Diego Collados Grammar of the Japanese Language | Page 5

Diego Collado
are in the form used by the text. Dashes indicate sequences which do not occur in the Christian material; while the forms in parentheses are sequences which do not occur in the text but have been reconstructed on the basis of the overall system from sequences attested to elsewhere. The forms ie, vo, v��, and v? have been placed in brackets to indicate that neither /e/, /o/, /oo/, or /au/ occur in the syllable initial position; and, where in the modern language they do, the text regularly spells that with an initial i or v. The forms in e? at the foot of the chart represent sequences that are phonetically identical to the forms above them, but which are transcribed differently to reflect morphological considerations; e.g., the form ague? from the stem ague. The phonetic values of /au/, /uu/, and /ou/ are [[IPA: Open-mid back rounded vowel]:], [u:], and [o:].
Two aspects of the usage of q should be noticed. First, as in the Arte, c is changed to q before o and u, when the sequence occurs at a morphological juncture; e.g., ioqu 'well,' and iq�� 'I shall go.' (This rule does not extend to a in such contexts; cf., iocatta 'was good.') Second, in contrast to the system used by Rodriguez, Collado does not feel compelled to follow q with u in all contexts. Thus what Rodriguez spells as queredomo Collado spells as qeredomo. Finally, the text records one usage of the letter h in the exclamation ha.
The Morphological System
Collado's treatment of the morphology contains one quite obvious difference from those of his predecessors: he isolates the particles of the language as separate elements of the structure. While his effort is more or less carelessly maintained by the type setter, his attempt to establish a division between the semantemes (shi) and the morphemes (ji) of Japanese by establishing formal distance between his verba and particula, reflects his consciousness that the morphological elements in Japanese are of a different order than those in Latin. At times, such as when he describes the preterit subjunctive as agueta raba, his divisions fly in the face of derivational history. But he can claim a reasonable justification for his decision by citing Rodriguez' rule for the formation of this form; "add raba to the preterit of the verb" (Arte, 18v). Perhaps it is a prejudice founded upon familiarity with {9} contemporary romanizations, but I cannot help but consider this attempt to give greater independence to the particles as an improvement in the representation of the morphological system.
In all other significant facets of the morphology Collado follows the principles established by Rodriguez with the one exception that in the over-all systematization of the verbal formation and conjugation he follows the classifications established in Lebrija's Introductiones rather than those which Rodriguez inherited from the Institutiones of Alverez. The most significant difference between the two systems is the use by Lebrija of the term subjunctive in his description of the moods where Rodriguez gives independent status to the conjunctive, conditional, concessive, and potential. As we shall see, after presenting the conjugational system of the verb within the framework of Lebrija, Collado breaks the expected sequence of his description of the verb to interject a section on conditional constructions and another on those of the potential.
In the treatment of the tenses Collado breaks with Rodriguez in not attempting to establish an imperfect for Japanese, but he does follow him in the overall classification of the conjugations. Thus:[9]
1st Conjugation verbs ending in e, gi, and e.g., ague, uru ji (xi and maraxi) 2nd Conjugation verbs ending in i e.g., iomi, u 3rd Conjugation verbs ending in ai, oi, and e.g., narai, �� ui
To the description of this general system Collado adds the treatment of the substantive verbs. This section in many respects is the weakest in his grammar with a portion of his description lost in composing the final text.
Since Collado does not, as Rodriguez, present the conjugations in paradigmatic form, I have extracted from his presentation the most representative forms of the verb ague, uru for each of the categories of the system, and presented them in Chart 2 for reference.
CHART 2
THE CONJUGATIONAL SYSTEM
Affirmative Negative
INDICATIVE MOOD
Present aguru aguenu Perfect agueta aguenanda {10} Pluperfect aguete atta aguenande atta Future ague?zu aguru mai Future perfect aguete ar[vo]zu ----
IMPERATIVE MOOD
Present ague io aguru na Future ague?zu aguru mai
OPTATIVE MOOD
Present avare ague io caxi avare aguru na caxi Preterit ague?zu mono vo aguru mai mono vo Future avare ague io caxi avare aguru na caxi
SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD
Present agureba agueneba Perfect agueta reba aguenanda reba Pluperfect aguete atta reba ---- Future ague? toqi aguru mai qereba
PERMISSIVE SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD
Present agueredomo aguenedomo Preterit agueta redomo aguenanda redomo Future ague?zu redomo aguru mai qeredomo
INFINITIVE
Present aguru coto aguenu coto Preterit agueta coto aguenanda coto Future ague? coto aguru
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