Diego Collados Grammar of the Japanese Language | Page 3

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 Jo?o 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 the Ars Grammaticae Iaponicae Linguae consisted to no small degree of abridging the exhaustive material contained in Rodriguez' grammar and arranging it within the framework of Lebrija's Introductiones.
To say that Collado followed Lebrija in the general structure of his description is not to imply that he fell heir to