Buch, Englisch, Band 433, 80 Seiten
Buch, Englisch, Band 433, 80 Seiten
Reihe: Languages of the World/Materials
ISBN: 978-3-89586-862-7
Verlag: LINCOM
Our main source for the knowledge of this ancient South American language is Fernando de la Carrera:
ARTE DE LA LENGVA YVNGA DE LOS VALLES del Obispado de Truxillo del Peru, con vn Confessonario, y todas las Oraciones Christianas, traducidas en la lengua, y otras cosas.(Lima 1644). The book contains a grammar, all the basic religious texts, confessional formulas, extensive explanatory questions and answers to most texts, psalms, as well as some brief non-religious dialogues and a number of sentences in Mochica. The author had a native command of the lanuage.
Mochica is typologically different from the other main languages on the West coast of South America (Quechua, Aymara, and Mapudungun) and contains features that are rare both within South American languages and in the languages of the world: case system where cases are build on each other in a linear sequence, e.g. the ablative suffix has to be added to the locative which again must be added to an oblique case form - all nouns have two stems: a possessed stem and a non-possessed stem - an agentive case suffix mainly used for the agent in passive clauses - a verbal system where all finite forms are formed with the copula. Mochica appears to be a linguistic isolate with no clear cognates among attested American Indian languages.