draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

Chapter 10
Conclusion
On the basis of a careful analysis of Old Omagua ecclesiastical texts, the present work has sought
to shed light on the grammar of Old Omagua as it was spoken in the late 17th and early 18th
centuries, and on the process by which the Jesuit missionaries of Maynas developed these texts.
This work also provides high-quality representations of the ecclesiastical texts in question to serve
as a resource for further analysis by others.
Old Omagua grammar, as revealed in the ecclesiastical texts, is largely similar to the that
of the modern language, but the texts provide clear evidence for morphemes and constructions
that are absent in the modern language, yielding key insights into earlier stages of the language.
In several cases, such as the privative =1ma, the structural elements either no longer or scarcely
found in the modern language are retentions from the Tupí-Guaraní precursor to Omagua, serving
to show that Old Omagua, and by extension, Proto-Omagua-Kokama, preserved aspects of Tupí-
Guaraní morphology no longer found in its modern daughter languages. In other cases, such as
the negative purposive =maka, the texts provide evidence for a morpheme absent in the modern
language, but present in Omagua’s modern sister language, Kokama-Kokamilla. Such evidence
allows one to reconstruct such morphemes to Proto-Omagua-Kokama, which is especially valuable
for morphemes that lack cognates in more typical Tupí-Guaraní languages. In yet other cases
the texts provide evidence regarding the original phonological form of elements which have since
undergone phonological erosion, as in the case of the Old Omagua Roaya, which has reduced to
Rua in the modern language. The full implications of the linguistic information contained in the
Old Omagua ecclesiastical texts for the reconstruction of Proto-Omagua-Kokama and the linguistic
history of its daughter languages lies beyond the scope of the present work, but it is clear that
considerably greater progress will be possible by making use of these texts.
The insights into Jesuit linguistic and text-development practices yielded by the ecclesiastical
texts and complementary historical materials are significant. Ecclesiastical texts like the Omagua
ones analyzed in the present work were critical components of one of two prongs of a broader
language policy that combined the promotion of Quechua as a lengua general with evangelical work
carried out the Amazonian lenguas particulares of each group. The ecclesiastical texts made it
possible for missionaries to carry out crucial evangelical activities such as catechizing converts and
youths, and teaching key prayers, even before mastering the relevant local languages. As such, these
texts were central to maintaining a degree of continuity in the face of relatively frequent rotations of
mission personnel. These texts are also evidence of a sophisticated language policy that promoted
the development of descriptive linguistic resources and the maintenance of archives that preserved
both descriptive materials and ecclesiastical texts for use by subsequent missionaries.
A close comparison of the two catechistic texts analyzed in this volume confirms an intriguing
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