This thesis explores adverb distribution in Iquito, a Zaparoan language spoken byapproximately 25 people in the northern Amazon Basin of Peru. The syntactic distributions of Iquito adverbs correspond to four semantic classes: time, manner,epistemic, and an intensifier. Time adverbs have the broadest distribution, occurring before the topic of a topicalized sentence, between topic and subject, after the verb, and after the object of a transitive sentence. Manner adverbs have a similar distribution, but are not found before topic. Epistemic adverbs have an even narrower distribution, never occurring sentence-initially (whether the sentence is topicalized or not) and rarely occurring between topic and subject. The intensifier adverb has the most restricted distribution, as it only occurs before adjectives or other adverbs. These distributions can be used to classify "atypical" adverbs, namely infinitival verbs that are used adverbially. Furthermore, these distributions shed light on the phrase structure of Iquito. Adverbs are analyzed in the literature as adjuncts, and the allowable positions are explained either as the result of adjunction to different constituents (Ernst 2002; Iatridou 1990) or movement between adjoined positions (Cinque 1999). The pre-verbal positions of Iquito adverbs, particularly in irrealis and negated constructions, raise questions for these analyses. The data demonstrate that adverbs can occupy non-adjoined positions, namely the object position in an irrealis (SOV) construction and possibly negation, forcing a reevaluation of the current treatment of adverbs. The research also expands the existing documentation on Iquito. / text

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Mollusk shells from Peruvian archaeological middens provide brief (< 5 yr per shell) records of past marine conditions. Marine radiocarbon age, R, is recorded in shell carbonate at the time of precipitation. R varies with changes in upwelling: when radiocarbon-depleted sub-thermocline water wells up, R is large; increased contribution from radiocarbon-enriched surface water (due to seasonal cycles or an El Niño event) reduces R. Are molluscan records of R a useful proxy for Peruvian upwelling? If so, does R from archaeological shells reveal mid-Holocene upwelling changes that constrain the Holocene history of El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)? Profiles of R along ontogeny from early 20th century Argopecten purpuratus (bay scallop) shells and mid-Holocene A. purpuratus, Mesodesma donacium (surf clam), and Trachycardium procerum (cockle) shells from eight coastal Peru locations show that R varies by up to 530 ± 200 ¹⁴C yr within individual shells. El Niño events are easily detectable in post-1950s shell carbonate due to increased radiocarbon contrast between sub- and super-thermocline water from “bomb carbon,” but R differences between El Niño and La Niña shells from the early 20th century are subtle. Decreasing precision in older shells due to ¹⁴C decay makes detecting El Niño events in the archaeological past using radiocarbon very difficult. Because of intrashell radiocarbon variation, caution is prudent when using marine material for chronometry in variable upwelling environments. Based on modeling, mollusks that grow seasonally rather than year-round can skew long-term average (> 1 yr) R reconstructions by nearly 200 ¹⁴C yr toward R of the preferred growth season. Coldloving M. donacium, for example, records older marine reservoir ages on average than A. purpuratus in the same water, because A. purpuratus grows in both warm and cold conditions. Comparisons of R between species with opposite seasonal growth habits can compound this effect. Because of intrashell R variation, seasonal growth biases, and measurement uncertainties, a change in R due to past ENSO changes would have to be hundreds of ¹⁴C yr or greater to be identifiable. Thus far, clear evidence for such a Holocene change in R has not been seen.

This essay looks at cultural commoditization by indigenous people in Third World countries in response to tourism. The common assumption is that commoditization invalidates a culture and that it somehow becomes inauthentic. I show that even though the Indians of the Peruvian highlands sell their “Indianess” for tourists to photograph, the real commoditization takes place by mestizos who appropriate Indian culture: their dress, rituals, handicrafts. The Indians and mestizos are both trying to maximize their share of tourism revenue, little of which actually gets to the highlands. Neither culture, however, becomes inauthentic in the process. While the meanings of cultural products may be altered over time, no culture is static and fixed in time: new meanings are relevant within the context of contemporary society.

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The main argument of this study is that the right of Indigenous peoples in Peru to consultation has little practical force and effect, since the Peruvian Constitutional Tribunal is not prepared to base it on a broader right of self-determination. I centre my investigation on the 2005-2011 decisions of the Constitutional Tribunal of Peru regarding the right to consultation. In these decisions, the application of the right to consultation is divorced from a perspective informed by the right of Indigenous self-determination. The main consequence of this divorce is that it obscures the pragmatic and symbolic dimension of the right to Indigenous self-determination, debilitating the practical and symbolic potential of the right to consultation. The lack of correspondence between the right to consultation and the right of indigenous self-determination is built into the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Tribunal and reflects the bias of its judges. This bias is actually a continuation and accommodation of old prejudices of the dominant society against Indigenous peoples in Peru; it is part of the pervasive cultural discrimination that is embedded in Peruvian society and that has been translated into jurisprudential terms and language. This bias is also a symptom of the invisibility of the cultural manifestations of Indigenous peoples and the resultant obscuring of cultural differences in general. This situation illustrates that the racism that existed in the colony, and continued during the republican era in Peru, has not died, but has merely been transformed into a more subtle form of legal and constitutional colonialism. / Graduate / 0326 / alvaro.cordova@mail.mcgill.ca

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