draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

The phonemic representation of Old Omagua forms is relatively straightforward with regard to
consonants, with the notable exception of /S/ and /tS/. Recall that modern Omagua exhibits a
phoneme /tS/, but only in a very small set of forms that are mostly attributable to borrowing (see
§2.1). Furthermore, Proto-Omagua-Kokama exhibited *tS, the source of Old Omagua and modern
Omagua /S/. Incidentally, none of the synchronic forms exhibiting /tS/ are attested in Old Omagua,
but a different set of forms exhibits the sequence . In some cases we analyze this sequence
as corresponding to an Old Omagua phoneme /tS/, which was marginal at that time as it is now,
while in other cases we consider to be yet another orthographic strategy for representing Old
Omagua /S/, which yields the overlap of in multiple rows in Table 3.1. We take this line of
approach because, on the one hand, it is clear that the forms in which we posit /tS/ are loan words
from Quechua (see below), while on the other hand it is otherwise obvious that the lenition process
that yielded Omagua /S/ from Proto-Omagua-Kokama *tS (as well as /s/ from *ts) had already
occurred by the time period in which these texts were written. All forms exhibiting orthographic
are given in Table 3.2, with the number of tokens, their phonemic representation in Old
Omagua and modern Omagua, their gloss and an indication of the texts in which they appear. 109
Forms above the dashed line contain old Omagua /tS/, while those below it contain /S/.
Table 3.2: Old Omagua Forms Containing
Orthography Tokens Old Omagua Modern Omagua Gloss Text
mucha 1 mutSa muSa kiss lord
hucha 8 utSa uSa fault, sin full, prof
chira 1 SiRa SiRa name frag
quasrachi 1 k w aRaSi k w aRaSi day full
richi 1 =RaSi =RaSi nass full
maria chicu 1 maRiaSiRu maRiaSiRu church diary
chipate 1 Sipate SipatI palm sp. (Sp. yarina) diary
The Old Omagua word mutSa ‘kiss’ and utSa ‘fault’ are loan words from Quechua, in which
language they also exhibit the medial affricate /tS/ (Taylor 2006:65, 98). 110 They appear to have
been introduced into Omagua by the Jesuits themselves, in order to convey the Christian notions of
adoration (i.e., of Christ) and sin, as they exhibit the same extended, religious uses in at least some
dialects of Quechua (ibid.). Note that in modern Omagua, the affricate in both forms has lenited to
/S/; the sense ‘adore’ does not survive, although the sense ‘sin’ does. The remaining Old Omagua
words, which we claim exhibit the alveo-palatal fricative /S/, occur only once with an orthographic
representation , and, with the exception of and , which are each
attested only once, occur elsewhere with expected representations of /S/ (see Table 3.1). 111 Lastly,
there is one instance of a :/s/ correspondence in the diaries of Manuel Uriarte (see (8.6) and
footnotes therein), in the form , which correpsonds to the applicative =supe. We do not
attribute much significance to this correspondence, since it is attested only once.
In general, the greatest challenges for assigning phonemic representations of Omagua words are
found in the orthographic conventions for representing vowels, in particular the unrounded high
109 lord = Lord’s Prayer; frag = Catechism Fragment; full = Full Catechism; prof = Profession of Faith.
110 See footnote 127).
111 The form is conspicuous here, in that the that would otherwise form the sequence , an
expected representation of /S/, appears to be “metathesized”. We assume this token to have been improperly
copied.
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