draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

aikiaRa musap1R1ka persona =kana uyepe =semai Dios muRa
dem.prox.ms three person =pl.ms one =verid God 3sg.ms
santísima trinidad
Holy Trinity
=nani Ra= SiRa
=contr.foc 3sg.ms= name
‘They are not three Gods. These three persons are truly one God. The Holy Trinity is
its name.’
(see (5.10))
(9.35) a. aikiaRa musap1R1ka personakana, Roayapa musap1R1ka Dioskana?
aikiaRa musap1R1ka persona =kana Roaya =pa musap1R1ka Dios =kana
dem.prox.ms three person =pl.ms neg =interr three God =pl.ms
‘These three people, are they not three Gods?’
b. Roaya [musa]p1R1ka Dioskana. aikiaRa musap1R1ka personakana persona uyepe titi Dios
muRa. santísima trinidadnanimai RaSiRa.
Roaya
neg
[musa]p1R1ka
three
Dios =kana
God =pl.ms
aikiaRa musap1R1ka persona =kana persona uyepe titi Dios muRa
=pl.ms three person =pl.ms person one be.alone God 3sg.ms
santísima trinidad
Holy Trinity
=nani =mai Ra= SiRa
=contr.foc =? 3sg.ms= name
‘They are not three Gods. These three persons are one God alone. The Holy Trinity is
its name.’
(see (6.10))
The responses, each of which we analyze as consisting of three short sentences, differ in a number
of important ways. In the first sentence, which is a non-verbal clause, the Full Catechism lacks the
pronominal form muRa 3sg.ms, found in the corresponding Catechism Fragment sentence. Based
on modern Omagua, we expect muRa to be necessary here for the sentence to be grammatical (see
§2.3.9). Note that in the second sentence of the response, however, also a non-verbal clause, the Full
Catechism exhibits muRa in the expected position, just as in the Catechism Fragment, suggesting
that its absence in the first sentence of the Full Catechism response may reflect a simple oversight,
rather than a lack of mastery of the grammar of non-verbal clauses.
The responses also differ in how the notion of God being a single god (despite being a trinity)
is expressed in the second sentence, with the collocation uyepe titi ‘one alone’ appearing in the Full
Catechism (and attested in modern Omagua), while the Catechism fragment employs the veridical:
uyepe=semai ‘truly one’. We believe both of these constructions were grammatical. Finally, the third
sentence of each of the responses exhibit the use of =nani as a contrastive focus marker on trinidad
(also a strategy attested synchronically (see §2.3.8.2)), but the presence of the nominalizer =mai
following the contrastive focus marker in the Full Catechism is inexplicable, and was presumably
ungrammatical.
11th Question-Response Pair The questions in this pair differ in two ways. We see that the
interrogative word maniamai ‘which’ in Catechism Fragment, 381 in (9.36), bears the interrogative
381 In modern Omagua, makatimai ‘which’.
150