Contact between Indigenous languages of the Central Andes and Spanish: Linguistic outcomes as cases of contra-hierarchical diffusion

The Central Andes in the 20th and 21st centuries displays the social ecology of a language contact scenario that leads to grammatical influence between unrelated languages. Linguistic influence from Andean languages to Spanish, the focus of this chapter, represents a case of influence from minoritized languages to a hegemonic language. The Central Andes portrays a unique and vibrant case of contact-induced features in a variety of a global language, Spanish. Although contra-hierarchical diffusion (linguistic influence from a minoritized to a hegemonic language) is considered rare, contact-induced linguistic outcomes in Andean Spanish include phonetic–phonological, morphosyntactic, morphosemantic, and semantic–pragmatic features. The broader use of these linguistic features is dependent on the register they can appear in and speakers’ awareness of their perceived social meaning in the region. Andean linguistic studies are in an ideal position to make theoretical and methodological contributions to Hispamerindian (socio)linguistics and language contact studies.