593

‘same' and ‘different’ meanings within and across dialects
are at best tentative and at worst may be wrong, lacking
sufficient input from native speakers. The evidence in this
chapter concerning such meanings is therefore to be viewed
with some skepticism.

Aymara metaphor has not as yet been investigated
cross-dialectally, but certain characteristics based on

the evidence of a few dialects may be noted.

8-2 Linguistic Postulates

All regional dialects of Aymara share certain lin-
guistic postulates common to the Jaqi languages. As identi-
fied by Hardman (1972a) the most important of these are (1)
four grammatical persons (the fourth includes speaker and
addressee), (2) distinction of human/nonhuman, and (3) speci-
fication of data source (distinction of directly and indi-
rectly acquired knowledge). These three postulates are
marked throughout Aymara language structure, in morphology,
Syntax, and semantics, and reflected in cultural norms.

During four hundred years of contact with Spanish, an
Indo-European language, it might be expected that Spanish
postulates would make inroads into Aymara. In Chapter 9
evidence of such inroads is given with respect to Missionary,
Patrén, and Radio Aymara, translation dialects spoken by cer-
tain native speakers of Aymara who are bilingual in Spanish.

The Aymara of other bilingual and monolingual speakers shows