677

lexical component.) It was also observed in the course
of this research that bilingual Aymara men talking to

each other in Aymara in La Paz used Spanish syntactic
linkers (like entonces '‘then') with great frequency but
did so only rarely when talking with monolinguals in rural
communities. The whole matter of Spanish loans in Aymara
deserves more study, taking into account situational
factors like the presence or absence of listeners who have
a greater command of Spanish (or English) than of Aymara.
The point I wish to make here is that a large number of
Spanish loans in a dialect does not in and of itself
necessarily imply a corresponding weakening of Aymara
grammatical processes or linguistic postulates or an im-
poverishment of the native Aymara lexicon.

Nevertheless, it is true that Missionary, Patré6n,
and Radio Aymara are generally characterized by a high
proportion of Spanish loanwords in Spanish phonology,
tending toward inclusion of whole Spanish phrases or even
sentences, or full-fledged code-switching. The tendency
to keep or try to approximate the Spanish phonology of
loanwords (when these are recognized as such) evidently
reflects, in some persons, the view that Spanish is
inherently superior to Aymara--a view fostered consciously
or unconsciously by most writers of Missionary and Patré6én
grammars (see 2-3 and 2-4.11) and accepted by adherents

of certain religious sects (see 10-2.7). In contrast,