Missionary Linguistics / Lingüística misionera: Selected Papers from the First International Conference on Missionary Linguistics, Oslo, 13-16 March 2003 (review)

This commendably prompt publication comprises seven articles in Spanish with English summary and five in English without Spanish summaries, grouped areally. The editors’ introduction (1–5) lists over a dozen recent volumes and collections on missionary linguistics, without noting that every one of them deals only with missionaries to America. Klaus Zimmermann, in ‘La construcción del objeto de la historiografía de la lingüística misionera’ (7–32), offers detailed prolegomena to the study of this field. Nicholas Ostler’s ‘The social roots of missionary linguistics’ (33–46) ranges the world to discover why, of the four waves of missionary activity in human history (Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, and Christian again), only the last resulted in the linguistic description of proselytes’ languages. His answer: only with printed books did the clergy become accustomed to learning a language from a book, and ‘the administrative mechanism of the religious orders … could see the benefit in investing in the publication of language text books for the future training needs of their ministry’ (45).

E. F. K. Koerner’s ‘Notes on missionary linguistics in North America’ (47–80) is, as the headnote admits, a disjointed selection from the history of Americanist linguistics; poorly proofread and not well edited, it deals with the French orders in Canada (including a three-page history of the Jesuit order) and the English Puritans farther south, then strays from the topic to talk about the linguistic work of Thomas Jefferson and his circle and their successors, leaving the impression that there was little evangelization of Native Americans beyond New England. He ignores nineteenth-century American missionary linguistics in the Near East and Oceania, claiming that ‘in terms of organized effort, … it began in earnest’ (72) with the Summer Institute of Linguistics in 1936. Hans-Josef Niederehe, in ‘Los misioneros españoles y el estudio de las lenguas mayas’ (81–91), lays the foundation for the study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century grammars of Huastec, Quiché, Cakchikel, and Yucatec. Julio Calvo Pérez, in ‘Las perífrasis verbales en la gramática quechua de Diego González Holguín (1607)’ (93–111), describes the tension between the Latin paradigmatic model available to González Holguín and the periphrastic construction of verbal voice in Quechua, concluding that he did quite well notwithstanding.

Rachael Gilmour’s ‘Colonization and linguistic representation: British Methodist grammarians’ approaches to Xhosa (1834–1850)’ (113–40) details the Methodist impulse to evangelization and historical, social, and political relations between the English and the Xhosa, followed by a discussion of the grammars of William B. Boyce and John W. Appleyard. Gilmour claims that they both follow ‘the Greco-Roman model’ (120) and describe the language in its own terms, Boyce having been the first to accurately describe the noun-class system of any Bantu language (he called it ‘euphonic or alliteral concord’ (127)). Gilmour does not say how they handled clicks. Toru Maruyama, in ‘Linguistic studies by Portuguese Jesuits in sixteenth and seventeenth century Japan’ (141–60), describes the thirty works produced between 1591 and 1620, contrasting the contemporaneous Jesuit output on languages of Africa, Brazil, and India, finding that the Japanese works are superior because interpreters did not exist.

Eun Mi Bae (writing from Oslo in Spanish on Japanese) considers the category of ‘pronominal adverb’ in a 1738 grammar (161–77). Emilio Ridruejo (179–200) and Joaquín García Medall (201–32) discuss Philippine topics in Spanish, respectively early work on Kapampangan (based on a prior study of Tagalog), and Visayan lexicography (1637). Mara Fuertes Gutiérrez (233–52) considers the methods...