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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conclusion to be drawn from the historical materials describing the development <strong>of</strong> ecclesiastical<br />
texts, namely, that the ecclesiastical texts were not produced by a single author at a single point<br />
in time, but instead successively re-worked and polished as part <strong>of</strong> a communal text tradition. The<br />
two catechisms are overwhelmingly similar, but show a variety <strong>of</strong> subtle differences in the words<br />
or grammatical constructions employed to express a given notion, which points to contributions<br />
by different individuals. Perhaps the best evidence for the involvement <strong>of</strong> different individuals,<br />
however, is that the contributors to the different texts exhibit different masteries <strong>of</strong> Old Omagua<br />
grammar. Although the contributors to both texts exhibit significant knowledge <strong>of</strong> the language,<br />
the contributors to the Full Catechism, for example, show mastery <strong>of</strong> the subtle distinction between<br />
reason and purpose interrogative words, while the contributors to the Catechism Fragment conflate<br />
this distinction, resorting in all cases to reason interrogatives. In contrast, the contributors to the<br />
Catechism Fragment generally ordered pre-nominal modifiers correctly, while the contributors to<br />
the Full Catechism inverted the correct order on a number <strong>of</strong> occasions.<br />
This work also sought to narrow down the likely contributors to the ecclesiastical texts, identifying<br />
Samuel Fritz and Manuel Iriarte as probably having been important in the communal text<br />
tradition in which the Old Omagua texts were embedded. A great deal is unknown about the details<br />
<strong>of</strong> these contributions, however, and the precise means by which these texts survived the destruction<br />
<strong>of</strong> Jesuit linguistic descriptions and ecclesiastical texts during the expulsion remains unclear.<br />
This work represents a first exploration <strong>of</strong> the Old Omagua ecclesiastical texts analyzed here, and<br />
they no doubt have much more to tell us, both about the language in which they were written, and<br />
the circumstances and manner in which they were created. Even this initial foray, however, shows<br />
us that the long-neglected texts created by the Jesuits <strong>of</strong> Maynas constitute invaluable linguistic<br />
and historical resources.<br />
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