Germán de Granda, Español y lenguas indoamericanas en Hispanoamérica: Estructuras, situaciones y transferencias. Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1999. Pp. 306.

Abstract

This is a collection of twenty matchless essays on the subject of language contact (Quechua, Guaraní, and occasionally Aymara in contact with Spanish). The first one serves as an introduction to the main theme and as a justification for the author's rejection of certain methodologies. “Observaciones metodológicas sobre la investigación sociolingüística en Hispanoamérica” (pp. 7–18) offers an excellent review of stratificational sociolinguistics, a field the author proves to know but prefers to discard on the basis of its inadequacy for studying marginalized Amerindian communities. The major deterrent is the application of quantitative methods to populations that do not belong to post-industrialized societies, where the continua of social strata and sociolinguistic variables are more easily grasped with contemporary methods of the social sciences. In contrast, groups in Latin American societies display wider socio-economic and socio-political gaps, not to mention massive peripheral strata.