Missionary Linguistics in New France: A Study of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Descriptions of American Indian Languages (Janua Linguarum. Maior) (Janua Linguarum. Series Maior)

## PREFACE The present work, originally a doctoral dissertation, is the product of a milieu and a moment. It reflects its writer's desire to bring into play his interest in seventeenthand eighteenth-century French culture, his awareness of the historical ties between France and America, and the modest skills he has acquired in studying structural linguistics. A debt of gratitude is owed to those members of the faculty of Indiana University who awakened this interest, fostered this awareness and helped to develop these skills, especially to Professors Thomas A. Sebeok and Sol Saporta (the latter now at the University of Washington) in linguistics, and to Professors Francis W. Gravit and Edward D. Seeber in seventeenth-and eighteenth-century French literature respectively. The Library Committee and the Agnes H. Anderson Fund of the University of Washington liberally supported the research and publication of this work. My broad coverage of early French missionary manuscripts would have been impossible without the generous help of the following librarians, curators and archivists who assisted me in search, identification and description, and gave permission to quote extensively from manuscripts entrusted to their care: Dr. Preface I. The Historical Continuum of Linguistic Science II. The Missionary Linguists of New France III. The Grammatical Training of the Jesuit Missionaries IV. Field Work of the Missionaries: Learning and Use of the Aboriginal Languages V. Indian Languages in the Printed Publications of the Missionaries VI. Ojibwa-Algonkin Phonology The Manuscripts The Dialectal Variations The Sounds and Their Representations VII. Morphology The Noun The Verb Composition and Derivation VIII. Conclusions Appendix A: “Principes de la langue Algonquine”, MS 12 Appendix B: Excerpts from Nicolas’ Algonkin Grammar, MS 14 Appendix C: Grammar Notes from “Préceptes, phrases et mots de la langue Algonquine outaouoise pour un missionaire nouveau”, by Louis André, MS 15 Appendix D: A Bibliographical List of Unpublished Manuscript Grammars, Dictionaries and Other Linguistica Written by French Missionaries of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries For the Algonquian and Iroquoian Languages Bibliography Index

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