draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

central vowel /1/. The high central vowel is generally represented as , although a less common
variant, , also surfaces, particularly following the bilabial stop /p/. With this representational
choice this phoneme is thus always conflated with other vowels, and we must rely on our knowledge
of the corresponding form in modern Omagua to infer the appropriate phonemic representation in
forms that exhibit orthographic in the Omagua texts. Additionally, the rounded back vowel
/u/ is variably represented as either or , presumably due to the fact that the single
rounded back vowel in the language occupied a position between cardinal /u/ and /o/, leading to
variation in how the Jesuit authors perceived and represented the segment.
A quite different challenge for accurate phonemic representation arises from what we assume to
be errors introduced in the process of copying the text. Given the nature of the errors, we believe
that the texts were copied at least once by someone who had no knowledge of Omagua. The result
was scribal errors that are easily explained if we assume that the copyist was simply attempting
to interpret and reproduce hand-written characters based on their shape, without being able to
rely on wider knowledge of the Omagua lexicon or Omagua phonotactics. 112 Thus, for example,
it is evident that orthographic handwritten was misinterpreted as or on several
occasions, where both of the latter resemble (see Table 3.3 113 ).
The final issue we consider with relation to the phonemic representation of forms in the Old
Omagua texts is the role of sound change. As indicated in §3.1, there are few systematic differences
between the phonemic representation of Old Omagua forms and modern Omagua ones. A
notable exception to this generalization involves Old Omagua orthographic . Most instances
of correspond to modern Omagua /I/, which is a reflex of Proto-Omagua-Kokama *e, also
corresponding to Kokama-Kokamilla /e/ (O’Hagan and Wauters 2012). In light of this, is
most typically represented as /e/ in our analysis in the line of phonemic representation (see (3.1c)).
More infrequently, however (i.e., only in the Lord’s Prayer and Catechism Fragment), corresponds
to modern /i/, particularly in unstressed position, and crucially also to Kokama-Kokamilla
/i/. In these instances, Old Omagua data becomes crucial for reconstructing the proper Proto-
Omagua-Kokama segment, since we would otherwise reconstruct *i in such forms. In the majority
of these instances, comparative data from elsewhere in the Tupí-Guaraní family has shed light on
this particular issue, in that Old Omagua words that exhibit but correspond to both modern
Omagua and Kokama-Kokamilla /i/ typically correspond to /e/ in other languages of the family.
In these cases we represent again as /e/ in our phonemic representation, and note that this
yields an additional correspondence set between Old Omagua and modern Omagua (really between
Proto-Omagua-Kokama and both daughter languages) e:i.
Conversely, and even less frequently, corresponds to modern /I/, which clearly came from
Old Omagua /e/. This latter correspondence, which is the least well attested, suggests to us that
the /e/ phoneme in some words may have already been raising to /I/ at this time, resulting in
112 For the Lord’s Prayer and Catechism Fragment, the copying event was likely only that of typesetting the texts for
publication, since, although there are numerous unexpected graphemes in the forms of these texts, word breaks are
more faithfully reproduced. However, in the Full Catechism and Profession of Faith, which come to us bundled in
the appendices to Manuel Uriarte’s diaries (see §6.1), word breaks are additionally quite surprising. We consider
it most likely that these word breaks are due to a copyist with no knowledge of Omagua reproducing another
hanwritten manuscript in the time between when the text was last edited and when it was typeset for publication.
113 In Table 3.3, empty cells indicate that there are no attested scribal errors with respect to the particular segment
in question. Recall that grayed out cells indicate that the respective phoneme is not attested in that text.
114 We assume this sequence and its counterpart in the immediately lower cell to be misinterpretations of .
115 We assume this to be a misrepresentation of , which in all other texts corresponds to /s/.
116 This sequence almost certainly corresponds to , given calligraphic practices of the period in which the first
of a sequence of two s was written as what essentially resembles a cursive .
117 We assume this and its counterpart in the immediately lower cell to be a misrepresentation of , which corresponds
to both /e/ and /1/ (see below).
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