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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A somewhat different process <strong>of</strong> semantic extension affected the word ayaise ‘wicked’ in the<br />
Lord’s Prayer, which both in modern Omagua and the other ecclesiastical texts, predicates negative<br />
personality attributes like dishonesty or a propensity for anger or violence to people. In the Lord’s<br />
prayer, however, we find the word being used more broadly to indicate a notion like ‘bad, evil’, which<br />
can also be predicated <strong>of</strong> inanimates. We take the extension from ‘wicked’ to ‘evil’ to be a result<br />
<strong>of</strong> Jesuit authors’ searching for an antonym to eRa ‘good’, which can be predicated <strong>of</strong> animates,<br />
inanimates, and even events, indicating general positive evaluation, without the kind <strong>of</strong> restriction<br />
to personality attributes we see for ayaise ‘wicked’. No such antonym exists as a single lexical item<br />
in modern Omagua at least, leading us to believe that ayaise was used in the Lord’s Prayer in a<br />
way that extended the native semantics <strong>of</strong> the term. 377<br />
(9.18) ayaise maRaisui neyumunuyepeta tanu<br />
ayaise maRai =sui ne= yumunuyepeta tanu<br />
wicked thing =abl 2sg= save 1pl.excl.ms<br />
‘Deliver us from evil.’<br />
(see (4.7))<br />
Finally we consider the use <strong>of</strong> kumesa ‘say’ as a translational equivalent <strong>of</strong> ‘judge’ in the Full<br />
Catechism, as in (9.19). Modern Omagua exhibits no word that expresses the notion <strong>of</strong> ‘judgment’ in<br />
a moral, legal, or eschatological sense, and it is clear that elsewhere in the Old Omagua ecclesiastical<br />
texts kumesa serves to express ‘say’, as in the modern language. We infer, then, that kumesa<br />
meant ‘say’ in Old Omagua, and that the Jesuits extended the term to ‘judge’ in the ecclesiastical<br />
texts. The precise motivation for this extension is obscure, but it is worth noting that in both<br />
modern Loreto Spanish and in several Peruvian Amazonian languages, decir ‘say’ and its indigenous<br />
counterparts <strong>of</strong>ten carry the connotation <strong>of</strong> ‘criticize’ (although this is not the case for modern<br />
Omagua), 378 a notion not that distant from ‘judge’. If this secondary sense was also salient in the<br />
region when the ecclesiastical texts were being developed, it may have served as a motivation for<br />
extending the meaning <strong>of</strong> kumesa ‘say’. This extension may <strong>of</strong> course be wholly a Jesuit innovation,<br />
grounded in the notion <strong>of</strong> judgement as a speech act, or on the idea that to speak <strong>of</strong> wicked deeds<br />
is to reveal them, thereby making them objects <strong>of</strong> possible moral censure.<br />
(9.19) upakatu yenesawakai upai ayaise yeneyaw1k1maipuRakana weRanu Rakumesasenuni RauRiaRi.<br />
upa =katu yene= sawa =kai upai ayaise yene= yaw1k1 =mai<br />
all =intsf 1pl.incl= soul =? every wicked 1pl.incl= do =inact.nomz<br />
=puRa =kana weRanu Ra= kumesa =senuni Ra= uRi =aRi<br />
=nom.pst =pl.ms coord 3sg.ms= say =purp 3sg.ms= come =impf<br />
‘He will come to judge all <strong>of</strong> our souls and all <strong>of</strong> our wicked deeds.’<br />
(see (6.25b))<br />
Finally, we consider a strategy employed in the Lord’s Prayer for expressing passive voice, that<br />
relies on extending the function <strong>of</strong> the third person masculine pronoun to a non-referential role. This<br />
strategy is exemplified in (9.9) in §9.3.2.1. The construction, tene Ra= mutSa muRa lit. ‘let him kiss<br />
it’, which aims to translate a jussive passive in the corresponding Spanish sentence (i.e. sanctificado<br />
sea tu nombre ‘hallowed be thy name’ = ‘let his name be hallowed’), involves a transitive active verb.<br />
377 See footnote 146 for additional comments.<br />
378 See sawata ‘criticize’.<br />
141