Examinando lo inesperado: Cambios en el corpus y en el estatus del idioma como parte del proceso de la revitalización lingüística

Drawing from the study of efforts to revitalize Quichua in the southern Ecuadorian highlands, this paper describes what may be some of the common language corpus and language status transformations which threatened languages undergo during the process of language revitalization. Specifically, the paper inspects the frequently unexpected corpus and status changes which have accompanied Quichua revitalization initiatives among the Saraguros, an indigenous Andean group. These processes are then compared with those of language death, and lastly, the implications of these findings for language planners and revitalization advocates are discussed.