34

As may be seen, a preponderance of sources were
under 40 and hence by definition bilingual in Spanish.
(Sources from Calacala and Morocomarca were trilingual
in Spanish, Aymara, and Quechua.) Monolinguals were
relatively less accessible to me than were bilinguals
primarily because lack of time and difficulties of
travel prevented visits to remote communities where
monolingualism is reportedly widespread and secondarily
because most monolinguals encountered in the communi-
ties visited were elderly and infirm, often with missing
teeth and consequent faulty diction. Determination of
the location of communities with a high proportion of
monolinguals of different ages must await future
research, preferably with the participation of native
speakers trained in linguistic field methods.

With regard to training of native speaker
linguists, an informal attempt was made throughout
this research to instill in sources the basic concepts
of anthropological linguistics and field methods, by
example if not in formal classes. For example, two
young women from urban centers were taken on field trips
to act as interpreters and to learn the basics of
informant-investigator relations. One source who
already had a firm grasp of the Yapita phonemic alphabet
(3-2) was asked to transcribe a tape-recorded story from

a dialect other than his own, at whose telling he had