Verbal art as heuristic for semantic analyses

Abstract

Aymara is an Amerindian language spoken mainly in Peru and Bolivia. To date, relatively little is documented about Aymara verbal art. Accordingly, we analyze a traditional song recorded in the Peruvian highlands. We provide a musical and linguistic analysis of the non-prosodic poetic song structure. We detail the octosyllabic, homeoteleutonic strategies for line formation, the melodic and rhythmic characteristics, and outline the syntactic, morphological, and semantic strategies used in forming semantic couplets. This reveals semantic categories which would not be apparent in a traditional linguistic analysis. Furthermore, the musical analysis confirms previous works on the misperception of a musical anacrusis. We conclude that rigorous, scientific analyses of verbal art require consideration of the construction of meaning through practice and dialog.