Presentation

The central topic of the VIII International Conference on Missionary Linguistics is

"Efforts towards the Normalization and Codification of Indo-American Languages During Colonial-Period Evangelization (16th - 18th Centuries)"

Description

The colonial grammars and lexicons of Amerindian languages produced by missionaries were intended to encompass both pedagogical and pastoral needs. As is widely known, linguistic description was not their main goal but rather considered an instrument for satisfying these other needs. In fact, pastoral and descriptive texts were an important component of the evangelization project. This implies a social and communicative dimension of the texts, which sought not only to codify the aboriginal languages in dictionaries and grammars, but also attempted to guarantee transmission of the Christian faith by means of religious texts such as doctrinal texts, prayer and sermon collections, etc.

Primarily during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we observe a rich period of grammatical and lexical production, which followed a codification model deeply rooted in the Latin tradition and required missionaries to meditate on the language variety that they were describing. The Latin framework conditioned their approach to understanding how these languages function. As a matter of fact, Santo Tomás (1560) stated this about the Quechua language, noting that it would be "encerrada debajo de las reglas y preceptos de la latina" (Prologo a Felipe II, Grammatica). These are the frameworks under which the missionaries examined languages typologically distinct from the Latin branch that they knew well, thus their activities alternated between applying traditional models and innovations necessary to describe and comprehend a new reality.

The missionaries also faced the task of adapting the Amerindian languages both to the expression of Christian truths and to the demands of a writing system. They discuss their orthographic and stylistic decisions many times in the paratexts of the pastoral writings; these choices had varying degrees of permanence.

Our conference welcomes the submission of topics in missionary linguistics that correspond to the general historic framework described above. As in previous years, we will also accept contributions related to other areas of missionary linguistics outside of those primarily considered for this event. For example, these contributions could examine other geographical areas (China, Japan, Africa, etc.) and/or subsequent time periods (up to the 19th century).

To see a list of suggested topics, click here.