | focus | fut | future |
gen | genitive | hon | honorific | inf | infinitive |
imp | imperative | irr | irrealis | lim | limitative |
loc | locative | neg | negative | nfut | non-future |
nmlz | nominalizer | obj | object | part | participle |
pl | plural | pl.subj | plural subject | plur | pluractional |
pres | present | prog | progressive | pron | pronoun |
prox | proximal | pst | past | Q | Quichua |
redup | reduplication | rl | realis | S | Spanish |
sg | singular | ss | same-subject | taj | taj suffix |
top | topic | whq | wh question |
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Barchas-Lichtenstein, J., Martin, C., Munro, P., Tellings, J. (2017). Quantification in Imbabura Quichua. In: Paperno, D., Keenan, E. (eds) Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language: Volume II. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 97. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44330-0_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44330-0_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-44328-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-44330-0
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)