draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

aikiaRa musap1R1ka persona =kana Roaya =tipa musap1R1ka Dios
dem.prox.ms three person =pl.ms neg =interr three God
‘These three persons, are they not three Gods?’
(example (5.10a
(2.45) uyaw1R1tipa yeneyaRa jesucristo 1watimai Ritamasui aikiaRa tuyuka Ritamakate RauRiaRi.
uyaw1R1 =tipa yene= yaRa jesucristo 1wati =mai Ritama =sui
again =interr 1pl.incl= master Jesus.Christ be.high.up =inact.nomz village =abl
aikiaRa
dem.prox.ms
tuyuka
land
Ritama
village
=kate
=all
Ra=
3sg.ms=
uRi
come
=aRi
=impf
‘Will our Lord Jesus Christ come from Heaven to Earth again?’
(example (6.23a))
We should note a variety of distributional facts concerning these two interrogative enclitics.
First, the interrogative clitic =pa is significantly less frequent than =tipa, occurring only four times
in all of the Jesuit texts. In all the syntactic positions in which it is attested, namely on interrogative
words and the clausal negator, =tipa is also attested. In the modern language, only =pa occurs,
whereas Kokama-Kokamilla exhibits =tipa only. Nevertheless, we reconstruct both *=tipa and *=pa
to Proto-Omagua-Kokama, based on cognates across the Tupí-Guaraní family. Evidence for this
comes principally from Tupinambá, which exhibited two interrogative markers pe and tepe, the
latter of which has been described by Cabral (1995:209-213) as a marker of rhetorical questions.
However, we suspect that the difference between the two markers hinged on knowledge asymmetries
between the speaker and his/her interlocutor, although more comparative work is needed across
the Tupí-Guaraní family to determine this for certain. The distribution of multiple interrogative
markers across the family will ultimately inform our reconstruction of *=tipa and *=pa, given that a
distinction between these two forms does not survive in the modern languages (and is hardly attested
even in Old Omagua), such that we cannot rely on synchronic data for the proper reconstruction of
the function of these morphemes.
2.3.5.2 Information Questions
In Old Omagua information questions, the questioned constituent is fronted, and either =tipa or
=pa appears on one of the interrogative words shown in Table 2.18. In the catechism fragment,
interrogative clitics appear on all interrogative words, whereas in the full catechism they are occasionally
omitted, in some cases in questions that otherwise correspond identically to those in the
catechism fragment (e.g., example (5.4a) versus (6.4a)). See §9.4 for a more in-depth discussion of
this variation.
79 In the catechism fragment, aw1R1 appears with =pa (example (5.5a)), whereas in the full catechism, aw1R1ka appears
without additional morphology (example (6.5a)). Only the latter is attested in modern Omagua.
80 In three instances (examples (5.3a), (5.6a) and (6.28a)), maRai ‘what’ is realized as maRi, which is intriguing for
two reasons. First, the modern language exhibits only maRi for ‘what’, while maRai fulfills two separate functions,
one as a noun simply meaning ‘possession’, and another in possessor focus constructions (e.g., ‘the book is mine’),
which are outside the scope of this paper. Second, maRi is a reduction expected in Kokama-Kokamilla, due to
widespread monophthongization processes (see O’Hagan and Wauters (2012)), not in Omagua. This may mean
that the influence of Kokama-Kokamilla on Omagua began at quite an early stage, which is unproblematic in itself
given that Uriarte ([1776]1986) reports the presence of some Kokama families in San Joaquín as early as the 1750s.
However, these facts may help date the writing of the catechisms, given that maRi is attested in both the catechism
fragment and the full catechism.
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