This talk examines how historical multilingualism can be reconstructed in regions where written documentation is limited, but memories of past language use and kinship remain accessible through oral history. It focuses on the Caquetá-Putumayo (CP) region of the Colombian Amazon, where long-term relations among speakers of Witotoan and Boran languages, Resígaro (North Arawak), and Andoke (an isolate) created a complex multilingual ecology. Although multilingualism and language contact in Northwest Amazonia have received considerable scholarly attention (e.g., Aikhenvald, 2002, 2012; Epps, 2009; Epps & Michael, 2017), and the multilingual character of the CP region has been recognized in previous research (e.g., Echeverri, 1997; Gasché, 2009; Wojtylak, 2021), little is known about how CP multilingualism was traditionally structured or how it varied across groups.
Drawing on interviews conducted with Indigenous elders during ethnolinguistic fieldwork in the CP region in 2024, the study combines oral histories and genealogical data through relational modelling (Wojtylak, 2025; Wojtylak & Ruiz, 2026). By mapping remembered individual language repertoires onto genealogies, it becomes possible to compare CP multilingualism quantitatively across groups and generations. The analyses trace changes over time and reveal significant social asymmetries in the distribution of multilingualism across groups. The talk presents this methodological approach and demonstrates how it can reveal the historical structure and development of multilingualism in the CP region.
|
Développement, Neurocognition, Dysfonctionnements
Diversité Linguistique et ses Sources
