Alfredo Augusto Torero Fernández de Córdova (September 10, 1930 in

Huacho Huacho () is a city in Peru, capital of the Huaura Province and capital of the Lima Region. Also is the most populated city of the Lima Region and Norte Chico. It is located 223 feet (68 metres) above sea level and 148 km north of the city of ...

Lima Region The Department of Lima () is a department and region located in the central coast of Peru, the ''seat of the Regional Government'' is Huacho. Lima Province, which contains the city of Lima, the country's capital, is located west of the Departmen ...

Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = Seal (emblem), National seal , national_motto = "Fi ...

– June 19, 2004 in

Valencia Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Valencian Community, Valencia and the Municipalities of Spain, third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is ...

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

) was a

vian

anthropologist An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and ...

and

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

. He was a student at the

National University of San Marcos The National University of San Marcos ( es, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, link=no, UNMSM) is a public research university located in Lima, the capital of Peru. It is considered the most important, recognized and representative educ ...

, from which he graduated in the early 1960s, and then traveled to France, where he continued his doctorate at the University of Paris. There he obtained a doctorate in 1965, under the direction of the linguist André Martinet, with his thesis ''Le puquina, la troisième langue générale du Pérou''. Alfredo Torero came to prominence thanks to his article "The Dialects of Quechua" in 1964 and ranks among the founders of Andean linguistics. Much of his work is characterised by bringing into his linguistic investigations also cultural aspects of the Andean peoples. Besides

Quechua Quechua may refer to: *Quechua people, several indigenous ethnic groups in South America, especially in Peru *Quechuan languages, a Native South American language family spoken primarily in the Andes, derived from a common ancestral language **So ...

and

Aymara Aymara may refer to: Languages and people * Aymaran languages, the second most widespread Andean language ** Aymara language, the main language within that family ** Central Aymara, the other surviving branch of the Aymara(n) family, which today ...

, he researched extinct languages such as

Mochica The Moche civilization (; alternatively, the Mochica culture or the Early, Pre- or Proto-Chimú) flourished in northern Peru with its capital near present-day Moche, Trujillo, Peru from about 100 to 700 AD during the Regional Development Epoch. ...

and

Puquina Puquina (or Pukina) is a small, putative language family, often portrayed as a language isolate, which consists of the extinct Puquina language and Kallawaya, although it is assumed that the latter is just a remnant of the former mixed with Qu ...

. The present classification of the Quechua language family is based fundamentally on his analysis and that of Gary Parker, who, independently, came to similar conclusions. He found that Quechua clearly did not originate, as is still often believed, in the region of the

Inca The Inca Empire (also known as the Incan Empire and the Inka Empire), called ''Tawantinsuyu'' by its subjects, (Quechua for the "Realm of the Four Parts", "four parts together" ) was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The admin ...

capital

Cuzco Cusco, often spelled Cuzco (; qu, Qusqu ()), is a city in Southeastern Peru near the Urubamba Valley of the Andes mountain range. It is the capital of the Cusco Region and of the Cusco Province. The city is the seventh most populous in Peru; ...

, but almost certainly somewhere considerably further north in Central Peru. Torero's proposed precise homeland for Quechua was the central coast of Peru in the

, but that remains both unproven and challenged by other linguists. The Alfredo Torero auditorium at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences,

in Lima is named after him.

Bibliography

*"Los dialectos quechuas". ''Anales Científicos de la Universidad Agraria'', 2, pp. 446–478. Lima, 1964. *"Lingüística e historia de la Sociedad Andina", ''Anales Científicos de la Universidad Agraria'', VIII, 3-4. Lima, 1970. *''El quechua y la historia social andina''. Lima, Universidad Ricardo Palma. 240 p., 1974. *"La familia lingüística quechua". En: Pottier, Bernard (ed.) ''América Latina en sus lenguas indígenas''. Caracas; Monte Avila Editores, C.A. pp. 61–92., 1983. *"El comercio lejano y la difusión del quechua. El caso del Ecuador". ''Revista Andina'', pp. 367–402, Cusco, 1984. *"Áreas toponímicas e idiomas en la sierra norte peruana: un trabajo de recuperación lingüística". En: ''Revista Andina'', pp. 217–257, Cusco, 1986. *"Procesos lingüísticos e identificación de dioses en los Andes centrales". En: ''Revista Andina'', pp. 237–263, Cusco, 1990. *"Los sibilantes del quechua yunga y del castellano en el siglo XVI". En: Calvo Pérez, Julio (ed) ''Estudios de lengua y cultura amerindias I'', Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, Departamento de teoría de los lenguajes, p. 241-254, 1994. *"Entre Roma y Lima: El Lexicón quichua de fray Domingo de Santo Tomás 560. En: Zimmermann, Klaus (ed). ''La descripción de las lenguas amerindias en la época colonial'' (Bibliotheca Ibero-Americana, 63), pp. 271–290. 1997. *"El marco histórico-geográfico en la interacción quechua-aru". En: Dedenbach-Salazar Sáenz, Sabine; Arellano Hoffmann, Carmen; König, Eva; Prümers, Heiko (ed) ''50 años de estudios americanistas en la Universidad de Bonn: nuevas contribuciones a la arqueología, etnohistoria, etnolingüística y etnografía de las Américas = 50 years americanist studies at the University of Bonn: new contributions to the archaeo'' (Bonner Amerikanistische Studien, 30 / Estudios americanistas de Bonn, 30), pp. 601–630. 1998. *''Idiomas de los Andes. Lingüística e historia''. Lima, IFEA. 565 p. 2002. This compendious work gathers together much of Torero's thinking published in numerous articles over the course of his career. {{DEFAULTSORT:Torero Fernandez De Cordova, Alfredo Peruvian anthropologists Linguists from Peru 1930 births 2004 deaths National University of San Marcos alumni National University of San Marcos faculty 20th-century anthropologists 20th-century linguists