draft manuscript - Linguistics - University of California, Berkeley

La copia del original me fue entregado para su corrección, la que he ejecutado uniendo o
separando lo que era necesario, pero conservando intactos los signos o letras,
excepto en aquellos casos en que el uso indebido de aquéllas incluía un error de concepto
o alteraba el verdadero sentido de la frase. Además, lo he traducido al español, palabra
por palabra, en un orden riguroso correspondiente al texto. En esa forma lo pongo en
este Apéndice como documento interesantísimo y como base de comparación con el texto
Kokama que va más adelante. 176
Interestingly, despite Espinosa Pérez’s efforts ‘correct’ the original manuscript, his decisions on
the representation of the Omagua in the text appear to have been ignored by Bayle in his later
publication (see below), since Espinosa’s representations and Bayle’s vary greatly, particularly with
regard to word breaks. It should be noted that the word boundaries in Espinosa’s version correspond
closely to the ones we ultimately chose, based on our analysis of the manuscript as reproduced in
Uriarte ([1776]1952a), but that the word word boundaries in the latter published version coincide in
a haphazard fashion with those of the Old Omagua words, as we analyze them. We have assumed
Bayle ultimately opted for a representation that was more faithful to the original manuscript, despite
Espinosa’s cogent and linguistically-informed analysis of the manuscript.
6.1.2 Uriarte ([1776]1952a), Uriarte ([1776]1986)
As alluded to above, the complete catechism was also published in 1952 by Constantino Bayle,
this time as an appendix to the two-volume diaries of Manuel Uriarte (see above), who worked
in the Maynas missions from 1750-1768, and was missionary in San Joaquín de Omaguas from
1756 until 1764 (Uriarte [1776]1986). The 1952 edition was republished in a single volume in 1986,
and because of greater circulation and availability to the reader, page references here reflect the
latter edition, although we also consulted the 1952 version. In addition to the complete catechism
in Omagua, the appendices contain several ecclesiastical texts in Quechua, Tikuna (isolate) and
Yameo (Peba-Yaguan, extinct) (see Uriarte ([1776]1986:597-624)).
Our own analysis is based on Bayle version of the catechism, because it is not always clear
in which cases Espinosa Pérez chose to modify the original orthographic representation in the
manuscript (both in terms of individual graphemes and word breaks), and we wished to base our
analysis on the version that, as we believe, most closely represents the original manuscript. We have,
however consulted Espinosa Pérez’s version in those cases in which we were unable to interpret the
Omagua in Bayle’s text ourselves, cases in which Espinosa Pérez occasionally provided an alternate,
and we think credible, interpretation of the orthography. Given his personal knowledge of Omagua,
we suspect that Espinoza was able to make more informed decisions about ambiguous written letters
in the handwritten manuscript (e.g., versus ), whereas Bayle had to rely solely on his visual
inspection of the manuscript.
The complete Omagua catechism apparently did not include a Spanish translation, since neither
Espinosa nor Bayle provide one. There does, however, exist a translation for a Quechua catechism
176 Translation (ours):
The copy of the original was given to me for correction, which I have undertaken by joining or separating
what was necessary, but preserving intact symbols and letters, except in those cases in which the
improper use of those [letters] resulted in a conceptual error or altered the true sense of the phrase.
Furthermore, I have translated it into Spanish, word for word, in a rigorous order that corresponds to
the text [i.e., the Omagua word order]. In that form I place it in this Appendix as one of the most
interesting of documents and as a base of comparison with the Kokama text that appears subsequently.
78