Origin

A standardised form of Quechua was codified in the religious texts produced by the Third Council of Lima (1582–1583) and published in 1584–1585, as well as in the associated anonymous grammar and dictionary published in 1586. More or less close written approximations of this variety were used for religious and administrative purposes during the rest of the 16th and at least the first half of the 17th century,^[36][37] although modifications of some details were by no means uncommon.^[38] The exact nature and origins of this variety and its relationship to the Inca lingua franca and to different Quechua regional dialects are somewhat controversial.

There is no doubt that Standard Colonial Quechua was a form of Quechua IIC, or Southern Quechua^{[39][35][40][11]} (although a minority view is that specifically the Manuscript of Huarochirí has features of Quechua IIB instead.^[28]). For instance, it has the 1st person subject suffix -ni rather than -y and the 1st person object -wa- rather than -ma-.^[35] It also expresses verbal number by means of the suffixes -ku and -chik. Accordingly, it can be seen as some sort of natural continuation of the Inca lingua franca, still essentially the same 'Southern Peruvian Quechua', if the Inca koiné is assumed to have been a Cuzco dialect of type IIC,^[41] or it can be regarded as a distinct rupture according to the currently more common view that the Incas had used a different, Coastal Quechua variety.^[42]

In spite of the clear Southern dialectal basis, the codifiers of Standard Colonial Quechua claimed, and do appear, to have made an effort to select forms ensuring maximal intelligibility across the country, avoiding both elements that were unique to various deviant local dialects and those that were peculiar to what was considered prestigious aristocratic speech in Cuzco.^[43][16] Thus, they preferred the widespread word muchu- rather than the Cuzco-specific synonym allpari- for 'suffer', and aklla- instead of chikllu- for 'choose'. They also avoided Cuzco borrowings from Aymara or Puquina which may have been partly due to the Incas' own origins.^[16][17]

There is, however, a certain controversy about the exact relationship of Standard Colonial Quechua to the Cuzco dialect. The authors themselves stated that they were writing in the variety of Cuzco, and three of the four did appear to have their origins in the former Inca capital or the surrounding area. Authors such as Mannheim (1991: 142) and Durston (2007: 191–194) consider the Third Council norm to be, indeed, based on the dialect of Cuzco with small artificial modifications of the type mentioned above. In the orthography, the codifiers opted for not marking the aspirates and ejectives typical of Cuzco,^[40] contributing to the resemblance of the written form to the modern Ayacucho dialect. However, they explicitly motivated that strategy not as an accommodation of dialects lacking these sounds, but with the fact that 'the meanings do not concur and the interpreters do not agree among themselves'.^[44] In fact, not even the contrast between 'k' and 'q' was expressed, which some have connected with its loss in many northern Quechua varieties.^[11] In any case, both the principle of avoiding Cuzco-specific lexemes and the one of not marking the ejectives, the aspirates and the uvular-velar contrast were deviated from to some extent in many subsequently published texts in Standard Colonial Quechua that sought to reflect Cuzco usage more faithfully.

A different view is expressed by Itier (2000: 48, passim), who believes the Third Council norm to have been based on an innovative Southern Quechua koiné that had emerged spontaneously in the preceding decades in response to the development of the mining industry and urbanisation and was clearly distinct from the traditional and archaic (albeit prestigious) Cuzco dialect associated with the Inca past. He explains the fact that many of those using this lingua franca referred to it as 'the language of Cuzco' with the assumption that people meant a Southern Quechua variety in general.^[45] Some innovations found in this form did eventually spread to Cuzco Quechua as well.^[46]

Assuming that the Inca lingua franca had not, in fact, been a form of Southern Quechua, the choice of the latter as a basis for the standard language by the colonial authorities may have been partly connected to the fact that this variety was prevalent in the areas that were most important for the mining industry. An additional factor was the prestige of Cuzco: there are numerous references to the fact that by the time of the Third Council in the 1580s, it was Southern Quechua and specifically the dialect of Cuzco that was seen as the most refined and closest to the way the Incas had spoken, hence worthiest of being used to express 'lofty concepts'.^[47][48] The focus on Cuzco in particular is explicable in view of its status as the former Inca capital, which led to be it being seen as 'the Athens, the Rome and the Toledo of the Quechua language', as Oré put it in 1598.^[49] This identification of their own dialect with that of the Incas was also, by that time, part of the identity of the Cuzco elites.^[50] The contrast between the Coastal Quechua of Juan de Betanzos's chronicle of 1557 and the Southern Quechua of Cristóbal de Molina from 1575 may suggest that the indigenous nobility had abandoned the old lingua franca and switched to the local dialect in the intervening period.^[51]

Again, depending on whether Standard Colonial Quechua is seen as a form of Cuzco Quechua or not, the transition to the language of classical Quechua drama (mid 17th – late 18th century) can be seen as an extinction and replacement of one written language by another^[11] or as a smooth and natural transition to later forms of the Cuzco dialect.^[52]

Use

Standard Colonial Quechua was adopted as an instrument of proselytisation by the Catholic Church, following a general policy of using vernaculars in religious instructions as advocated by the Council of Trent (1545–1563) in connection with the Counter-Reformation. Efforts to use some form of Quechua for religious purposes began in the 1540s at the latest, predating significantly the attested Standard Colonial Quechua standard. The earliest doctrinal texts and a dictionary, now lost, were written by Juan de Betanzos in Cuzco, apparently on commission of the Spanish Crown. Other individual initiatives appear to have occurred, and the First Council of Lima (1551–1552) seems to have approved of certain Quechua Christian texts which may have been in the variety of Domingo Santo Tomás and even to have included the sermon and general confession prayer that he includes in his 1560 work.^[53] At the same time, a chaplaincy was established in Lima cathedral, providing a stipend for a cleric to regularly preach in 'the Indian language' (presumably Quechua) there.^[54] Another Quechua catechism is known to have been produced by the Jesuits in Lima by 1569,^[55] and yet another set of texts was being worked on by them around 1576.^[56]

At the same time, a parallel effort was going on in Cuzco. In 1567, there were already officially approved Quechua religious texts that priests were instructed to use in the Diocese of Cuzco. These were revised in 1573, reportedly involving the introduction of some sort of diacritics by Melchor del Aguila. In the 1570s, Cristóbal de Molina was a notable Quechua-speaking preacher in the city; he would go on to write a famous chronicle in 1575.^[57]

To ensure that priests learnt Quechua, a teaching chair was founded at the Lima Cathedral in 1571.^[58] In the late 1570s, competence in Quechua was made obligatory for priests in Peru in order to ensure effective proselytisation and doctrinal purity, and a Quechua chair was established at Lima's University of San Marcos with the function of not only offering courses in Standard Colonial Quechua, but also conducting examinations that certified competence in Quechua – essentially licensing for priestly office.^[58] Already in the 1580s, this monopoly was revoked and various other bodies and experts were entrusted with performing such linguistic licensing for locations distant from Lima – notably, in Cuzco.^[59]

Once established by the Third Council of Lima (1582–1583), Standard Colonial Quechua is known to have been used in sermons in and in teaching and is reported to have been widely understood and to have enjoyed significant prestige, reportedly even leading to dialect shift among rural Quechua speakers in contact with the urban centres.^[60] Besides its clerical use, Standard Colonial Quechua was the primary native vehicle of written communication, seen in personal letters and, to some extent, in legal and administrative contexts such as the writing of petitions and titles to land and office.^[61] However, unlike Nahuatl in Mexico, Quechua was almost never used in notary records, with only two fragments surviving, possibly because of a 1576 ban on mestizos' occupying the office of notary.^[62]

The standard is reported to have been understood to some extent in most of the country, including the Central Quechua areas as well,^[63] although the degree of competence in it was smaller in lower social strata and women.^[64] Some linguists have argued that much of the current spread of Southern Quechua throughout the Southern Peruvian highlands and the displacement of other native languages by it was only achieved in the colonial period due to its promotion by the Spanish authorities^[65] or economic activity,^[66] whereas others have contended that the significance of these factors was probably small and that the Southern Quechua area must have been homogeneous since before the Spanish Conquest.^[67]

After the Third Council of Lima, all authors adhered to its standard in most aspects, but only few did so entirely faithfully without making any noticeable modifications: according to Alan Durston's assessment, the latter may hold true only of the works of Pablo de Prado and Diego de Torres Rubio.^[68] In fact, when Alonso Martínez, a member of the Third Council translation team, attacked Alonso Huerta in 1613 for deviating from the Third Council standard, this did not prevent Huerta from using Archbishop Lobo Guerrero's patronage to inherit Martínez' university chair after the latter's death in 1614.^[69] The modifications that most post-Third Council authors made followed two principal tendencies.

One of these was to reflect more closely and consistently the speech of Cuzco (often Aymara-influenced, possibly connected to the Incas' own Aymara linguistic background). The most typical examples of this trend are the works of Diego González Holguín (1607–1608) and Juan Pérez Bocanegra (1631),^[70] although César Itier also believes it to be present in Alonso de Huerta (1616) and Torres Rubio (1619).^[71] In some respects, it seems that these authors were drawing on the traditions of Cuzco's pre-Third Council literary and linguistic project, whose production has not survived.^[72] Specifically the practice of representing the ejectives and aspirates characteristic of Cuzco was also adopted by Luis Jerónimo de Oré (1598), Batolomeo Jurado Palomino (1646), Juan Avendaño (1648) and Francisco de Ávila (1648), so it can even be said to have become 'the norm' in the 1640s.^[73] In spite of such elements, especially Oré's work is very close linguistically to that of the Third Council, as is that of Diego de Molina (1649).^[74]

Another tendency was to adapt the language of the texts that were to be used in the Central Quechua-speaking (Chinchaysuyu) areas by including elements from these dialects. This tendency was especially popular among natives of Huánuco and around the colonial capital Lima, which was located close to Central Quechua territory. Its primary advocate was Alonso de Huerta (1616), who held the cathedral and university chairs of Quechua in Lima for many years (the first from 1592 and the second from around 1614 to the mid or late 1630s^[69]). This Central Quechua tendency is expressed, albeit inconsistently, in the works of Luis Jerónimo de Oré (1598), Francisco de Ávila (1648), Juan Avendaño (1648), Diego de Molina (1649), and, most extensively, by Juan Castromonte (1651?). Huerta, Molina and Castromonte also made, like Holguín, an effort to distinguish between /k/ and /q/ in their spelling.^[75]

These different approaches clashed, in particular, in a debate in the late 1640s about the use of the Cuzco-based Standard Colonial Quechua in areas speaking Central Quechua ('the language of Chinchaysuyo'). Some argued that priests working in these areas needed to acquire competence in Central Quechua in order to be able to communicate properly with the parishioners, while others objected by asserting that the standard variety was sufficiently comprehensible there and was more refined, closer to the Incas' speech and thus more appropriate for its purpose.^[76]

By the middle of the 17th century, the countrywide use of Standard Colonial Quechua declined.^[11] At the time, Spanish authorities switched to a policy of Hispanicisation and suppression of indigenous languages, which was mandated as early as the 1630s, but was enforced inconsistently.^[77] The policy shift was reflected in a halt of publications of original linguistic work on Quechua (although occasional reprints continued) after the middle of the century, and a general loss of interest by the Church and the State alike in developing a literature in Quechua.^[78] The requirements for priests to have competence in Quechua became ever less stringent from the same time on and the cathedral Quechua chair in Lima was closed in 1694. An effort was made to reverse this policy only a hundred years later, in 1754, by the archbishop of Lima, Pedro Antonio de Barroeta y Ángel, as well as by the Sixth Council of Lima in 1772.

The reasons for the mid-17th century change are unclear. One possible cause that has been adduced is the increasing tendency of Indians to leave the Indian reductions and to avoid the services of priests by performing the Christian rituals themselves within so-called fraternities (cofradías). There was also a growing perception that the Christianisation of the indigenous people was already as complete as it was realistic to expect. Some contributing factors may have been a controversy regarding the linguistic and theological quality of Quechua-language preaching that took place in the 1650s, and an official Hispanisation policy that the Spanish monarchy embarked on in the 1680s.^[79]

Remarkably, this did not lead to a disappearance of written Quechua literature, but only to a shift of focus. From the mid 17th century, it came to be dominated by clearly regional varieties, above all by Cuzco Quechua,^[11] which were now promoted by the elites of that city, who sought their legitimisation in the Inca past. Indeed, this resulted in something of a Quechua literary renaissance and golden age, which was expressed specifically in playwriting.^[80] The language of the classical Quechua drama of that period is recognisable as distinctively Cusco–Collao Quechua because of the various innovations, especially the lenitions, which increasingly set it apart both from Standard Colonial Quechua as well as from other Southern Quechua varieties.^[52][81] Indian Quechua speakers also produced their own informal devotional texts in manuscript form, partly continuing the tradition of the official ecclesiastical literature of the classical period.^[82] During the same period, in addition to the reeditions of older works re-oriented towards Central Quechua, the first religious texts composed specifically in the Quechua varieties of modern Ecuador (by Luis Francisco Romero, 1725, 1753) and Bolivia (by Juan Antonio Dávila Morales, 1739) appeared.^[83] This efflorescence was ended by the defeat of the Tupac Amaru rebellion of 1780, which resulted in a severe crackdown on Quechua use, including an explicit ban on Quechua literature and theatre and the abolition of the chair of Quechua at the University of San Marcos.^[10]

Comparison with modern Quechua dialects

In the phonology, Standard Colonial Quechua differs from modern Southern Quechua dialects, but not from those of other regions, by still distinguishing two different sibilants: s and ŝ. The lenition of syllable-final consonants that is typical of modern Cuzco-Collao Quechua (/k/ after front vowels > /tʃ/ > /ʃ/ > /s/, /t/ > /s/, /p/ > /ɸ/ > /χ/, /q/ > /χ/, /w/ > /y/, /r/ > /ɹ/^[84]) had not yet taken place in the language of the Third Council^[85] or in that of the Huarochirí Manuscript: thus, the second-person plural is /-chik/, not /-chis/, and the progressive aspect ending is /-chka/, not /-sha/. This makes it more phonologically similar to the modern Ayacucho dialect, where these changes have not taken place.^[86] From Juan de Aguilar's grammar of 1691, the first clear signs of such lenition in Cuzco Quechua begin to appear, and later texts display various stages in the process.^[87] Other Cuzco changes that had not yet taken place in Standard Colonial Quechua were: (1) the rule that makes the suffixes /-yku/ and /-rqu/ lose their consonants and replace the vowel /u/ with /a/ before the suffixes /-mu/, /-pu/ and /chi/; (2) the replacement of the nasal /ɲ/ and word-final /m/ in some morphemes with the unmarked /n/. Finally, the euphonic /ni/ that is inserted before suffixes after consonant-final stems had an allomorph /i/ before /q/, /ŝ/ and /r/, which is absent in modern Cuzco Quechua. On the other hand, already in Standard Colonial Quechua times, there was a dialectal difference between the presence of ejective and aspirated stops in Cuzco due to Aymara influence and their absence in other varieties, and both options were accommodated within the literary standard.

In the morphology, it can be noted that the accusative suffix in Standard Colonial Quechua still has the archaic shape -kta after a vowel as opposed to the modern generalised -ta.^[88] There is no special narrative/mythical past tense using the verbal suffix -ŝqa, as the latter is still used almost only as a past participle ending, although some early instances of 'perfect' compound use can be found.^[89]

Attestation and texts

As mentioned already, Juan de Betanzos' chronicle Summa y naración de los incas (1557) contains some Quechua words which appear to reflect a variety of Coastal Quechua and not Southern Quechua, in spite of having been written in Cuzco. In 1560, a grammar and a dictionary, including Christian religious texts, in what was probably also a variety of Coastal Quechua (with apparent Southern as well as Central lexical elements and even some Northern ones according to some authors) were published by Dominican priest Domingo de Santo Tomás as early as 1560 under the titles Grammatica o Arte de la lengua general de los Indios de los Reynos del Perú and Lexicón o Vocabulario de la lengua general del Perú.

Short texts and passages in Quechua, especially ritual texts reported to date from Inka times, are found in Spanish-language chronicles by four authors of partly indigenous origins.^[90] The first one, by Cristóbal de Molina el Cuzqueño (Fabulas y Ritos de los Incas, 1575^[91]) has been considered the earliest unambiguous attestation of Southern Quechua.^[51] The other three were written after the establishment of Standard Colonial Quechua. The authors were Inca Garcilaso de la Vega (Comentarios reales de los Incas, 1609), Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala (El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, around 1610) and Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua (Relación de las antigüedades deste Reyno del Perú, around 1613, where the quotes from the ritual texts are associated with each of the Inkas^[91]). The authenticity of these prayers has been disputed.^[92]

It was the publications associated with the Third Council of Lima in 1583–1586 that codified Standard Colonial Quechua.^[93] The body of work exemplifying the recommended variety was the trilingual collection (in Spanish, Quechua and Aymara), entitled Doctrina Christiana (1584–1585) and composed of three volumes: two catechisms in dialogue form – a shorter and a longer one – and a collection of 31 sermons discussing the Sacraments and the Ten Commandments.^[94][95] The Third Council's translations of basic prayers and Christian expressions remain standard in Quechua to this day, albeit with the necessary dialect modifications.^[96] The religious texts were complemented by a grammar and a dictionary, both of which were published anonymously in 1586 and printed in Lima by Antonio Ricardo (specifically summoned from Mexico for this purpose^[64]). The latter essentially remained the standard ones for the Standard Colonial Quechua period and were later re-published in revised forms three times, in 1603, 1604 (published under the name of Alonso Martínez, a member of the Third Council translation team^[97]) and 1614.^[98] Two of the four translators, Francisco Carrasco and Bartolomé de Santiago, were mestizos originally from Cuzco and the linguistically close Arequipa, respectively, while Alonso Martínez had spent some time first in Central Quechuan Huaylas and then in Cuzco, and Juan de Balboa was a native of Lima, but probably acted as a supervisor or figurehead.^[99]

These were only the beginning of a long series of publications of Quechua ecclesiastical texts that continued for more than half a century – the production was very copious, many texts survive in print and manuscript copies and even more are known to have existed.^[100] About fifteen years after the Third Council, the Symbolo Católico Indiano (1598) was published by Luis Jerónimo de Oré in a language close,^[101] yet not entirely identical^[48] to that of the Third Council. It consisted of a collection of seven Christian religious chants in Quechua with partial translation in Latin and, again, trilingual versions of the Ten Commandments, some prayers, the Ten Commandments, the Sacraments, confessions and a short catechisis. An isolated anonymous sermon La Plática que se ha de hazer a los indios en la predicacion de la Bulla de la Santa Cruzada (1600) is composed in the Third Council variety as well.^[102] Another important text is the Ritual Formulario (1631) by Juan Pérez Bocanegra, which consists mostly of bilingual questionnaires dealing with the Sacraments, the Commandments and different religious 'errors'. It is written in a more Cuzco-influenced variety than that of the Third Council.^[103] and is notable for containing a detailed discussion of Quechua kinship terms, complete with a diagram.^[104] In 1641, a Directorio espiritual en la lengua española, y quichua general del inga was published by Pablo de Prado. A Catechismus Quichuensis was published in 1646 by Bartolomeo Jurado Palomino. More collections of sermons were published by Fernando de Avendaño in 1648 (Sermones de los Misterios de Nuestra Santa Fe Católica), Francisco de Ávila (posthumously) in the same year (Tratado de los Evangelios, bilingual) and Diego de los Cobos Molina in 1649 (Sermones de la Cuaresma).^[101] Finally, somewhere between 1650 and 1653, a ritual book entitled Aptaycachana was written by Juan de Castromonte, although the many Central Quechua elements and the author's own designation of its language as Chinchaysuyo (i.e. Central Quechua)^[105] mean that it can only partly be seen as a specimen of Standard Colonial Quechua.

Among texts usually regarded as specimens of Standard Colonial Quechua, by far the most famous and significant in terms of content is the Huarochirí Manuscript (variously dated to 1598 or 1608), produced by indigenous informants under the directions of Francisco de Ávila, which describes the indigenous myths and religious practices of the province of that name. While it generally adheres closely to the Third Council's standard^[106][93] and is identified as belonging to Quechua IIC, it exhibits, in addition, some features resulting from the influence of Aru, which was probably the mother tongue of the editor.^[107] Alternative views are that the language of the Huarochiri Manuscript actually belongs to Quechua IIB (Northern Quechua)^[108] or that its dialectal provenience is uncertain.^[109] Another notable source are the so-called Cotahuasi Letters, written in 1616 by local cacique Cristóbal Castillo.^[110] At least a dozen legal-administrative documents and private letters authored by Indians in Standard Colonial Quechua have also been discovered.^[111]

After the 17th century, there were very sporadic new official efforts to produce ecclesiastical texts in Quechua. In 1705, Gaspar Manuel published a re-edition of Pablo de Prado's 1641 Directorio espiritual, adding many new texts from various sources and, in one case, a long passion hymn Romances de la passion de N. Señor Iesu Christo that is not found in any previous source. This work can still be identified as largely Standard Colonial Quechua,^[112] although its date of origin is outside of the 'classical' period in the strict sense. Finally, towards the end of the colonial period, a new translation of a catechism into Quechua was published on the orders of the Sixth Council of Lima in 1773 along with a reedition of the Third Catechism of the Third Council's Doctrina Christiana. At the same time, the tradition had an offshoot in the informal production of devotional manuscripts by indigenous Quechua speakers that became abundant in the 18th century: they contained mostly copies of earlier texts, but also some apparently new litanies and translations of psalms and hymns. They clearly reflect the changes that had taken place in the regional dialects of their origin by that time: Quaderno de directorio espiritual is a specimen of Cuzco Quechua and a similar Untitled Devotionary exemplifies Ayacucho Quechua.^[113]

In the first half of 17th century, many other grammars and dictionaries were produced: Diego González Holguín (1607–1608, Alonso de Huerta (1616), Diego de Torres Rubio (1619) – all three using clearly Cuzco-influenced language^[114] – and Rojo Mejía y Ocón (1648). After a significant hiatus a small renaissance occurred at the turn of the century with the grammars of Juan de Aguilar (1690) and Estevan Sancho de Melgar (1691),^[115] as well as the 1701 revised re-edition of Torres Rubio's grammar by Juan de Figueredo. These late grammars reflect a language stage noticeably different from Standard Colonial Quechua, since the ones by Aguilar and Melgar reflect regional innovations that had taken place in the meantime in the Cuzco dialect, whereas the one by Figueredo had an added focus on Central Quechua (Chinchaysuyo). An even greater focus on Central Quechua was present in the third edition of Torres Rubio's grammar in 1754 with notes by Bernardo de Zubieta y Rojas.^[116]

From the middle of the 17th to the late 18th century, an indigenous literary renaissance flourished in Cuzco, resulting in the composition of a number of Quechua dramas on historical and religious subjects, partly of native and partly of European inspiration. These include Auto Sacramental del robo de Proserpina y sueño de Endimión (about 1644) and Auto Sacramental del Hijo Pródigo (about 1650) by Juan de Espinosa Medrano (el Lunarejo), as well as three dramas thought to have been composed between the late 17th and the late 18th century, in this likely chronological order:^[117] El pobre más rico (late 17th or early 18th century) by Gabriel Centeno de Osma, Uska Paukar and El milagro del rosario (Anonymous, middle of the 18th century) and by far the most famous Quechua drama, Ollantay (Anonymous, sometimes attributed to Antonio Valdez; Justiniani codex from the 1770s–1780s, Sahuaraura codex from 1838, but representing a more archaic linguistic stage than the Justiniani manuscript).^{[118][119][120][121]} While these dramas are also seen as belonging to the classical period of Quechua literature, their linguistic basis was clearly more decidedly local and specific to Cuzco than that of previous works, and they display a gradually increasing amount of linguistic innovations specific to later Cuzco Quechua – in particular, extensive lenitions.^[117][122] In fact, it appears that the supraregional Standard Colonial Quechua standard as codified by the Third Council gradually fell out of use in roughly the same period as the one when the Golden Age of Quechua theatre began. For this reason, the dramas have sometimes been described as more or less archaic specimens of Cuzco Quechua rather than of Standard Colonial Quechua in the narrow sense of the word.^[11]

Morphophonology

A number of suffixes have two versions – one that occurs after consonants and one after vowels. Sometimes the difference is that the postconsonantal allomorph has the shape -CV(C), whereas the postvocalic one has only the initial consonant -C: e.g. wasi-m 'house-affirmative', but ñan-mi 'path-affirmative',^[142] ñan-pa(q) 'path-genitive', but wasi-p 'of the house'.^[143] Another possibility is that the postvocalic allomorph begins in two consonants, whereas the postconsonantal one has only the second one: wasi-kta 'house-accusative', but ñan-ta 'path-accusative'. In still other cases, the postconsonantal allomorph differs from the postvocalic one in that it is preceded by the 'euphonic element' -ni- (or, in especially Cuzco-influenced texts, the more archaic -ñi-^[144]): e.g. wasi-y 'my house', but ñan-niy 'my path',^[145] ĉunka isqun-niyuq 'nineteen', ĉunka suqta-yuq 'sixteen'. Most Standard Colonial Quechua outside of the Huarochirí manuscript has the variant -i- after the consonants -q, -r and -ŝ as well: e.g. yawar-i-y 'my blood',^[146] where the Haurochirí manuscript has yawar-ni-y.^[145] In the rest of this article, the element that is sometimes absent (the vowel and possibly a following consonant in the first type of alternation and the syllable -ñi/ni in the other) will be written between parentheses: -m(i), -(k)ta, -p(aq), -(ni)y.

Nominal morphology

Verbal morphology

The verbal morpheme chain can be summarised as follows:^[173]

Imperative

The imperative forms, as shown in the table below, have unique person-mood portmanteau suffixes for the second and third person, namely -y and -chun, respectively, but the options for the preceding and following suffixes are mostly the same as in the indicative, except that the paradigm is somewhat defective.

The second person imperative suffix is -y: e.g. hamu-y 'come!'. It is preceded by the object markers: waqaycha-wa-y! 'protect me!' As usual, a third person object receives no overt suffix: waqaycha-y! 'protect him/her/it!'.^[206] The plural suffixes are added to the imperative one to mark the plurality of the subject or the object as well: waqaycha-y-chik! 'protect it (addressed to several people)!'^[154] In contrast to the general limitation to one plural suffix per verb, the optional possibility of expressing the plurality of the object in addition to the subject as in waqaycha-wa-y-chik-ku! 'protect us ye!' (alongside the ambiguous waqaycha-wa-y-chik!) has been recorded.^[207] An alternative recorded with the same meaning is waqaycha-wa-y-ku!, which seems to reflect the plurality of the 1st person object only.^[208]

There is also a third person imperative suffix -chun: hamu-chun 'let him come!' Plurality of the subject can be expressed with -ku here, too: hamu-chun-ku 'let them come!'.^[209] It can take the 1st person object prefix (riku-wa-chun 'let him/them see me!'), but to express a 1st plural object, the future forms are used instead.^[201] Imperative forms for a 3rd person acting on the 2nd are not recorded by the cited grammars.

For a first person plural imperative (exclusive or inclusive), the corresponding future tense forms are used.^[210]

The resulting paradigm can be summarised as follows:

Optative

The optative mood expresses a wish, a (dubious or improbable) possibility, a hypothetical condition or its result. It is generally formed by adding the suffix -man to the present tense forms (before possible discourse particles): e.g. hamu-nki-man 'you would come'. However, the 1st person singular suffix -ni is replaced by -y, and the 1st person plural inclusive -n-chik fuses with -man into -chwan. The overall paradigm is, then:^[211][199]

As in the indicative, the plural suffixes can also express plurality of the object, and this includes the fused -chwan: thus, third person acting on first person inclusive ('he would V us') is expressed by the suffix sequence -wa-chwan.^[212]

The hypothetical result of a non-realisable condition in the past (a 'preterite optative') can be expressed by adding the 3rd person singular past tense of the copula: hamu-nki-man ka-rqa-n 'you would have come'.^[211]

Copula and possession

The copula verb is ka-, but it is omitted in the third person.^[213] This applies also in periphrastic 'compound tenses' formed with the copula.^[214] However, it also has the sense 'exist', in which case its third person form is used.^[215] It is also included in the way of expressing the notion 'to have': (ñuqa-p) wasi-y ka-n '(of me) my house exists > I have a house.'

Non-finite verbal forms

The suffixes of the non-finite verbal forms are as follows:

Particles

Some of the most important particles are the following:

Focused topics are marked with the enclitic particle -qa^[227] or with -taq, which expresses a stronger contrast, similar to English 'but, whereas, although'.^[155] Another topic-introducing particle is -ri, which signals a new topic in contrast with the previous one and can be translated as 'and', 'but', 'as for', or 'what about' (the latter in questions).^[228] The topic particle is mutually exclusive^[229] with the enclitic particles encoding evidentiality, one of which is typically added to the first available unit of each clause. There are three of these: -m(i) for personally witnessed facts, -ŝ(i) for hearsay and -ĉá for conjecture/doubt.^[230] Thus, allin-mi can be translated as 'I know for certain that it is good', allin-ŝi as 'They say it's good', and allin-ĉá as 'it might be good'. The non-syllabic allomorphs -m, -ĉ and -ŝ are used after vowels, and the syllabic ones -mi, -ĉ(á) and -ŝ(i) are used after consonants: e.g. wasi-m 'house-affirmative', but yawar-mi 'blood-affirmative'.^[142]

An example of the combined use of the topic and focus-evidential particles can be the sentence: chay wasi-qa hatun-mi 'that house (near you) is big'. The topic can also be postposed, with the particles still signalling the information structure: chay wasi-m hatun-qa 'it is that house (near you) that is big'.^[227] In a negated verb phrase, the evidential particle is encliticised to the negative adverb: warmi-qa mana-m hamu-n-chu 'the woman isn't coming' (on the particle -chu, see below).^[231]

The interrogative particle, which marks yes/no-questions, is -chu. It is encliticised to the focused word: hatun-chu chay wasi-qa 'is this house big?'.^[232] The same particle is also encliticised to the last word of a negated verb phrase, in addition to the preceding negative adverb mana, whereas the latter receives the evidential particles: thus, warmi-qa mana-m hamu-n-chu 'the woman isn't coming'.^[231] In a prohibitative construction, the same particle is used, whereas the preceding adverb is ama: ama hamu-y-chu! 'don't come!'^[233] The adverb ama is used in the future tense, too: ama-taq kuti-ŝaq-chu 'but I will not return' Another common negative adverb is paqta(ĉ) 'be careful (so that X does not happen)', which is combined with the optative mood.^[234]

The function conjunction is fulfilled by enclitic particles such as -paŝ 'and': wasi-paŝ 'and a house',^[235] as well as some of the discourse particles already mentioned. There is also an enclitic particle -lla meaning 'only': huk llamalla 'only a llama'.,^[170] an enclitic particle -raq meaning 'still, yet', and a morpheme ña 'already' that may occur as an enclitic particle or as an independent word.^[225]

A free-standing particle ari is used to confirm emphatically the preceding information: mana-m ari 'truly, certainly not'.^[236] A similar meaning is attested for the enclitic -puni 'definitely'.^[237]

Syntax

The word order is mostly SOV. In noun phrases, modifiers (such as adjectives) precede nouns: e.g. allin wamra 'a/the good child'.^[238] A past participle may also follow the noun, in which case both receive the relevant case suffix: kuya-ŝqa wasi-kta 'beloved house (acc.)', but wasi-kta kuya-ŝqa-kta (ditto).^[239]