languages that have been in contact during millennia, reshaping each other’s linguistic features.When Spanish entered this
area, it exerted a pressuring influence on these languages. It was also, in its turn, modified by them, giving birth to a Spanish
variety currently known as Andean Spanish.1 This variety is spoken in the Highlands of South America, in the Andean
Mountain Range, across Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Colombia, and Chile, and it has been developing for over
500 years. Yet Andean Spanish remained virtually unnoticed by the vast majority of grammarians and linguists, until the
systematic study of Quechua and Aymara made possible its recognition. It was not until the 1970s that Andean Spanish was
recognized by the academic community as an independent linguistic system showing not only properties of Spanish and
Quechua or Aymara, but also many of its own unique, innovative features. Since then, there has been a significant amount of
research and data collection, identifying some key aspects of the variety, from different perspectives and theoretical
frameworks.
As important as research on Andean Spanish has been, it has had little impact on mainstream linguistic theory, for a
variety of reasons. Firstly, most findings are published only in Spanish, which limits a broader distribution. In addition,
standard Spanish figures prominently in linguistic theory across all theoretical frameworks, so researchers tend to treat the
peculiarities of Andean Spanish as quirky facts that merely flavor the big picture and that can be mechanically explained by
invoking language transfer. Furthermore, since a great percentage of Andean Spanish speakers, sadly, generally belong to the
poorest, least educated, and most geographically and socially isolated segments of society, they are difficult to reach from
mainstream academic centers. Then too, many researchers, particularly those within the Andean community, focus their
work on applied linguistics (developing tools for bilingual education, for instance), rather than focusing on the intricacies of
theoretical and grammatical inquiry.
In addition to all of this, it must be acknowledged that research on Andean Spanish has not yet reached the level of
understanding we have with respect to Quechua and Aymara. This is not surprising, since the study of contact varieties poses
additional challenges to linguistic inquiry. For the same reason, less attention has been paid to problems raised by contact
among the various indigenous languages in the Andes. Despite these roadblocks, an interest in the relevance of language
contact in the Andes from diverse theoretical linguistic perspectives has been growing among many contemporary
researchers. Investigation in language acquisition, code-switching, micro parameters, prosody, and historical linguistics,
among other topics, shows that the study of language contact in the Andes can illuminate some poorly understood
grammatical properties.