draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

‘God is none of these things. They are merely God’s creations.’
(see 5.6))
(9.29) a. k w aRaSi, yas1, sesukana, w1Rakana, miaRakana, 1watakana, Roayatipa Dios?
k w aRaSi yas1 sesu =kana w1Ra =kana miaRa =kana 1wata =kana Roaya
sun moon star =pl.ms bird =pl.ms animal =pl.ms jungle =pl.ms neg
=tipa Dios
=interr God
‘The sun, the moon, the stars, the birds, the animals, the forests, are they not God?’
b. Roaya Dios muRa. aikiaRa upakatu maRainkana Dios yaw1k1maipuRa puRai muRa.
Roaya
neg
Dios muRa
God 3sg.ms
aikiaRa upa =katu maRain =kana Dios yaw1k1 =mai =puRa
dem.prox.ms all =intsf thing =pl.ms God make =inact.nomz =nom.pst
puRai muRa
contr.foc 3sg.ms
‘They are not God. All these things are God’s creation.’
(see (6.6))
Turning to the responses, we find that they are slightly different in content, as evident in (9.28)
and (9.29), reflecting the differences in the questions posed. As a result, the Full Catechism exhibits
a noun with two prenominal modifiers aikiaRa upakatu maRainkana ‘all of these things’ with no
counterpart in the Catechism Fragment. Significantly, this collocation shows the same reversed
order of prenominal modifiers found in (9.25), confirming contributors to this text felt this to be the
correct order. This response also exhibits what appears to be simple grammatical error, a thirdperson
singular pronoun, muRa, that does not agree in number with its antecedents, namely those
things that are not to be identified with God. The counterpart of this pronoun in the Catechism
Fragment, Ranu in (9.28), does exhibit the correct agreement.
Finally, the Catechism Fragment response exhibits the collocation nati maRai, which is clearly
intended to mean ‘none’ or ‘none of them’ (cf. maRai ‘thing’). Interestingly, neither modern Omagua
or modern Kokama exhibit a reflex of nati, which appears to function as a negation element here,
nor has it yet proved possible to identify a corresponding element in Tupinambá or any other
Tupí-Guaraní language.
7th Question-Response Pair The questions in these pairs exhibit two differences, the most
significant being the difference in choice of interrogative word. The Catechism Fragment question,
in (9.30), employs reason interrogative (formed from maRai ‘what’ and =ikua reas), while the
Full Catechism question, in (9.31), employs a purpose interrogative (formed from maRai ‘what’ and
=Ra nom.purp) (see §2.3.5). The responses make clear that the purpose interrogative is correct,
indicating that the use of reason interrogative in the Catechism Fragment reflects the failure of the
contributors to that text to master the subtle distinction between reason and purpose interrogatives
in Old Omagua. The fact that a contributor to the Full Catechism had mastery of the reasonpurpose
distinction in Omagua interrogative formation suggests a fairly high degree of fluency.
The Catechism Fragment does, however exhibit the correct ordering of prenominal modifiers to
maRainkana, while the Full Catechism exhibits the reverse order.
(9.30) a. maRaikuatipa Dios yaw1k1 upakatu aikiaRa maRainkana?
147