The suffix *-lli in the South Andean toponymy of Peru: traces of an ancestral Aymara language from the Velille basin?

Abstract

An interesting finding is the presence of recurring place names in the southern Peruvian Andes that end in <lli>/<lle>, many of them concentrated in the south of Cuzco and north of Arequipa, the ancestral cradle of the Chumbivilcas and Collagas. In view of its lexical item closing character, it is undoubtedly a nominalizing suffix with the form *-lli /‑ʎi/. The analysis presented here has revealed great morphological productivity of *-lli, which was applied to both nouns and verbs, producing place names with the senses of ‘place’, ‘abundance’, and ‘quality’. In addition to its formal and partly semantic homology with the deverbative agentive Aymara -ri, it points to a common origin. However, the multi-functionality and non-selectivity of *-lli is well above the performance of modern Aymara nominalizers who are regularly selective. Regarding the language that used it, a genetic link with the (proto)Aymara of Vilcas has been established, from the presence of *-lli suffixing mostly to Aymara and Quechua roots. Likewise, the pattern of the dense footprint of place names with an epicenter in the upper and middle basin of the Velille river reflects the presence of a homogeneous idiomatic group, which most likely coexisted with a Puquina dialect. This consideration claims more studies on the role, and presence of Puquina in the region, to prove not only the phonetic influence Puquina /ɾ/ > [ʎ], but also a superstratum effect.