draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

Chapter 2
Grammatical Sketch of Old Omagua
In this chapter we provide a sketch of Old Omagua grammar, with the goal of allowing the reader
to understand and critically evaluate our analysis of the Omagua texts presented in Chapters 4-8.
Note that this description is not intended to be a comprehensive description of the language.
Our description of Old Omagua relies considerably on our analysis of modern Omagua and on
the comparative study of other Tupí-Guaraní languages, as well as, of course, the data present in
the Old Omagua ecclesiastical materials themselves. If we make no comment to the contrary in
the description below, it can be assumed that a given form is identical in form and function in
the modern language. Certain forms attested in Old Omagua are not attested in modern Omagua,
and we discuss these on a case-by-case basis. In some instances, our analysis of these Old Omagua
forms is significantly informed by the properties of cognates in other Tupí-Guaraní languages, in
which case relevant comparative Tupí-Guaraní data is presented, as necessary. Unless citations
indicate otherwise, example sentences given in the following description are drawn from the Omagua
ecclesiastical texts themselves, in which case they bear an example number by which they can be
located in Chapters 4-8. For the sake of space, we have reduced each example in Chapter 2 to
show only our phonemic representation, morphological segmentation, and free translation, which
corresponds to our target translation (see §3.1).
The only extant descriptions of Old Omagua grammar of which we are aware are very short
sketches in Veigl (1788, 1789) 13 and von Humboldt (2011). 14 Both works are of interest as historical
documents, but are of somewhat limited use from a modern perspective. Written in terms of Latin
grammatical categories, it is not always clear to what degree the Latin grammatical terms used in
the descriptions correspond to those appropriate for Omagua. We make reference to these sketches
only at those points at which we feel they shed light on our own analyses.
Our description begins in §2.1 with a description of the Old Omagua phonological inventory.
We then present a discussion of Old Omagua morphology in §2.2, beginning with a discussion of
person-marking (and the closely related issue of pronouns), which surfaces both on verbs and nouns.
After the discussion of person-marking we turn to specifically nominal morphology, in §2.2.2, and
specifically verbal morphology, in §2.2.3. We provide an overview of Old Omagua syntax in §2.3.
13 The Austrian Jesuit Franz Xavier Veigl (b. 1723 Graz – d. 1798 Klagenfurt, Austria) (Jouanen 1943:749) was
Superior of the Maynas missions from 1762 until 1766 (ibid.:722), during which time he was resident at Santiago
de la Laguna, the headquarters of the Jesuit mission, and may have been exposed to the Omagua of a small group
of families resident there (see footnote 43 and §9.1). Veigl’s account of the Maynas missions, originally written in
Latin, was first published in German translation in 1785 (Veigl 1785), without the Old Omagua grammar sketch.
A second edition was reissued in 1798 (Veigl 1798), also lacking the sketch. The first Spanish publication, which is
a translation of the 1798 German edition, was not released until 2006 (Veigl [1798]2006).
14 Humboldt’s work, dating from the early 19th century, was based on an 18th-century grammar of Omagua written
in Italian by Lorenzo Hervás y Panduro (see §4.1.1)
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