Rethinking Verb-Final Position in Peruvian Andean Spanish: An Indirect Contact-Induced Change

Word order in Andean Spanish has attracted considerable scholarly attention, particularly regarding the extent to which sustained contact with Quechua has shaped its syntactic and pragmatic patterns. However, there are no recent studies investigating whether this variation in contemporary Andean Spanish has become consolidated or remains a minor phenomenon. This study was conducted to describe the frequency of verb-final constructions in a corpus of 25 bilingual Spanish–Quechua speakers and Spanish monolinguals from the city of Juliaca (Perú). The central objective of this study is to identify patterns in constituent order as they emerge from the narratives of speakers in Juliaca, examining how the verb position relates to the degree of new and given information, pragmatic function, and discourse situation. The variation in verb placement is analyzed from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives, considering informational, pragmatic, and syntactic factors. This research was conducted within the framework of Contact Linguistics, employing a dynamic approach to language interaction. It is based on the principle that speakers employ available grammatical constructions to incorporate distinctions or semantic nuances that might not exist in non-contact Spanish but are present in the Amerindian language. In this way, speakers draw on their linguistic background to develop innovative expressive tools or diverse communicative alternatives, incorporating them into their daily communication.