Missionary Grammars Research Articles

Grammatical category versus comparative concept in missionary grammars of Tamil (16th-18th centuries): the description of the relative clause

ABSTRACT Linguists today presuppose that for both description/analysis and comparison of languages, there is a substantial set of universal crosslinguistic categories. In the same way, in the grammaticisation of non-European languages, missionaries took the grammatical categories elaborated for Latin as a set of universal crosslinguistic categories. One could assume that they fell into the trap of transferring time-tested terminology from traditional Latin grammar adapting it to the description of a language with rather different structural properties without really capturing its ‘genius’. Even if this assumption may certainly be true to some extent, it does not present the whole picture and it does not do justice to the efforts missionaries made in describing new languages. Therefore, focusing on how missionaries understood and described the Tamil relative clause and relativiser marker, this paper aims to discuss the tension arising in grammatical descriptions between language-particular categories and crosslinguistic conceptual transfer. The paper thus demonstrates how missionaries did not limit their accounts to the transfer of a priori grammatical categories, tailored for Latin and applied to Tamil, but rather how they refined their descriptions through a crosslinguistic conceptual transfer that may be considered the first step towards comparative concepts.

"Eu mato": The Linguistic and Religious Rewriting of the Tupí under Portuguese Missionary Rule (1555-1630)

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between Portuguese missionary grammars, imperial-indigenous relations, and Tupi resistance between 1555 and 1630. Focusing on Jose de Anchieta’s popular grammar Arte de gramatica de lingua mais usada na costa do brasil (1555) and Luis Figueira’s Arte da Lingua Brasilica (1621), it argues that the shifting focuses of these texts represent the values of the Jesuit order and the interests of Portugal in the New World. Portuguese missionaries moved from an earlier emphasis on trade and Christian conversion with an exclusively oral culture toward a more aggressive and insidious campaign for cultural and linguistic erasure in the region. While previous scholarship has examined changes in Tupi phonemes, morphemes, and syntax between the grammars, this study instead investigates the historical changes pertinent between these texts, their constructed relationships between Portuguese and Tupi, and shifts in their lexical emphases. Keywords: colonial translation; grammars; Jesuit missionaries; cultural erasure; Tupi-Guarani

"Eu mato": The Linguistic and Religious Rewriting of the Tupí under Portuguese Missionary Rule (1555-1630)

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between Portuguese missionary grammars, imperial-indigenous relations, and Tupí resistance between 1555 and 1630. Focusing on José de Anchieta’s popular grammar Arte de gramática de língua mais usada na costa do brasil (1555) and Luís Figueira’s Arte da Língua Brasílica (1621), it argues that the shifting focuses of these texts represent the values of the Jesuit order and the interests of Portugal in the New World. Portuguese missionaries moved from an earlier emphasis on trade and Christian conversion with an exclusively oral culture toward a more aggressive and insidious campaign for cultural and linguistic erasure in the region. While previous scholarship has examined changes in Tupí phonemes, morphemes, and syntax between the grammars, this study instead investigates the historical changes pertinent between these texts, their constructed relationships between Portuguese and Tupí, and shifts in their lexical emphases. Keywords: colonial translation; grammars; Jesuit missionaries; cultural erasure; Tupí-Guaraní

Tagalog Missionary Grammars as a Translation Resource: Translation, Book History and the Production of Linguistic Knowledge in the Spanish Philippines

This article looks into missionary grammars as a resource for investigating translation and its entanglements with book publishing in the Spanish Philippines. Although current research directions tend to use them for studying early forms of non-European languages or for historicizing the initial stages of linguistics as a discipline, I argue that these grammars can also be examined as a translational corpus. Translation was an underlying procedure in their composition and, ultimately, in the production of linguistic knowledge under the colonial condition. This article shows how the Spanish-language grammars of Tagalog, the basis of the modern-day national language called Filipino, were produced as an academic and material response to colonialism. It traces the evolution of these grammars alongside the establishment of the printing press in the Philippines and the intricacies of Catholic missionary work. It proceeds to analyse the paratextual and linguistic contents of the grammars and the translation strategies employed in their creation. The article finally describes how the erosion of the theological foundations of language in the nineteenth century was manifested in later missionary grammars and how this coincided with the secularisation of book publishing.

Gramática hebrea y gramáticas hispanas de los siglos XVI y XVII

espanolEl articulo recoge las noticias que diversos especialistas han publicado sobre la presencia de la gramatica hebrea en las obras de gramatica escritas por autores hispanos de los siglos xvi y xvii y anade algunos datos nuevos. Contextualiza este fenomeno en el ambiente intelectual que se extiende por Europa en el siglo xvi e identifica las obras de la tradicion gramatical hebraica que contienen las nociones y terminos usados por los gramaticos hispanos. Concluye postulando la conveniencia de emprender una investigacion sistematica sobre la cuestion, revisando desde esta perspectiva las gramaticas misioneras. EnglishThis paper brings together several studies published by renowned researchers on the presence of Hebrew grammar in the grammatical works written by Hispanic authors in the 16th and 17th century, to which it adds new data. We frame this influence within the intellectual context prevailing in 16th-century Europe and identify the works of the Hebrew grammatical tradition containing the ideas and terms used by the Hispanic grammarians. Lastly, we conclude suggesting the convenience of taking up a systematic research on the matter, revising missionary grammars from this perspective.

Von Coimbra nach Tobol’sk

SummaryWorldwide missionary activities from the 16th century onward were not limited to the New World and overseas in general, but also in East Central Europe in the wake of sectarian struggles following the Reformation. Soon after the Tridentine Council (1545–1563), the Jesuits spread their activities to all countries between the Baltic and Adriatic Seas. Not only Catholic but also Lutheran and Calvinist missionaries went to Poland-Lithuania, Hungary, Slovenia, and other countries. The first Polish grammar (Statorius 1568) was published principally for the Calvinist mission in Poland, while the first Slovenian grammar was printed in Wittenberg (Bochorizh 1584) for the use of Lutheran missionaries in the predominantly Catholic Slovenia. This article examines the missionary background and the vernacular character of two further missionary grammars of the Slavic languages. The first Croatian grammar by Bartul Kašić (1575–1650) was printed in Rome for the use of Catholic Jesuit missionaries from Italy working in Illyricum (Kašić 1604). Kašić’s choice of thešto-dialect to be the literary norm in missionary publications substantially determined the further standardization history of the Croatian language. Almost a hundred years later H. W. Ludolf (1696) succeeded in printing the first Russian grammar for the Lutheran-Pietistic mission in Muscovy, a milestone on the way to the “refinement” of the Russian vernacular intended by Ludolf to make it the literary language of the Russian Empire. The first grammars of the Slavic vernacular languages can, therefore, be rightly called missionary grammars. This designation also applies to the first grammars of the non-Slavic languages in the Baltic States and Hungary (and, beyond Europe, in the largely Eastern Orthodox Armenia and Ethiopia). Whatever their sect, the authors of these missionary grammars were motivated by rivalry with other Christian denominations in Slavic and non-Slavic speaking countries of the Christian East.

Review of Zwartjes (2011): Portuguese Missionary Grammars in Asia, Africa and Brazil, 1550-1800

Review of Zwartjes (2011): Portuguese Missionary Grammars in Asia, Africa and Brazil, 1550-1800

Making Africa Legible

European colonialism and missionization in Africa initiated a massive orthographic shift across the continent, as local languages that had been written for centuries in Arabic letters were forcibly re-written in Roman orthography through language standardization reforms and the introduction of colonial public schools. Using early missionary grammars promoting the “conversion of Africa from the East,” British colonial standardization policies and educational reforms, as well as petitions and newspaper editorials by the local Swahilispeaking community, I trace the story of the Romanization of Swahili in Zanzibar, the site chosen as the standard Swahili dialect. While the Romanization of African languages such as Swahili was part of a project of making Africa legible to Europeans during the colonial era, the resulting generation gap as children and parents read different letters made Africa more illegible to Africans themselves.

Making Africa Legible

European colonialism and missionization in Africa initiated a massive orthographic shift across the continent, as local languages that had been written for centuries in Arabic letters were forcibly re-written in Roman orthography through language standardization reforms and the introduction of colonial public schools. Using early missionary grammars promoting the “conversion of Africa from the East,” British colonial standardization policies and educational reforms, as well as petitions and newspaper editorials by the local Swahilispeaking community, I trace the story of the Romanization of Swahili in Zanzibar, the site chosen as the standard Swahili dialect. While the Romanization of African languages such as Swahili was part of a project of making Africa legible to Europeans during the colonial era, the resulting generation gap as children and parents read different letters made Africa more illegible to Africans themselves.

Chinese words to express feelings and emotions recorded in the missionary grammars

Which words did the Chinese use to express their emotions in the past? Which grammatical category did these words mainly belong to? Adverbs? Interjections? Particles? How did the Europeans perceive them? Are these still the same in today’s spoken language? This study will try to answer the above questions through the analysis of the words to express emotions recorded in some of the main grammars of Chinese compiled by European missionaries (or on the base of their works) from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. The works targeted for the analysis are the following: M. De Mancano(?), Arte de la Lengua Chio Chiu (1620, 1621); M. Martini, Grammatica Linguae Sinensis (1653 ca.); F. Varo, Arte de la Lengua Mandarina (1682); H. de Premare, Notitia Linguae Sinicae (1720); E. Fourmont, Linguae Sinarum Mandarinicae Hieroglyphicae Grammatica Duplex (1742); R. Morrison, Grammar of the Chinese Language (Morrison 1815). The choice of these works has been made on the ground on several factors: some of these works are the oldest grammars of Chinese in our possessions; they are among the most outstanding works of this kind in the historical period they were compiled; they perfectly cover, with their time distribution, the period taken into consideration for our analysis.

Missionary position: The grammar of Philippine colonial sexualities as a locus of translation

In this paper, I shall examine how Spanish missionaries during the colonial period described the sexual mores of early Filipinos in missionary grammars and vocabularies, and how such description should also be regarded as a locus of translation. Since these missionaries wrote the first systematic analyses of the languages of the archipelago to aid their work of evangelizing early Filipinos, it is in their writings that sexualities were first interrogated through the lens of a colonial religion and polity. By looking into the lexicographical approaches for defining sex-related terms in a Tagalog missionary dictionary, and the authorial choices in incorporating sexualities in two bilingual confession guides, I shall argue that proselytization served as an important translational constraint that created a space where Filipino sexualities were exoticized, and where a particular vision of colonial polity was articulated from a privileged position of colonial rule.

Portuguese Missionary Grammars in Asia, Africa, and Brazil, 1550–1800 by Otto Zwartjes (review)

Portuguese Missionary Grammars in Asia, Africa, and Brazil, 1550–1800 by Otto Zwartjes (review)

Otto Zwartjes, <b>Portuguese missionary grammars in Asia, Africa and Brazil, 1550-1800</b> (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series III, Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 117)

Missionary grammars written in Portuguese were shaped as practical tools for language teaching and after the end of mission period were swiftly forgotten. Most of this vast production is lost. Some grammars remained in libraries as a precious heritage, others were brought to Europe and a few were printed. Once rediscovered, they were considered partial descriptions or excessively contaminated by Latin grammar.

Portuguese Missionary Grammars in Asia, Africa and Brazil, 1550–1800. By Otto Zwartjes

<i>Portuguese Missionary Grammars in Asia, Africa and Brazil, 1550–1800</i>. By Otto Zwartjes

Worthy the Name of a Grammar

SummaryThis article compares two missionary grammars written in the middle of the 17th century, Horacio Carochi’s (1579–1662)Arte de la Lengua Mexicana con la declaración de los adverbios della(1645) and John Eliot’s (1604–1690)The Indian Grammar Begun: or, an Essay to Bring the Indian Language into Rules(1666). Although published only 21 years apart, the two works differ in both context and theoretical underpinnings. These differences are manifested both in the type and depth of analysis undertaken by each author. Indeed, Carochi’s analysis goes much deeper and offers a more complete description of the language treated. While this can be attributed in part to Carochi’s own linguistic ability, the quality and completeness of his grammar is due in large part to the existence of a tradition of scholarship concerning Nahuatl in New Spain, a tradition that is strikingly absent in New England of the time.

Worthy the Name of a Grammar: Verb Morphology and Conjugation in Carochi’sArte de la Lengua Mexicana(1645) and Eliot’sThe Indian Grammar Begun(1666)

This article compares two missionary grammars written in the middle of the 17th century, Horacio Carochi’s (1579–1662)Arte de la Lengua Mexicana con la declaración de los adverbios della(1645) and John Eliot’s (1604–1690)The Indian Grammar Begun: or, an Essay to Bring the Indian Language into Rules(1666). Although published only 21 years apart, the two works differ in both context and theoretical underpinnings. These differences are manifested both in the type and depth of analysis undertaken by each author. Indeed, Carochi’s analysis goes much deeper and offers a more complete description of the language treated. While this can be attributed in part to Carochi’s own linguistic ability, the quality and completeness of his grammar is due in large part to the existence of a tradition of scholarship concerning Nahuatl in New Spain, a tradition that is strikingly absent in New England of the time.

Las primeras gramáticas mesoamericanas

SummaryOn the basis of an analysis of ten grammars of different Meso-American indigenous languages crafted by missionaries during the 16th century, the author attempts to dress an inventory of the specific linguistic traits that characterizes them. These characteristics highlight the efforts which the authors had to make in order to penetrate these unknown and typologically distant languages from those studied at the time of the Renaissance. The present article points out that the missionaries, who had no formal linguistic training, made use of principles of classic hermeneutics, of analogy and anomaly, in order to analyze the function of the word in these new languages. It also establishes the value of these missionary grammars for the philology of the Meso-American indigenous languages, which is only at a beginning.

Línguas bárbaras e peregrinas do Novo Mundo segundo os gramáticos jesuítas: uma concepção de universalidade no estudo de línguas estrangeiras1

In this paper I explore the reflection of the religious context in the concept of universal grammar as it is presented in four missionary grammars written by Jesuit priests in Brazil: Anchieta (1595), Figueira (1621?), Dias (1697) e Mamiani (1699). In the last few decades linguists have seen the return of the expression universal grammar to the literature, as a consequence of the influence of Noam Chomsky’s work. The hypothesis of a common core for all languages has its roots in a tradition which goes back to the Middle Ages. In the Christian West it was thought that the endowment given by God to Adam was uncovered by the confusion of tongues, as a punishment for the Tower of Babel. Therefore the concept of universality in those grammars has its grounds in a very different framework from the chomskyan UG. Abstract In this paper I explore the reflection of the religious context in the concept of universal grammar as it is presented in four missionary grammars written by Jesuit priests in Brazil: Anchieta (1595), Figueira (1621?), Dias (1697) e Mamiani (1699). In the last few decades linguists have seen the return of the expression universal grammar to the literature, as a consequence of the influence of Noam Chomsky’s work. The hypothesis of a common core for all languages has its roots in a tradition which goes back to the Middle Ages. In the Christian West it was thought that the endowment given by God to Adam was uncovered by the confusion of tongues, as a punishment for the Tower of Babel. Therefore the concept of universality in those grammars has its grounds in a very different framework from the chomskyan UG.

The lexical integrity principle: Evidence from Bantu

The lexical integrity principle has been called into question by recent work which hypothesizes a syntactic phrasal source for inflected words. Bantu morphology provides a particularly rich empirical domain for this issue because it straddles the boundary between morphology and syntax, inviting syntactic analyses in both the earliest missionary grammars and recent theoretical works in generative grammar (Myers 1987; Baker 1988a,b; Kinyalolo 1991, Carstens 1991). In this study we show that the morphology and syntax of Bantu noun class markers strikingly support the lexical integrity principle, once the morphemic structure of words is factored apart from their prosodic and functional structures.

Colloquium on the History and Historiography of Missionary Grammars

Colloquium on the History and Historiography of Missionary Grammars