The Typology of Tupi-Guarani as Reflected in the Grammars of Four Jesuit Missionaries

Anchieta (1595), Aragona (c.1625), Montoya (1640) and Restivo (1729)

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3955170
AutoresGeorg Bossong (University of Zurich, autor correspondente)
Ano2009
Volume36
Fascículo2-3
Páginas225-258
Data de publicação2009-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoHistoriographia Linguistica (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0302-5160 • E-ISSN: 1569-9781
EditoraJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/hl.36.2.04bos
OpenAlexW2055003926
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas10

Some fundamental typological peculiarities of Guarani, namely the inclusive-exclusive distinction, transnumerality, the nominal tense, the (non)-distinction of subjects and objects, and duality (active-stative alignment) are presented and analyzed from both a modern and a historical perspective: first, to better understand the features of Guarani; second, to illuminate the difficulties missionaries faced when trying to cope with language structures that drastically differed from their training in Latin grammar. Using the missionaries' grammars as first-hand testimony, the conclusion is reached that we have not significantly advanced beyond these works from the 17th and 18th centuries. Although none of the Jesuit padres arrived at a clear understanding of all the peculiarities of Tupi-Guarani that are dealt with in this paper, they made substantial contributions to describing the unusual features of this language family adequately, and thus went deliberately beyond the framework of Latin school grammar

Grammar · Humanities · Latin Americans · Linguistics · Perspective (graphical · Rule-based machine translation · Sociology · Typology · Anthropology · Computer Science · Historical Linguistics and Language Studies · History · History of Colonial Brazil · Linguistics and Language Studies · Media, Communication, and Education · Philosophy · Artificial Intelligence