Conocimiento etnoecológico codificado en la lengua quechua

The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze the relationship between language and environment in the ethnoecological knowledge on potato biodiversity encoded in the Quechua language, in a peasant community located in the geographic strip where the main Andean tuber agrobiodiversity centers of Bolivia are located. The theoretical basis is ecolinguistics, specifically ethnoecology linguistics, which studies the cultural ecological knowledge of a "place" through language that has a role in the meaning, codification, registration and circulation of this knowledge. It is a qualitative study with an ethnographic basis, which consisted of an immersion in the daily life of the community and the compilation of oral texts in Quechua language on the worldviews, knowledge and practices present in the cultivation of potato biodiversity, adapted to the characteristics of the puna ecosystem. The potato is an ancient crop that is part of the communal management of the territory and guarantees the food security of the population.The verification of this thesis is that: the cultural model of nature defines the ontological bases of the ecological knowledge encoded in the language. The worldview and ecological knowledge are implicit in the linguistic system. The ethnoecological concepts encoded in the Quechua language account for the lexical and grammatical richness that express the conception of the natural environment as a “living world”, and the ways of interacting with it. In this sense, the Quechua language represents a support for local environmental sustainability.