Languages spoken in the Colombian Amazonia: A comparative exercise between the results that follow the Sound Alternations proposal in their structural and areal scopes

Abstract

Dixon and Aikhenvald (1999) considered the existence of Amazon as a linguistic macroarea, from which it has recognized the separation between Vaupés and Caquetá-Putumayo areas in Colombia (Epps; Michael, 2017), where without georeferencing were used to characterize areal scopes. Through phonological criterium of Sound Alternations (Donegan; Stampe, 2009) in combination with methods without (García-Vallve; Puigbo, 2016 [2002]) and without georeferencing methods (Nerbonne et al., 2018) were applied to twenty-five languages from the compilation of González de Pérez and Rodríguez de Montes (2000), it was inferred that structural classifications aren’t very similar than areal. Moreover, it has found that, respect to phonological criterion, Vaupés isn’t an even terrain, but it’s divided between the North and South.

Keywords

• Languages spoken in the Colombian Amazon
• Sound Alternations proposal
• Structural scope
• Areal scope