Final discoveries
Our last full week of fieldwork on Omagua has come to a close, and this week I begin tying up the remaining loose strings related to Omagua and preparing for my trip to San Regis. My colleague Clare Sandy left Iquitos this morning, and I am now on my own in Peru for the remaining seven weeks of my field season. Attempting to wind down all work on Omagua for the foreseeable future is an intimidating process, and our final week has been full of surprises, disappointments and anxieties, some of which I will summarize below.
We were disappointed this week to try unsuccessfully to work with the eldest speaker of Omagua, Lazarina Cabudivo Tuisima. Our working with her primarily relied on her willingness (which is nowhere to be found, to put it lightly), but also on her granddaughter Isabel's ability to take her for the day from her son's house to her own. Her son is an evangelical pastor, and his house is apparently often full with potential converts or members of his flock, and thus not a suitable place for work. We were told we may be asked to participate in church activities for our time at his house, a position we did not wish to find ourselves in given our lack of time and incipient relationship with his family. I was in communication with Isabel over four different days, on none of which was she able to retrieve her grandmother. On Friday I told Isabel that, due to lack of time, we would not try again to work with her grandmother. Despite this, I am going to propose to Amelia that we bypass working at Isabel's and visit Lazarina one upcoming afternoon. A fluent text of even fifteen to twenty minutes' duration could be invaluable for our current and future analysis of Omagua. Additionally, Amelia is eager for Lazarina to collaborate on the project, likely because it is clear to everyone that her age places her at a much higher level of fluency We know of one other speaker who is as old as or possible older than Lazarina, Paula Tuisima Huaní. However, she is in extreme bad health and unable to work.
Our work with Amelia last week was our most productive yet. We did significant work on pluractionality, affix ordering (see previous post), topic-focus and lexical elicitation, among other items. We are fortunate to have access to many nineteenth century word lists on Omagua, recorded by European explorers of the Amazon such as Carl von Martius and François de Castelnau. The former was a German trained as a botanist, who coined many of the scientific names for local Amazonian plants and animals during an expedition that ended in 1820. As such, a significant portion of his word list on Omagua deals with animal life, with glosses in the scientific name, making their exact identification possible (since, for the most part, the scientific names have not changed). Species names are often hard to recall in the unnatural context of lexical elicitation, and I was able to obtain around a dozen new species in this way. In some cases, the information in von Martius' list matched that of early lexical data we obtained from our first consultant Arnaldo Huanaquiri Tuisima, but which we had more or less disregarded because other speakers could not verify them, and because his control of the language ended being shown to be at a lower level than theirs. A favorite example is that of the Two-striped forest pitviper (Bothriopsis bilineata smaragdinus), Omagua aɾaɾa muy, a picture of which can be found here. Omagua aɾaɾa means 'macaw', and muy 'snake' -- the regional Spanish name is loro machaco, a more or less faithful translation of the Omagua. We had previously thought this term (and many others like it) to be calques from Spanish, but reliable lexical data from as early as the 1810's suggests that the direction of influence may have been the other way.
In grammatical news, just as we discovered tense in Omagua during the final week of last summer's fieldwork, the final week this year has led to the discovery three new morphemes, -pɨɾɨ, -ɨma and -suaɾa. -pɨɾɨ no longer appears to be productive in the language, but functions as a negator on a small set (three) of stative verbs, e.g., ipuʃi 'be heavy', ipuʃipɨɾɨ 'not be heavy' (i.e., 'light'). -ɨma is a productive privative suffix (i.e., 'lacking X' or 'not having X') that derives stative verbs from nouns, e.g., ta miɾikua 'my wife', ta miɾikuaɨma 'I don't have a wife'. This form is a particularly exciting discovery, as it is an additional form inherited from Tupí-Guaraní (i.e., PTG *-eʔɨm) -- one of the languages of this family was involved in the contact situation, an outcome of which was Omagua. Like the word lists, the initial examples I offered to our consultant Amelia were from a 1935 ethnolinguistic study on the Omagua and Kokama peoples by Lucas Espinosa, a Jesuit missionary priest. Similarly, -suaɾa, an adverbializer, also dates back to Old Omagua and TG (Omagua: curacasuaɾa ɾa umanu 'he died while acting as curaca'; PTG *-tswaɾ, an adverbial nominalizer).
Last week was also host to the celebrations surrounding Peruvian Independence Day (las fiestas patrias del veintiocho de julio), which was a particularly eventful one with the inauguration of the new president Ollanta Humala, after the five-year term of Álan García. Schools were closed for the week, and there were several parades hosted around Iquitos on the Plaza de Armas and the Plaza del 28 de Julio. Peru shows off a different strain of professions in their parades in comparison to the U.S., with (in addition to the traditional retinue of military personnel) teachers, professors, nurses and doctors marching. Members of Colombian and Ecuadorian military were also in attendance, presumably as a show of solidarity (Canadian and Mexican military marching down The Mall next Fourth of July anyone?). There has been a large turnover in our hotel recently, and there are a lot of new (quieter) faces around. La Casona is starting to feel a bit like home as the staff gets to know us more and more. Clare & I had a nicer dinner out last night at La Noche before her departure: patarashca de paiche (a type of fish wrapped in a banana leaf), cream of asparagus and sangria!
This week I must fully edit and print seven copies of our Omagua dictionary to distribute to our speakers and two offices in San Joaquín. In addition, I have to finish writing up two months' work as much as possible, and read all the current documentation on Yameo, Omurano and Kakinte. Yameo documentation consists of a word list by the German anthropologist Günter Tessmann, as well as a small grammatical description and word list by the same Espinosa (for Omurano see previous post). Documentation on Kakinte is the most sophisticated, but only consists of one morphology study (some cursory information on Kakinte can be found here.) I must additionally work with Amelia at least one more morning (likely two), possibly an afternoon with Lazarina, run errands to the Parroquia de San Juan Bautista (where I am searching for more baptismal records), and also make a morning trip to Nauta, the port from which I will be departing (about 1.5 hours away), to arrange boat travel up the Marañón. A similar tale of the kind of quest I will be embarking on can be found here on Lev's blog, Greater Blogazonia. I hope to update you all on that leg before I depart on Saturday!
We were disappointed this week to try unsuccessfully to work with the eldest speaker of Omagua, Lazarina Cabudivo Tuisima. Our working with her primarily relied on her willingness (which is nowhere to be found, to put it lightly), but also on her granddaughter Isabel's ability to take her for the day from her son's house to her own. Her son is an evangelical pastor, and his house is apparently often full with potential converts or members of his flock, and thus not a suitable place for work. We were told we may be asked to participate in church activities for our time at his house, a position we did not wish to find ourselves in given our lack of time and incipient relationship with his family. I was in communication with Isabel over four different days, on none of which was she able to retrieve her grandmother. On Friday I told Isabel that, due to lack of time, we would not try again to work with her grandmother. Despite this, I am going to propose to Amelia that we bypass working at Isabel's and visit Lazarina one upcoming afternoon. A fluent text of even fifteen to twenty minutes' duration could be invaluable for our current and future analysis of Omagua. Additionally, Amelia is eager for Lazarina to collaborate on the project, likely because it is clear to everyone that her age places her at a much higher level of fluency We know of one other speaker who is as old as or possible older than Lazarina, Paula Tuisima Huaní. However, she is in extreme bad health and unable to work.
Our work with Amelia last week was our most productive yet. We did significant work on pluractionality, affix ordering (see previous post), topic-focus and lexical elicitation, among other items. We are fortunate to have access to many nineteenth century word lists on Omagua, recorded by European explorers of the Amazon such as Carl von Martius and François de Castelnau. The former was a German trained as a botanist, who coined many of the scientific names for local Amazonian plants and animals during an expedition that ended in 1820. As such, a significant portion of his word list on Omagua deals with animal life, with glosses in the scientific name, making their exact identification possible (since, for the most part, the scientific names have not changed). Species names are often hard to recall in the unnatural context of lexical elicitation, and I was able to obtain around a dozen new species in this way. In some cases, the information in von Martius' list matched that of early lexical data we obtained from our first consultant Arnaldo Huanaquiri Tuisima, but which we had more or less disregarded because other speakers could not verify them, and because his control of the language ended being shown to be at a lower level than theirs. A favorite example is that of the Two-striped forest pitviper (Bothriopsis bilineata smaragdinus), Omagua aɾaɾa muy, a picture of which can be found here. Omagua aɾaɾa means 'macaw', and muy 'snake' -- the regional Spanish name is loro machaco, a more or less faithful translation of the Omagua. We had previously thought this term (and many others like it) to be calques from Spanish, but reliable lexical data from as early as the 1810's suggests that the direction of influence may have been the other way.
In grammatical news, just as we discovered tense in Omagua during the final week of last summer's fieldwork, the final week this year has led to the discovery three new morphemes, -pɨɾɨ, -ɨma and -suaɾa. -pɨɾɨ no longer appears to be productive in the language, but functions as a negator on a small set (three) of stative verbs, e.g., ipuʃi 'be heavy', ipuʃipɨɾɨ 'not be heavy' (i.e., 'light'). -ɨma is a productive privative suffix (i.e., 'lacking X' or 'not having X') that derives stative verbs from nouns, e.g., ta miɾikua 'my wife', ta miɾikuaɨma 'I don't have a wife'. This form is a particularly exciting discovery, as it is an additional form inherited from Tupí-Guaraní (i.e., PTG *-eʔɨm) -- one of the languages of this family was involved in the contact situation, an outcome of which was Omagua. Like the word lists, the initial examples I offered to our consultant Amelia were from a 1935 ethnolinguistic study on the Omagua and Kokama peoples by Lucas Espinosa, a Jesuit missionary priest. Similarly, -suaɾa, an adverbializer, also dates back to Old Omagua and TG (Omagua: curacasuaɾa ɾa umanu 'he died while acting as curaca'; PTG *-tswaɾ, an adverbial nominalizer).
Last week was also host to the celebrations surrounding Peruvian Independence Day (las fiestas patrias del veintiocho de julio), which was a particularly eventful one with the inauguration of the new president Ollanta Humala, after the five-year term of Álan García. Schools were closed for the week, and there were several parades hosted around Iquitos on the Plaza de Armas and the Plaza del 28 de Julio. Peru shows off a different strain of professions in their parades in comparison to the U.S., with (in addition to the traditional retinue of military personnel) teachers, professors, nurses and doctors marching. Members of Colombian and Ecuadorian military were also in attendance, presumably as a show of solidarity (Canadian and Mexican military marching down The Mall next Fourth of July anyone?). There has been a large turnover in our hotel recently, and there are a lot of new (quieter) faces around. La Casona is starting to feel a bit like home as the staff gets to know us more and more. Clare & I had a nicer dinner out last night at La Noche before her departure: patarashca de paiche (a type of fish wrapped in a banana leaf), cream of asparagus and sangria!
This week I must fully edit and print seven copies of our Omagua dictionary to distribute to our speakers and two offices in San Joaquín. In addition, I have to finish writing up two months' work as much as possible, and read all the current documentation on Yameo, Omurano and Kakinte. Yameo documentation consists of a word list by the German anthropologist Günter Tessmann, as well as a small grammatical description and word list by the same Espinosa (for Omurano see previous post). Documentation on Kakinte is the most sophisticated, but only consists of one morphology study (some cursory information on Kakinte can be found here.) I must additionally work with Amelia at least one more morning (likely two), possibly an afternoon with Lazarina, run errands to the Parroquia de San Juan Bautista (where I am searching for more baptismal records), and also make a morning trip to Nauta, the port from which I will be departing (about 1.5 hours away), to arrange boat travel up the Marañón. A similar tale of the kind of quest I will be embarking on can be found here on Lev's blog, Greater Blogazonia. I hope to update you all on that leg before I depart on Saturday!
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