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REFERENCES
Frishberg, Nancy. 1972. Navajo object markers and the Great Chain of Being. Syntax and
Semantics 1, ed. John Kimball, pp. 25966. New York: Seminar Press.
Hale, Kenneth L. 1973. A note on subjectobject inversion in Navajo. Papers in Honor of
Henry and Renee Kahane, ed. Braj Kachru et al., pp. 300309. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Li, Fang-Kuei. 1946. Chipewyan. Linguistic Structures of Native America, ed. Harry Hoijer
et al., pp. 398423. New York: Viking Fund.
Young, Robert W. 2000. The Navajo Verb System: An Overview. Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico Press.
Young, Robert W., and William Morgan, Sr. 1987. The Navajo Language: A Grammar
and Colloquial Dictionary. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Young, Robert W.; William Morgan, Sr.; and Sally Midgette. 1992. Analytical Lexicon of Navajo. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Uchumataqu, the Lost Language of the Urus of Bolivia: A Grammatical Description of the Language as Documented between 1894 and
1952. By Katja Hann. Indigenous Languages of Latin America, vol. 7.
Leiden: CNWS Publications, 2008. Pp. 306.
In this book, Katja Hann (henceforth H) offers a grammatical description of
Uchumataqu (or Uru), an extinct language of the Uru-Chipaya family. This family
contains two other extinct languages (Chimu and Uru Murato) and one that is still
spoken (Chipaya). Hs effort at systematizing the available Uchumataqu materials,
consisting of language reports and word lists prepared by various scholars between
1894 and 1952, has resulted in a robust and valuable grammatical description. Chapter 1 presents an introduction to the book, a description of the sources used, and the
methodology applied. Chapter 2 lists and exemplies the phonemes, the most important phonological processes, and includes notes on orthography. Chapter 3 is an introduction to the morphological type of Uchumataqu. It also offers interesting analyses
of different morphological processes (such as the not quite convincing evidence for
the existence of noun incorporation [pp. 142 43]) and a satisfying analysis of the
word-class distinctions found in the corpus. The chapters that follow present the
different morphological subsystems: nominal morphology (chap. 4); verbal morphology (chap. 5); and the morphology of adverbs, postpositions, and other particles
(chap. 6). Finally, chapter 7 offers interesting information on different types of sentences, including complex ones.
As in any study relying on the analysis of relatively old secondhand materials,
philological issues have to be dealt with. One is, of course, the reliability of the
sources. In most of the cases (the clearest exception being Vellard), the data were
gathered during very short periods of eldwork (only a few hours in some cases) and
do not include information about the speakers. In addition, we have to assume the participation of interpreters (bilingual speakers of Aymara and Spanish), who may have

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introduced mistakes during the elicitation sessions. Hs solution to this is a sensible

one: a requirement that the data included in the description be attested in all or most
of the sources. However, this requirement is also problematic, since the data were
gathered at different times between 1894 and 1952. Thus, what H describes represents
different stages of the Uchumataqu language, which, due to processes of obsolescence, may be signicantly different from each other. The stage of the language found
by Mtraux seems to be particularly different from the others. Therefore, there is always the possibility that the forms described by just one scholar were genuine, even
though they were not mentioned by other scholars, who happened to describe a different stage of language.
In addition to the problem of diachronic differences, there is the problem of dialectal differences. H points out that the language described was spoken around Lake
Titicaca in the communities of Irohito (northwestern Bolivia), Chimu (southeastern
Peru), and in the Bay of Puno (Peru) (p. 1). However, the language of Irohito (Uru or
Uchumataqu) is usually distinguished from Peruvian Uru, referred to as Chimu. Analyzing these two varieties together, by including Lehmans (1929) materials1 on
Chimu, as H has done, is problematic. As H herself explains: What can be said is
that even in those cases where a Chimu word is close to its Ancoaqui [i.e., Irohito
RZB] equivalent, we almost always nd slight differences (p. 40 [emphasis mine]).
How these differences are dealt with is not clear. Remarkably, despite Hs inclusion of
Chimu data in her description, H almost completely ignores Chipaya (Sabaya, Oruro,
Bolivia), the one language of the Uru-Chipaya family which is still spoken and the one
for which a vocabulary (Olson 1963) and an excellent reference grammar (CerrnPalomino 2006) are available. Chipaya is an invaluable source of comparative data to
help to interpret and analyze the Uchumataqu sources, as I show in the remainder of
this review.
Let us rst consider the fact that the sources used by H are not consistent internally
nor in relation to each other. Using the example of the Uchumataqu word for water,
which was written <qoas(i)> by Uhle (1894), <coasi> by Polo (1901) and Bacarreza
(1910), <qho*! asi> by Lehmann (1929b), <kosi/huse> by Lehmann (1929d), <kxasi>
by Mtraux (1935), and <Ks-si/kwsi> by Vellard (194967), H claims that it is almost impossible to determine the quality of the initial stop (pp. 5859). However, this
word is still attested in Chipaya, where we nd the form /qhwav/ alternating with [qhav]
and, assuming that Chipaya and Uchumataqu are phonologically almost identical
(p. 6), we may postulate that the form had an aspirated labialized postvelar initial consonant. However, as Chipaya data also indicate, labialized postvelar stops tend to
alternate with nonlabialized ones, a fact that also helps to understand the different
orthographic representations found in the sources. Of course, this claim needs additional support; but, if correct, it might have changed the postulated phoneme inventory,
which does not include a complete set of labialized sounds.
Another area which may have beneted from comparisons with Chipaya data is the
analysis of glottal and aspirated plosives. As is usually the case, the sources are not
1
Sources such as these, cited by H, are not listed in the references given at the end of this
review (due to space limitations). The reader will of course nd them in Uchumataqu, the
Lost Language of the Urus of Bolivia.

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entirely clear about these phenomena (p. 64) and, therefore, the Chipaya data are all
the more valuable. For example, for sweat, Mtraux (1935) provides phali while
Vellard (1950) provides plne, making it difcult to ascertain what the quality of the
initial sound of that word was. Now, Chipaya shows a cognate form with an aspirated
initial consonant /phalan-/, and this fact can be used as evidence that the form given by
Mtraux was more accurate or that when Vellard described the language, the aspiration had been dropped.
Another problematic analysis is Hs interpretation of <z>, <sh>, or <sh> in Lehmann
and Mtraux as voiced fricatives. Voiced fricatives are not a typical feature of Andean
languages, and a comparison with the Chipaya cognates will demonstrate a correlation between those symbols and the phonemic apicodental and retroex fricatives of
Chipaya. Therefore, the data suggest that, like Chipaya, Uchumataqu had one of those
fricatives as a phoneme. Analyzing the use of <z> in materials from 1929 or 1935 according to what it means in the IPA (p. 72) is inappropriate.
Similarly, the distinction between a velar and a postvelar fricative, which is suggested by the sources and is not considered phonemic by H, might have been analyzed
as phonemic after comparison with Chipaya data.2 Another example is Hs interpretation of the symbol <tr> as a cluster and not as a representation of a retroex affricate,
a more likely analysis.
In conclusion, while this painstaking work is a most welcome contribution to Andean linguistics, it is my hope that in future studies of Uchumataqu, there will be more
emphasis on the use of Chipaya to help in the interpretation of Uchumataqu data.

Roberto Zariquiey Biondi, La Trobe University

REFERENCES
Cerrn-Palomino, Rodolfo. 2006. El chipaya o la lengua de los hombres del agua. Lima:
Ponticia Universidad Catlica del Per.
. 2007. Reconstruccin del proto-uro: Fonologa. Lexis 31, nos. 1/2:47104.
Olson, Ronald D. 1963. Vocabulario chipaya. Informe de campo no. 92. Ms., SIL Library,
Dallas.

A Grammar of Crow (Apsalooke Alilau). By Randolph Graczyk. Studies in the Native Languages of the Americas. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2007. Pp. 448.
Randolph Graczyks A Grammar of Crow is a valuable addition to the growing
body of research on the Siouan languages. The intended audience is linguists, but the
writing is clear enough that students with a course or two of linguistics might follow
2
Many of those topics were discussed in detail in the phonological reconstruction of
Proto-Uru by Cerrn-Palomino (2007), which illustrates the importance of using Chipaya
data to interpret Uru materials.

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