draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley
draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley
draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley
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‘Portuguese, to the church!’<br />
original: ‘¡Portugués, a la iglesia!’<br />
(Uriarte [1776]1986:243)<br />
8.2 Part II, Section 82<br />
In August 1757, Uriarte is summoned to a house in San Joaquín where a young Omagua man named<br />
Manuel has hanged himself. Uriarte, who does not initially suspect suicide, is struck by a comment<br />
made by the young man’s grieving mother: “‘Se habría acordado que otros hartos parientes se<br />
mataban en el monte”’ (Uriarte [1776]1986:253). 265 To get to the bottom <strong>of</strong> the matter, Uriarte<br />
asks the question in (8.2a). The mother responds in (8.2b). In the end Uriarte denounces the<br />
suicide, indicating to the family that the man will not be buried in the church, and that they may<br />
throw his body in the river.<br />
(8.2) a. i. Aiquara gue ca agua rati-ti ayucarann?<br />
ii. Aiquara gueca agua ratiti ayuca rann?<br />
iii. aikiaRa w1ka awa Ratiti ayuka Ranu?<br />
aikiaRa w1ka 266 awa Ra= titi ayuka Ranu 267<br />
dem.prox.ms be.strong person 3sg.ms= be.alone kill 268 3pl.ms<br />
‘Did this strong man kill himself?’<br />
b. i. Roaya amua pua zui nunanuzenom.<br />
ii. Roaya amua puazui nunanuzenom.<br />
iii. Roaya amua puasui R[a]umanusenuni.<br />
Roaya<br />
neg<br />
amua<br />
other<br />
pua =sui Ra= 269 umanu =senuni<br />
hand =abl 3sg.ms= die =purp<br />
‘So that he wouldn’t die from another hand.’<br />
(Uriarte [1776]1986:253)<br />
The Omagua in (8.2) exhibits a number <strong>of</strong> grammatical inconsistencies, and unfortunately,<br />
the in-text translation that appears following each <strong>of</strong> these two passages does not appear to be<br />
264 This word appears to have been adopted by several distinct linguistic groups by the middle <strong>of</strong> the 18th century<br />
as an ethnonym for the Portuguese, and is also attested in a mid-18th-century grammar <strong>of</strong> Secoya (a Tukanoan<br />
language) (see Cipolletti (1992:191)). Uriarte comments, with regard to this form, “los blancos carayoas (así<br />
entienden, portugueses)” (Uriarte [1776]1986:242). The modern Omagua term for a white man is mai.<br />
265 Translation (ours): “‘He must have remembered that so many other relatives killed each other in the forest’.”<br />
266 Based on Omagua and the other ecclesiastical text we would expect the stative verb w1ka ‘be strong’ to be<br />
nominalized with =mai here, as stative verbs must be nominalized in order to function as nominal modifiers.<br />
267 See footnote 162.<br />
268 In modern Omagua, ayuka means ‘hit’, though it is clear from cognates in other Tupí-Guaraní languages that<br />
Proto-Omagua-Kokama *ayuka meant ‘kill’. Synchronically, ‘kill’ is umanuta (i.e., umanu ‘die’ and -ta caus).<br />
269 Here we change to R and insert a. Our alteration is motivated by the deduction that the subject must be third<br />
person, since we assume it to be coreferential with the subject <strong>of</strong> the preceding sentence (see main body discussion).<br />
The lack <strong>of</strong> a final vowel in Ra= in the original text is presumably due to an instance <strong>of</strong> heteromorphemic vowel<br />
hiatus resolution (a trait <strong>of</strong> fast speech), which is unusual in the ecclesiastical texts (see footnote 129).<br />
109