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A colonial grammar or arte

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Astrid Alexander-Bakkerus
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 DR. ASTRID ALEXANDER-BAKKERUS
AMSTERDAM CENTRE FOR LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION
(ACLC)

UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM

A colonial grammar or arte

(British Library, Ms. Add. 25,323 and 25,324)

Abstract
The manuscripts Add. 25,323 and Add. 25,324 from the British Library concern a
description of Jebero, a moribund language spoken in North Peru. The former
manuscript contains a Spanish-Quechua-Jebero vocabulary, the latter a Christian
doctrine in Jebero and in Quechua and a grammar of Jebero. The codices date from the
18th century. They were not meant to be published. The author, whose name is not
given, wrote them for his fellow missionaries.
In this paper I give a number of features of colonial grammars/ artes, and show
why we can consider the manuscripts Add. 25,323 and Add. 25,324 as a whole and why
we can assume that, as such, they constitute a colonial grammar.
Subsequently we pay attention to the Christian doctrine, the most important piece
of both codices and the reason why the other parts, i.e. the trilingual vocabulary and the
grammar of Jebero, were written.

Key words: Jebero, colonial grammars, Christian doctrine.

1. Introduction

Notwithstanding the fact that the name of the author of the codices Add. 25,323 and
Add. 25,324 is omitted, there are reasons to believe that the manuscripts were written
by the Jesuit missionary, Samuel Fritz (1654-1726). Samuel Fritz explored the basin of
the Amazon river, made a chart of the Marañón territory and contacted the Jebero
people in 1694.
The manuscript Add. 25,323 comprises a word list, called Vocabulario dela
Lengua Castellana, la del Ynga, y Xebera ‘Vocabulary of the Spanish language, that of
the Ynga, and Jebero’. The concept Ynga in the title refers to the Inca, the ruling
population group in Peru at that time, and the language of the Inca is Quechua, a lingua
franca. Xebera is the eighteenth century spelling of the word Jebera. The vocabulary has
some three thousand entries.
Add. 25,324 includes a Christian doctrine and a grammar of the Jebero language.
The language is still spoken by some elderly people in the district of Jeberos in North
Peru. Pilar Valenzuela, who did fieldwork in Jeberos, started a revitalisation project
with the Jebero people.
The Jebero language belongs to the Kawapana language family, a small family
consisting of two members of which Chayawita is the other member. As so many other
Amerindian languages, Jebero is an agglutinative language and nouns and verbs are the
most important word classes. Noun and verb stems can have both prefixes and suffixes.1
Jebero does not have an open, distinctive class of adjectives, but nominalised forms and
nouns expressing a quality, a property, or a colour, may function as such. The language
further has a small, closed class of non-derived adverbs, and a few conjunctions only.
Subordinate clauses are formed by means of nominalisations. The order of the
constituents is predominantly SOV.
Interestingly, the language has a dual first person plural and it does not make a
distinction between a past, present and future tense, but between a non-future and a
future tense. The Jebero verbal paradigm further comprises an imperative mood and a
great number of nominalised forms.

2. Colonial grammars, characteristics2

Soon after the ‘discovery’ of new continents by western explorers, Europe colonised a
great number of the ‘newly discovered’ lands, and a good many of grammars in all sorts
of indigenous languages were produced for reasons of communication. Most of the
grammars were written by missionaries. They were sent by the church to these countries
in order to propagate the catholic faith and to convert as many people as possible.
When Europe discovered and colonised the ‘world’, it already had a long
history of language description, a tradition that went back to the works of art of the
Greek and Latin philosophers.3 (In the Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, grammar was
considered to be one of the seven liberal arts.) Moreover, at that time, Latin was not
only the language of science, it also was - and still is - the language of the church. The
grammarians and missionaries who wrote those grammars thus were trained in Latin,
and they knew the classics. It is therefore no surprise that, considering the long tradition

1
In Quechua, a neighbouring language, stems do not have prefixes. They are followed by suffixes.
2
For a discussion in great detail concerning colonial grammars see Zimmermann 1997, and for more
information about colonial linguistics see Stolz, Vossmann and Dewein.
3
For more information about the Greaco-Latin tradition of language description, the purpose of a
Greek or Latin grammar, and the contents of it, see Alexander-Bakkerus 2005: 45-47.
of language description, the classical training of the grammarians and the status of
Latin, the authors of an arte fell back on the Greek and Latin grammars when they had
to describe an indigenous language and that their language descriptions were based on a
Graeco-Latin model, all the more so because this model appeared to be very suitable for
the description of other foreign, i.e. European, languages. This Latin model used by the
European grammarians contained the following characteristics:
- a nominal declension with six cases;
- a verbal conjugation with five tenses (present, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect,
future), five moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive/ optative, infinitive,
participle) and a number of gerunds/ supines;
- a sentence divided into in eight parts (noun, verb, pronoun, adjective, adverb,
preposition, conjunction, interjection);
- a dichotomy between categorematic parts, i.e. declinable, significant parts
(nouns, pronouns, verbs, participles) and syncategorematic parts, i.e. non-
declinable, co-significant parts (adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions,
th
interjections) introduced by Priscian (6 century) and by the Modistae (Middle
Ages); 4
- a grammar beginning with sounds, followed by chapters about syllables, words
and sentences, and ending with texts, the pièce de résistance and the reason
why the grammars was written.

A comment should be given on the last item. In Greek and Latin grammars, the pièce de
résistance consisted of pieces of poetry, for the grammarians did not wrote their work to
teach a language or to convert people, but with a view of promoting the art of poetry
and of showing the beauty of it. Therefore they preceded the poetic texts by
philosophical treatises about ‘voice’ or ‘elements’ (sounds), syllables, words and
sentences, features used by poets to achieve a work of art. Grammar thus was for the
benefit of poetry. In colonial grammars written by missionaries, however, the pièce de

4
See Alexander-Bakkerus, 2008: 219-220.
résistance consisted of a Christian doctrine or parts from the Christian doctrine. The
fact is, the grammars were written for the benefit of the church, and they could be
considered as un instrumento de la evangelización ‘un instrument of evangelisation’
(Zimmermann 1977: 15). Since the missionaries wrote the grammars to transmit their
faith, they often used words and a phrases from the Bible and the Christian doctrine to
exemplify a linguistic phenomenon. Therefore, their grammars, besides including a
Christian doctrine or parts of it, are full of biblical verses and doctrinal phrases, and of
concepts referring to the catholic faith.

3. Ms. Add. 25,323

The additional manuscript 25,323 has 69 pages (folio 1 recto - 35 recto). It comprises a
trilingual Spanish-Quechua-Jebero vocabulary and notes that precede (folio 1 recto - 2
verso) and follow (folio 35 recto) the vocabulary. The notes concern, amongst other
things, the pronunciation of problematic Jebero sounds. These sounds are troublesome,
because they do not occur in Spanish or have no phonemic value in Spanish, so that
they cannot be symbolised by means of a letter of the Spanish alphabet. The
lexicographer then uses German words to describe these problematic sounds. He refers
for instance to the German words Mörser ‘mortar’ and Schreibpapier ‘writing paper’ to
explain that the Jebero sound system has a front mid vowel [ɶ] and a palatal fricative
[ʃ], and he uses the German grapheme ö and the German trigraph sch, respectively, to
represent these sounds that sound so strange to a speaker of Spanish. The fact that the
author knows German also makes it likely that the manuscripts were written by Samuel
Fritz, who was born in Bohemia and knew German.
The dictionary does not only contain ca. three thousand words or entrees (see
also section 1), it also contains many sentences in which concepts are explained and are
used in context.
4. Ms. Add. 25,324

The Ms. Add. 25,324 counts 29 folios. It comprises a part of a Doctrina Christiana
‘Christian doctrine’ and a grammar of Jebero, Gramatica dela Lengua Lengua Xebera
(henceforth GLX). The Christian doctrine, as contained in the manuscript (folio 1 recto
– 18 verso), is treated in section 5. In this section we pay attention to the GLX.
The grammar (folio 19 recto –29 verso) can be divided into two segments. In the
first segment, folio 19 recto-24 verso, the different parts of the sentence are treated. The
second segment, folio 25 recto-29 verso, is devoted to the conjugation of the verb.
Segment 1 has the following contents: Del nombre ‘About the noun’, Del plural
‘About the plural’, Del substantivo y adjectivo ‘About the substantive and adjective’,
Delos grados de comparación ‘About the degrees of comparison’, Delos numerales
‘About the numerals’, De los pronombres ‘About the pronouns’, Delos relativos ‘About
the relative pronouns’, Delas preposiciones ò postposiciones ‘About the prepositions or
postpositions’, Delos adverbios ‘About the adverbs’, Delas conjunciones ‘About the
conjunctions’, Delas ynterjecciones ‘About the interjections’.
The GLX thus seems to divide the sentence into ten parts, instead of into eight parts,
as was customary. Nine sentence parts are discussed in the first segment: nouns/
substantives (+ plural), adjectives (+ degrees of comparison), numerals, pronouns,
relative pronouns, prepositions/ postpositions, adverbs, conjunctions, interjections; and
one sentence part, the verb, the most important part of the sentence, is discussed in the
last segment. However, a closer look at the data reveals that the grammarian also pays
attention to the verb in the first segment. In the section about the plurals, for instance,
the author also discusses verbal plurality, and what he classifies as substantives and
adjectives actually are nominalised verb forms. We thus may introduce the following
rearrangement in the first segment: nouns, verbs, adjectives, numerals, pronouns,
relative pronouns, prepositions/postpositions, adverbs, conjunctions, interjections. In
addition, when we range the numerals under the class of the nouns and the relative
pronouns under that of the pronouns, a classical division into eight parts emerges: nouns
(+ numerals), verbs, adjectives, (relative) pronouns, prepositions + postpositions,
adverbs, conjunctions, interjections.
Interestingly, the author traditionally analyses the declinable, significant parts of
the sentence (noun, verb, adjective, pronoun) first, and the non-declinable, co-
significant ones (prepositions/ postpositions, adverbs, conjunctions, interjections)
afterwards, so that the former neatly precede the latter in his arrangement. The author,
by separating both groups, thus makes a distinction between the significant and the co-
significant parts.
So, we may consider the first segment of the GLX as a traditional grammar, in
which the eight parts of sentence are treated, and the declinable parts are analysed
separately from the non-declinable parts. The second segment, the one with the
conjugation of the verb + the verbal paradigms, can then be considered as a practical
appendix to the first segment.

5. A Christian doctrine

As said, the manuscript Additional 25,324 also contains a part of a Christian doctrine. It
counts 36 pages: folio 1 recto – 18 verso, and it can be divided into three sections:
1. texts in Quechua + a translation into Jebero, folio 1 recto – 12 verso;
2. texts in Jebero, folio 13 recto – 14 recto;
3. texts in Jebero + a translation into Quechua, folio 15 recto – 18 verso.
Folio 14 verso is not listed in the sections mentioned above. The text on folio 14 verso
is in Spanish and it does not belong to the Christian doctrine. On the folio, the writer
addresses himself to his successors, advising them, amongst other things, to explain to
the Indians, over and over again, “lo que rezan, lo que niegan, lo que creen, lo que han
de hazer ò dexar” ‘what they are praying, what they are denying, what they are
believing, what they have to do or to omit’, so that are not “como papageyo” ‘like a
parrot’. The advices given by the writer and the fact that he addresses himself to his
fellow missionaries give evidence that he wrote the manuscript for the church, so that it
could be left for a successor when the priest was transferred to another mission post.
Section 1 begins with two loose folios: folio 1 recto and verso. The text of the
folios, a part of the daily catechism, is repeated later on, and we encounter it again on
folio 4 recto and verso. This means that the Christian doctrine actually begins on folio 2
recto, containing the Act of Contrition. The fact that the Christian doctrine part begins
with loose folios suggests that, originally, the folios were not put on order, that the
arrangement had not been determined yet, and that the book could have been arranged
otherwise. The incoherent arrangement makes it likely that the manuscript was not
meant to be published. The doctrine thus really begins with the Act of Contrition on
folio 2 recto. The Act is followed by a summary of the daily catechism and by
questions, answers and formulas concerning the sacraments of baptism, confession, and
matrimony.
Section 2 contains four prayers in Jebero: the Lord’s Prayer, Hail Mary, Creed, and
Salve. The prayers are followed by an enumeration of the Ten Commandments, the
Commandments of the Church, the Sacraments of the Church, and by a general
confession. The prayers date from the time of Father Lucas de la Cueva, a Jesuit priest,
who in 1638, together with another Jesuit priest, Father Caspar de Cuxia, established a
series of missions on the northern bank of the Marañón river.
Section 3 is a repetition of the preceding section. It contains the same prayers, the
enumeration of the commandments and the sacraments, and a general confession. The
difference between both sections is that the Jebero text in section 3 is accompanied by a
translation in Quechua. However, a far more interesting, difference between section 2
and section 3 is that their texts, although concerning the same subjects and having the
same standardised use of words, nevertheless represent different language strata. The
Jebero text in the former section dates from the 17th century, whereas the one in the
latter section dates from the end of the 18th century. The difference between both
language strata is discernible for instance in the text of the prayer Ave Maria ‘Hail
Mary’ below:
17th century version end 18th century version

mucha-i-q’n Maria muchaa-pa-ti-q’n Maria

honour-3sA.IMP-2sO Mary honour-DUR-3sA-2sA Mary
‘Hail Mary!’ (lit. ‘Let one honour ‘Hail Mary!’ (lit. ‘Mary, being
you Mary!’) honoured by one!’)

gracia-lecn motîo-la, gracia-neng-quec motîo-la,

grace-COM be.filled-2sS grace-3sPOS-INS be.filled-2sS
‘(You are) full of grace.’ ‘(You are) full of (his) grace.’

Dios queñma-lecn ñapa- Dios apu-mapoa queñma-lecn

God 2s-COM be- God father-1pPOS 2s-COM
li napa-li
3sS be-3sS
‘(God) [The Lord] is with thee’. ‘(God) [The Lord] (our father) is
with thee’.

cuap’r-losa-quegla queñma cuapr-losa-quegla quenma

woman-PL-SEP 2s woman-PL-SEP 2s
mointin-la mointin-la
be.blessed-2sS be.blessed-2sS
‘Blessed art thou amongst women’ ‘Blessed art thou amongst women’

du-palén-quegla huahua-paln du-palén-quecla oclinando-li

womb-2sPOS-SEP child-2sPOS womb-2sPOS-SEP be.born-3sS
Jesus mointi-n vila Jesus huahua-palen
Jesus be.blessed-3sS son Jesus child-2sPOS
mointi vila
3sS.be.blessed son.
‘[and] blessed is (the son) Jesus, ‘[and] blessed is (the son) Jesus,
(your child) [the fruit] of thy (your child, born from) [the fruit
womb’. of] thy womb’

Sa. Maria inilad, Sa. Maria virgin

St. Mary virgin St. Mary virgin
‘Holy (virgin) Mary,’ ‘Holy (virgin) Mary,’

Dios achin, Dios achin,

God mother-3sPOS God mother-3sPOS
‘mother of God,’ ‘mother of God,’

cuda hucha-pi-döc-maleg queñmoa hucha-van-losa-maleg

1pEXC sin-PP-PL-CAUS 1p sin-POSS-PL-CAUS
mucha-vana-o mucha-vana-o-döc
pray-BEN-1s pray-BEN-1sO-PL
‘pray for us sinners.’ ‘pray for us sinners.’

epa-quec timin-pa-ting-unda. epala queñmoa

now-LOC die-DUR-3sS-COR now 1p
‘Now and in the hour of our death’. timin-a-cova-su
(lit. ‘Now and when one is dying’.) die-NOM-1p-NOM
ugli-quec-unda.
day-LOC-COR
‘Now and in the hour of our death.’
(lit. ‘Now and on the day that we
are dying’.)

Amen ‘Amen’. Amen. ‘Amen’.

A comparison between both versions shows that the 17th century text is direct and
shorter than that of the 18th century, and that the usage of words in the former is
less elaborated than that in the later version. The reason why the newer version
appears to be more elaborated than the older one could be that Samuel Fritz, the
putative writer of the 18th century doctrine, could spent more time on the translation
of the doctrine than Lucas de la Cueva, or, that the 17th century Jebero informants
with whom Lucas de la Cueva worked in order to translate the prayer into their
language were less informed in this subject than the ones who worked with the
author of the manuscripts in the 18th century. Fact is that the usage of words in the
18th century prayer seems to be more developed than the usage in the 17th century
version. The extensions and semantic changes in the prayer Hail Mary of the 18th
century, vis-à-vis the text of the prayer of 17th century, are discussed in the analysis
below:

line 1:
in the 17th century text, the verb mucha(a)- ‘to honour’ is in the imperative mood.
It is an exhortation to honour Mary;
in the 18th century text, the verb mucha(a)- ‘to honour’ has a nominalised, durative
form functioning as a relative clause of which Mary is the head. It does no longer
incite mankind to honour Mary. The honouring of Mary is now a fact: Mary is
being honoured by men;

line 2:
in the 17th century version, the word ‘grace’ is not specified, so that it has a general
meaning. It could mean ‘benevolence’, ‘charm’, ‘honesty’, ‘mercy’, ‘virtuousness’,
etc.
in the18th century version, the word ‘grace’ is specified, and it is a very important
and powerful ‘grace’, because it is the mercy of God. By means of this mercy, God
absolves us of sin, so that we, free of sins, can ascend into heaven, instead of
descending sinful into the underworld. Since Mary is full of God’s grace, she is
almost equal to God, and she can be considered as his female counterpart. Now she
can also act as a direct intermediary between God and us. So, instead of addressing
us directly to God, we can address us to Mary and ask her, a, to forgive us our sins,
and, b, to plead God to do the same. A double plea will benefit our cause and God
will certainly hear the pleas when they come from his homologue, Mary;

line 3:
in the 18th century version, the name ‘God’ is followed by the ornamental epithet
‘our father’. The adjunction of the possessive pronoun ‘our’, indicates that the
father is not only the God of the Spaniards, but also the God of both Spaniards and
Indians. This reference to an all-embracing god is missing in the 17th century text;

line 5:
the specification oclinando-li ‘born’ in the 18th century version emphasises that
Jesus is born naturally, like any other child, i.e. that he is born as a human being
and that he is human. The specification refers to one of the Mysteries of the Roman
Catholic Church, namely, the nature of Jesus, i.e. that Jesus, being God’s son, but
born as a human being, is both divine and human;

line 6:
both texts, the 17th century version as well as the 18th century one, refer to another
Mystery of the church: the virginity of Mary.
Remarkably, in the older text the writer tries to translates the concept ‘virgin’
into Jebero, and he uses the word inilad, meaning ‘intact’, as the most appropriate
translation. In the 18th century, the loan word virgen ‘virgin’ seems to have become
so current, that the translator does not need to search for an equivalent in Jebero
and that he can employ the borrowing without any further explanation;

line 7:
here we have a case of narrowness on the one hand, against broadness on the other
hand: the 17th century author employs a first person exclusive marker cuda ‘we’,
i.e. ‘you and me’, excluding all other (third) persons, whereas the 18th century
writer uses a first person plural pronoun queñmoa ‘we’, including all the persons of
the community.
There is also an inconsistence in the 17th century version: the person who
benefits from the action is a first person plural ‘we’, but the benefactive person
marked on the verb is a first person singular ‘I’. Plurality is here indicated by
means of the personal pronoun cuda ‘1p exclusive’, preceding the verb form. The
18th century verb form has a regular first person plural benefactive marking on the
verb.

line 8:
the sentence ‘now and in the hour of our death’ is difficult to translate into Jebero,
because the notion of ‘hour’ does not exist in Jebero. Nevertheless, it is again the
18th century version that is more specific. The 17th century sentence epa-quec timin-
pa-ting-unda ‘now and when one is dying’ is rather vague. In this version, the
determination of time (‘hour’) is not translated. In the 18th century version, on the
other hand, the word ‘hour’ is translated as ugli ‘day’, a concept that is very well
known by the Jebero people.

6. Concluding remarks

In section 2 we have seen that most of the colonial grammars were written by
priests. They contacted the indigenous people with the purpose to spread the
Roman Catholic faith, and they learned and described the language of the
inhabitants in order to be able to proclaim the faith. We have also seen that such
grammars more or less share the same features:
- like the Greaco-Latin grammars, the colonial grammars traditionally start with
sounds, followed by words and sentences, and a number of them end with texts, i.e.
with a Christian doctrine or parts of the doctrine;
- they divide the sentence into eight parts: nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns,
prepositions and postpositions, adverbs, conjunctions, interjections;
- they make a distinction between the categorematic parts and the syncategorematic
parts;
- and, the most striking resemblance, the grammatical description is based on the
structure of Greek and Latin.
The Jebero grammar meets all the criteria mentioned above: (i), it is a language
description composed in colonial times for the benefit of the church; (ii), it
distinguishes eight parts of the sentence; (iii), it separates the categorematic parts
from the syncategorematic ones; (iv), the structure of the indigenous language is
modelled on that of Greek and Latin. The only difference between the Jebero
grammar and other colonial grammars is the arrangement of its contents. The
classical arrangement into sounds, words, sentences, and texts is not applicable to
the grammar as contained in the Ms. Add. 25,324. The manuscript does not begin
with sounds. It begins with texts, viz. parts of the Christian doctrine, instead of
ending with them, and a section about sounds is missing. However, in section 4 we
have seen that the manuscript has some loose folios, and that the order of the folios
seems to be undetermined. Therefore, it is not unthinkable that the book could have
been arranged otherwise and that the GLX preceded the doctrine texts, so that the
manuscript ended with texts.
The same counts with regard to the manuscript Add. 25,323, which, as we have
stated, contains a Spanish-Quechua-Xebero dictionary, and opens and closes with a
number of notes concerning the pronunciation of Jebero. The deletions and
insertions in both the notes and the dictionary show that the manuscript was in
‘status nascendi’. It is likely then that the author would have joined the notes about
phonetics together when making a fair copy of the draft, so that the manuscript
would start with a complete section about sounds.
 Furthermore, it is not unthinkable either that both manuscripts originally
consisted of a bunch of loose folios and occasional notes, which were written in
stages, and which, in due course, formed a whole. All the more so because the
priest wrote them for personal use or for general use of the church. In all
probability, the splitting up into two separate manuscripts took place afterwards,
when Samuel Fritz’ papers were sold and passed into the hands of the British
Library. So, when we join the manuscripts together again and rearrange the draft
contents, which were written gradually in the course of time, we may obtain a
traditional, classical ordering in sounds (the initial section in the additional
manuscript 25,323), words and sentences (the vocabulary in Ms. Add. 25,323 + the
grammar in Ms. Add. 25,324, the following manuscript), and texts (the Christian
doctrine in Ms. Add. 25,324).
In conclusion we can say that the additional manuscripts 25,323 and 25,324
from the British Library jointly constitute a characteristic colonial grammar, and
that it is a useful grammar. The grammar is worth a study, not only because it
concerns a moribund language of which little has been known, but also because it
has an exceptional Christian doctrine. The doctrine as contained in the additional
manuscript 25,324 is extraordinary, because it reveals two different language
layers: a Jebero stratum dating from the 17th century and a stratum from the 18th
century, as is shown in section 5.

References
Alexander-Bakkerus, Astrid. 2005. Eighteenth-Century Cholón. Utrecht: LOT.
Alexander-Bakkerus, Astrid. 2008. Two colonial grammars: Tradition and Innovation. In: Asian
Jounal of Latin American Studies, 21/1, 215-255..
Stolz, Thomas; Vossmann, Christina; Dewein Barbara (eds). 2011. Kolonialzeitliche
Sprachforschung. München: De Gruyter Oldenbourg.
Zimmermann, Klaus (ed). 1997. La descripción de las lenguas amerindias en la época colonial.
Frankfurt am Main/ Madrid: Vervuert/ Iberoamericana.

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