Analyzing a selection of negative constructions in Huaraz Quechua (Ancash, Peru), this study contributes to examine the tangled link between language and culture. The work shows how the investigation of the sociolinguistic background and the dynamic sociocultural environment of the HZQ speakers is key to understanding how people interact with each other and their individual linguistic choices. In particular, the selection of negative markers by the participants to a linguistic interaction is

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... sented as driven, among others factors, by the interplay of common knowledge and specific sociocultural settings. Based on a large corpus of data that consists of the anthology Cuentos y relatos en el quechua de Huaraz and three hours of self elicited video material, the approach applied here integrates the formal and functional description of negation with an analysis of the speakers' expectations in the use of negative markers. The study presents negative constructions that are new discoveries in the Quechua literature and others that are unique constructions within the HZQ dialect, differing from related structures described for other Quechua dialects so far. That expectations play a major role in the function of negation has been noted in previous works (see Bernini & Ramat 1996). The present study takes this further and analyzes these expectations in the context of the specific sociocultural environment. In particular, the interplay of habitual understanding, common knowledge, social hierarchies and specific sociocultural values are found to be the basis for how the functions of negation are determined. This importance of the sociocultural environment can be seen in several functions of negation. One function of negation that arose from the analysis of the video material recorded is to minimize the knowledge of the storyteller, and this can be traced directly to years of exclusion, which have embedded the belief among Quechua speakers that their language and their knowledge have no value. Another function of negat [...]