Cover not available
Article published In:
Missionary Linguistics world-wide: Theory, practice and politics
[Historiographia Linguistica 42:2/3] 2015
► pp. 315–333

A Contrastive Study of 18th-Century Word-Lists

Translations into some fifty American and Philippine languages

| Universiteit van Amsterdam

At the end of the 18th century Russian Empress Catherine II sent a letter to Spanish King Charles III containing two lists. The first was a list of grammars and vocabularies of American and Asian languages, while the second was a lexical compilation to be translated into as many American and Philippine languages as possible by missionaries and Spanish civil servants. The so-called List no. 2, a matrix list of around 445 words, was translated into approximately fifty languages. These translations were sent to Spain but they never left the country. Although the matrix list in Spanish has already been published, a comparative study focusing on its different translations is still to be made. The compilation and translation of these lists – Pallas’ and List no. 2 – constitute one of the first large-scale projects in comparative linguistics. They were pioneers in their selection criteria, structure and methodology. This paper is a general overview of both the original matrix list (in Spanish) and the manuscripts containing the translations in more than fifty languages, which are to the present day preserved without being studied in the Archivo General de Indias in Seville and the Real Biblioteca in Madrid. In this paper, special attention will be paid to the compilation and translation strategies followed by the missionaries.

Published online: 21 January 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hl.42.2-3.04fer
References

A.Primary sources

Bacmeister, Hartwich Ludwig Christian
1773 Ob”javlenie i prošenie kasjiuščijasia do sobranija raznyx jazykov v primierax= Avertissement et invitation concernant un seul sujet à traduire en plûsiers langues = Idea et desiderata de colligendis linguarum speciminibus = Nachricht und Bitte wegen einer Sammlung von Sprachproben. Sankt Peterburg: pri Akademii Nauk.Google Scholar
Bertonio, Ludovico
1612 Vocabulario de la lengua aymara. Juli [Peru]: Francisco del Canto.Google Scholar
Gessner, Konrad
1555 Mithridates: De differentiis linguarum tum veterum tum quae hodie apud diversas nations in toto orbe terrarium in usu sunt. Tiguri [Zurich]: excudebat Froscheverus.Google Scholar
González Holguín, Diego
1608 Vocabvlario dela lengva general de todo el Perv llamada lengua Quichua o del Inca. Lima: Francisco del Canto.Google Scholar
Hervás y Panduro, Lorenzo
1784 Catalogo delle lingue e notizia della loro affinitá, e diversitá. Cesena: Giorgio Biasini.Google Scholar
1787 Saggio pratico delle lingue. Cesena: Giorgio Biasini.Google Scholar
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm
1768 Opera Omnia. Geneva: Fratres de Tournes.Google Scholar
Jankovič de Mirievo, Fëdor
1790–1791 Sravitel´nyj slovar” vsex jazykov narĕčij po azbučnomu porjadku raspoložennyj. 41 vols. San Peterburgo: s.iGoogle Scholar
Pallas, Peter Simon
ed. 1787–1789 Totius Orbis Vocabularia comparativa Augustissimae cura collecta. 21 vols. Petropoli: Typis I. C. Schnoor.Google Scholar
Scaliger, Josephus Justus
1610 Opuscula varia antehac non edita. Parisiis: apud Hadrianum Beys.Google Scholar

B.Secondary sources

Adelung, Friedrich von
1815 Catherins der Grossen Verdienste um die Vergleichende Sprachenkunde. St. Petersburg: Friedrich Drechsler. (Repr., with a new introduction and a bio-bibliographical index by Harald Haarmann. Hamburg: Helmut Buske 1976.)Google Scholar
Buenaventura de Carrocera, OFM cap. (alias Antonio Rabanal de la Hoz)
1981 Lingüística indígena y venezolana y los misioneros capuchinos. Caracas: Universidad Católica Andrés Bello.Google Scholar
Duponceau, Peter Stephen
1830 “The Translator’s preface”. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 31.65–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fernández Rodríguez, Rebeca
2014 “Traducción de términos religiosos en los vocabularios filipinos (1565–1800)”. Missionary Linguistics V / Lingüística Misionera V. Selected papers from the Seventh International Conference on Missionary Linguistics, Bremen 28 February–2 March 2012 ed. by Otto Zwartjes, Klaus Zimmermann & Martina Schrader-Kniffki (= Studies in the History of Language Sciences, 122), 273–294. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Gómez, Diego
2014 Colección Mutis. Bogotá: Instituto Colombiano de Antropología e Historia. [URL].
Hoenigswald, Henry M.
1990 “Descent, Perfection and the Comparative Method since Leibniz”. Leibniz, Humboldt, and the Origins of Comparativism: Proceedings of the international conference, Rome, 25–28 September 1986 ed. by Tullio De Mauro & Lia Formigari (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 49), 119–132. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klein, Harriet E. Manelis & Herbert S. Klein
1978 “The Russian Collection of Amerindian Languages in Spanish Archives”. International Journal of American Linguistics 44:2.137–144. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Larrucea de Tovar, Consuelo
1986 “José Celestino Mutis (1732–1808) and the Report on American Languages Ordered by Charles III of Spain for Catherine the Great of Russia”. The History of Linguistics in Spain ed. by Antonio Quilis & Hans-Josef Niederehe (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 34), 213–229. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lauch, Annelies
1969 Wissenschaft und kulturelle Beziehungen in der russischen Aufklärung: Zum Wirken H. L. Ch. Bacmeisters. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.Google Scholar
Metcalf, George J.
1974 “The Indo-European Hypothesis in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries”. Studies in the History of Linguistics. Traditions and paradigms ed. by Dell Hymes, 233–257. Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press (Repr. in Metcalf 2013, 33–56.)Google Scholar
2013 On Language Diversity and Relationships from Bibliander to Adelung. Ed. with and introduction by Toon Van Hal & Raf Van Rooy. (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 120.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Palacio Real
1928 Lenguas de América. (= Manuscritos de la Real Biblioteca 6.) Madrid: Real Biblioteca.Google Scholar
Pickering, John
1821 “On the Adoption of a Uniform Orthography for the Indian Languages of North America”. Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 4:2.319–357. Boston: The Academy.Google Scholar
Ritchie Key, Mary
1977 “ The Linguistic Discoveries of Catherine the Great ”. The Third LACUS Forum 1976 ed. by Robert J. di Pietri & Edward L. Blansitt Jr, 39–45. Columbia, S.C.: Hornbeam.Google Scholar
1980 Catherine the Great’s Linguistic Contribution. Carbondale, Ill.: Linguistic Research, Inc.Google Scholar
Robins, Robert H.
1990 “Leibniz and Wilhelm von Humboldt and the History of Comparative Linguistics”. Leibniz, Humboldt, and the Origins of Comparativism ed. by Tullio de Mauro & Lia Formigari, (= Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 49), 85–102. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roldán, Concha
2005 “Pluralité des langues et éthique universelle”. Leibniz et les puissances du langage ed. by Dominique Berlioz & Frédéric Nef, 325–339. Paris: Vrin.Google Scholar
Swadesh, Morris
1971 The Origin and Diversificatio of Language. Ed. by Joel F. Sherzer. Chicago: Aldine-Atherton.Google Scholar
Van Hal, Toon van
2015 “Friedrich Gedike on why and how to Compare the World’s Languages: A stepping stone between Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Wilhelm von Humboldt”. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft 25:1.53–76.Google Scholar
Vermeulen, Han F.
2013 “Peter Simon Pallas und die Ethnografie Sibiriens im 18. Jahrhundert”. Reisen an den Rand des Russischen Reiches: Die wissenschaftliche Erschließung der nordpazifischen Küstengebiete im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert ed. by Erich Kasten, 47–75. Fürstenberg & Havel: Kulturstiftung Sibirien.Google Scholar
Viñaza, Cipriano Muñoz y Manzano, Conde de la
1892 Bibliografía Española de Lenguas Indígenas de América. Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra. ([URL].)
Zarco, del Valle y Espinosa de los Monteros, Manuel Remón y López Valdemoro, Juan de Quesada
1914 Lenguas de América. Catálogo Bibliográfico de XXI manuscritos existentes en la Real Biblioteca. Madrid: Imprenta Clásica Española.Google Scholar
Zwartjes, Otto, Klaus Zimmermann & Martina Schrader-Kniffki
2014 Missionary Linguistics V / Lingüística Misionera V. Selected papers from the Seventh International Conference on Missionary Linguistics, Bremen 28 February–2 March 2012. (= Studies in the History of Language Sciences, 122). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Fernández Rodríguez, Rebeca
2023. Language, Science and Globalization in the Eighteenth Century**. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 46:1 ► pp. 38 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.