The Grammatical Expression of Dialogicity in Muylaq’ Aymara Narratives

Abstract

The Aymara oral narratives of the Peruvian village of Muylaque make explicit and implicit reference to the personal knowledge of the narrator, the shared knowledge of the community, and the existence of other narratives. They are, accordingly, considered dialogic (Bakhtin 1981). This article uses excerpts from a variety of narratives to show how dialogicity is indicated grammatically through an analysis of tense and evidentiality as well as arguments of the verb ‘say’.