My dissertation explores the theoretical implications of these observations. I have also documented how and when children still differentiate between words belonging to Aché or Guaraní, an important skill in an ideological context where language is a frequent object of discourse in relation to ethnic identity and cultural continuity. In 20 I have conducted a language socialization study to explore the emergence of a new contact language, result of convergence between Aché and Guaraní, learned as first language by the children. Sedentarisation has led to rapid sociocultural transformations, among them change to agriculture for subsistence, missionisation, and language shift from their heritage language (Aché) to the national language (Guaraní). Since 2009 I have conducted fieldwork in the indigenous Aché communities in eastern Paraguay, a former hunter–gatherer collective recently settled on reservations after deforestation, persecutions and disease. I received my MA in Sociocultural Anthropology from Freie Universität Berlin and my PhD in Linguistic Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles. I am a linguistic and sociocultural anthropologist interested in the ways in which children acquire, transform, and develop awareness of language, culture, and morality through everyday interactions with caregivers and peers, especially in contexts of sociocultural change.

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