draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

Chapter 9
Historical Context of Old Omagua Texts
The principal goals of this chapter are to clarify the role of the Old Omagua ecclesiastical texts in
the missionary practices of the Jesuits who worked with the Omaguas, and to better understand the
processes by which the Old Omagua ecclesiastical texts were developed. We begin by situating the
ecclesiastical texts within the broader language policy of the Maynas Jesuits, showing that these
texts constituted a critical tool for evangelical work in the context of extreme linguistic diversity,
and constant turnover in missionaries in particular mission sites. We also show that work on the
development of ecclesiastical texts was grounded in significant basic linguistic work and were objects
of continuous revision and elaboration in the context of a communal textual tradition. Turning to
the Old Omagua ecclesiastical texts themselves to better understand the textual practices involved
in their development, we examine the Jesuit development of neologisms, use of calques, and by
comparing the two catechistic texts, demonstrate that although the texts are quite similar in many
respects, supporting the notion of a communal text tradition, they also show traces of different
grammatical competencies in the Jesuits who contributed to their development, making it clear
that different missionaries worked on them. Finally, we attempt to clarify to the degree possible
who these contributors might have been.
We begin by presenting a brief overview of Jesuit interactions with the Omagua in §9.1. 297 In
doing so we focus on the continuity (or lack thereof) of relations between the Jesuits and Omaguas,
which becomes relevant to our discussion in §9.5 of the likely trajectory of text creation and revision
the Old Omagua ecclesiastical text. We next present an overview of Jesuit language policy in
Maynas in §9.2, focusing on the interplay between lenguas generales and lenguas particulares, the
development of descriptive linguistic resources in lenguas particulares, practical language learning
and use of translators, and finally, the general use and development of ecclesiastical texts in Maynas.
We then turn in §9.3 to a close examination of the Old Omagua ecclesiastical texts, first discussing
how the creators of these texts made use of neologisms to express certain theological notions, and
the degree to which the texts exhibit calquing on languages other than Omagua, which serves as a
measure of the linguistic sophistication of those involved in developing the texts. In §9.4 we compare
the two versions of the Omagua catechisms which give us insight into how the texts changed over
time, and the ways in which the linguistic abilities of the missionaries involved varied. Finally, in
§9.5 we present a discussion of which specific Jesuits may have been involved in the development of
the texts, how those texts are related to each other and how they come down to us today.
297 See the discussion of early interactions between Omaguas and Europeans in Chapter 1 for contextualization.
117