Diego Collados Grammar of the Japanese Language | Page 3

of important philological problems as better dealt with
within the context of Rodriguez' grammars. This decision has its most
obvious consequences in the section on the arithmetic, where
innumerable data require exposition. However, since a basic purpose of
this translation is within the context of the history of descriptive
grammar, these tantalizing side roads have been left unexplored. It is,
nevertheless, hoped that this translation will serve as a convenient tool
for those wishing to make a more detailed investigation into the
philological questions raised by the text. But I must caution those who
would undertake such an inquiry that they had best begin with a careful
study of the works of Father Rodriguez.
With its limitations acknowledged, the Ars Grammaticae Iaponicae
Linguae remains a document worthy of our interest, and I offer this
translation in order that Collado's work may more easily find its proper
place in the history of descriptive grammar.
The Grammatical Framework
Collado perceived his task to be the presentation of a grammar of
Japanese which would have sufficient scope to equip those dedicated to
the propagation of the faith with a knowledge of the proper spoken
language of his time. While he concludes his grammar with a brief, and
rather presumptuous, statement concerning the written language, his
purpose is clearly to train his students in the fundamentals of colloquial
speech. His sensitivity to this point is demonstrated by his carefully
transforming those examples presented by Rodriguez in the written
language in the Arte into correct colloquial expressions in his own
grammar.
The description is, of course, prescriptive. But given its age and its
purpose this ought not to be construed in the contemporary, pejorative
{4} sense. Collado, as Rodriguez and indeed all the grammarians of the
period, felt obligated to train their students in those patterns of speech
which were appropriate to the most polite elements of society.
Particularly as they addressed themselves to missionaries, they wished
to warn them away from such illiteracies as might undermine their
capacities to propagate the faith.

The description further reflects the traditional process conceptualization
of language. This is particularly obvious in the treatment of the verb.
Thus:
Praesens subiunctiui fit ex praesenti indicatiui mutato u in quo finitur
in eba.... (The present subjunctive is formed from the present indicative
by changing the u in which it ends to eba....) [p. 23].
In general each of the verbal forms is conceived to be the result of a
specified alteration of a basic form. Likewise the nouns are treated
within the framework of the declension of cases.
The treatment of Japanese forms is based upon a semantic framework
within which the formal characteristics of the language are organized.
For example, given the construction aguru coto aró (p. 31) and its gloss
'Erit hoc quod ist offere: idest offeret (It will be that he is to offer, or he
will offer),' it is clear that the aguru coto is classified as an infinitive
because of its semantic equivalence to offere. The same is true of the
latter supine. If the form in Latin is closely associated with such
constructions as 'easy to,' or 'difficult to,' the semantically similar form
which appears as the element iomi in iominicui 'difficult to read,' must
be classed as the latter supine. Rodriguez in his Arte Breve of
1620--unknown to Collado--makes an attempt to classify the structural
units of Japanese along more formal lines; but in Collado's treatment
the semantic, and for him logical and true, classes established by the
formal structure of Latin constitute the theoretical framework through
which the Japanese language is to be described.
Collado makes reference to two specific sources of influence upon his
grammar. The first is included in the title to the first section of the
grammar, Antonius Nebrissensis. It is to this great Spanish humanist,
{5} better known as Antonio Lebrija (1444-1522), that Collado turns
for the model of his description.
An examination of Lebrija's grammar, the Introductiones Latinae
(Salamanca, 1481), shows that from the basic outline of his
presentation, to the organization of subsections and the selection of
terminology, there is little departure by Collado from his predecessor.

Even in such stylistic devices as introducing the interrogatives by
giving the form, following it with "to which one responds," and then
listing a number of characteristic answers; Collado is faithful to the
Introductiones.
But it is from his Jesuit colleague, Father João Rodriguez, that Collado
receives his most significant influence. There is no section of his
grammar that does not reflect Rodriguez' interpretation of the raw
linguistic data of Japanese. On the basis of the innumerable examples
taken from Rodriguez--most of the substantive sentences are directly
quoted from the Arte--as well as the parallel listing of forms and
identical descriptions of certain grammatical phenomena, it is clear that
the writing of