Domingo de los Santos's Vocabulario de la lengua Tagala (Sampaloc reprint, 1794)
The Franciscan dictionary of Tagalog, reprinted in 1794 at the convent press of Sampaloc by a lay brother of the order. Its opening notes are a field manual: four accents that change meaning, entries labelled for upland speech, particles that differ by the sex of the person addressed — and a warning that a Tagalog speaker will agree with whatever the priest says if he senses the priest wants agreement, so the questioner must never show displeasure.
Why this wins its question: Where this dictionary is mentioned at all it is as a bibliographic entry in the history of Philippine printing. Its prefatory notes are the interesting part and are quoted here from the 1794 sheets: a four-way accent contrast demonstrated on a single syllable string, accent shift used as a derivational rule, entries labelled for upland speech with the uplands mapped by name, and a fieldwork instruction that anticipates the modern warning about acquiescent informants — do not ask for bare roots, and expect "Si Padre, derecho está" from a man who can see the priest wants agreement. The same pages carry the compiler's judgement that Tagalog is short of words and the dedication's statement that the object is to make the naturales understand what suits them, so the descriptive achievement and its colonial setting are cited together.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The title page reads "VOCABULARIO DE LA LENGUA TAGALA PRIMERA, Y SEGUNDA PARTE. EN LA PRIMERA, SE PONE PRIMERO EL CASTELLANO, Y DESPUES EL TAGALO. Y EN LA SEGUNDA AL CONTRARIO, QUE SON LAS RAYZES SIMPLES CON SUS ACCENTOS", compiled "POR NUESTRO HERMANO FRAY DOMINGO DE LOS SANTOS EX-DIFINIDOR DE LA SANTA PROVINCIA DE SAN GREGORIO … EN ESTAS ISLAS FILIPINAS", and imprinted "REIMPRESO EN LA IMPRENTA DE N. S. DE LORETO DEL PUEBLO DE SAMPALOC: POR EL HERMANO BALTHASAR MARIANO DONADO FRANCISCANO; ANNO M.DCC.XC.IV." The volume was made in the islands, at a convent press in a town outside Manila, and names the lay brother who printed it.
This 1794 volume is a reprint and says so. The licence bound into it, issued at the Palacio Arzobispal de Manila on 7 December 1793, grants the Franciscan procurator general Fr. Miguel de la Madre de Dios "nuestra facultad, y licencia para que pueda reimprimir, y reimprima el Vocabulario de la lengua Tagala", on the ground that ministers should be provided with "los auxilios necesarios para el devido desempeño, en la administracion Espiritual". The volume nowhere states the date or place of the first printing, so nothing about the original imprint is asserted here.
The prefatory notes set out four accents, treating pitch, length and a held breath as meaning-bearing. Two are marked (pp) and (pc) for penultimate and final stress; a third and fourth "importa mucho no confundirlos con los dos passados", one pronounced so that the word "parezca va la palabra apresurada al final; y antes de pronunciar la ultima sylaba detener el aliento con sutileza, y luego proseguir", the other "con mucha sutileza, que parece separa cada Sylaba de por si". The demonstration is a minimal set on one syllable string: "Baga (pp) los Bofes. Baga (pp) Brasa. Baga (pc) Por ventura. Baga (pc) Postema."
Accent is treated as morphology, not only as pronunciation. The notes give rules by which the accent moves when a root is derived: an adjective built on a (pp) root takes (pc) — basag (pp) "quebrar cosa de loza", basag (pc) na pingan "plato quebrado"; adjectives compounded with ma- and in/hin "siempre es el Accento al contrario del que tiene la Rayz"; reciprocals, frequentatives and abstracts each shift in a stated direction — "Caniyogan (pp) Palmar, ò Palmares. Caniyogan (pc) Vn solo coco."
Entries carry a dialect label. A T after a verb "dize que aquel Verbo es de los Tingues, ò Montes", and the note defines the upland area geographically — "desde los Montes de San Pablo por Nacarlan hasta Calaylayan donde estava antiguamente la Cabezera de Tayabas, y de alli corre los Montes de Cabinti, hasta Vilingviling, que es por cima de Mabitac" — while warning that the marking is soft, since many upland words "los entienden en la Laguna, y en Manila".
The last of the numbered notes is an elicitation protocol, and it names the bias that the asymmetry between friar and informant creates. Never ask what a bare root means, it says, "por que muchas vezes no la entenderá el Indio"; build sentences with the verb instead and let the speaker say whether the word is used. Then: whoever wants to know "deve desnudarse de passion, y vestirse de paciencia quando pregunta, por que si el Indio conoce que el Padre sentirá que le digan, que no está derecho lo que habla, responderá á todo diziendo: Si Padre, derecho está. Aunque no sea assi." The book records both the method and the power relation that makes the method necessary.
The opening of letter A is a treatise on particles rather than a list of words, and it records pragmatics that a gloss-only dictionary would lose: the interjection ay "es para quando se habla con muger, y el Oy con Uaron"; a postposed E marks hesitation, used "quando uno se olvida de lo que intenta dezir, hasta que se le ocurre"; a preposed, briefly pronounced E marks self-correction — "nag camali pala aco, E … como decimos, que me erré"; and the plain genitive particle "no es de respeto", the respectful form being built with vica preceded by the appellative ang.
Two of the compiler's own decisions shape, and limit, the record he left. He states that he deliberately omitted the Spanish nouns that had come to supply what "no tienen los Naturales", "por no alargar el Vocabulario" — so the loanwords already in use are largely invisible in it. And he explains polysemy as deficiency: one Tagalog voice serves many Spanish ones "por la falta que la lengua Tagala tiene de Vocablos", a judgement about the language rather than an observation about derivation, and one his own accent and affix rules do not support.
The dedication states the purpose without ornament. Addressing the Province of San Gregorio as the teacher from whom he had "la enseñanza de los primeros Rudimentos que tuve de esta lengua", Santos writes that the province has always laboured to advance the language so that its sons "y demas Ministros Evangelicos den á entender á estos naturales lo que les conviene", and offers the work "para gloria, y honrra de Dios Nuestro Señor, y beneficio comun de las almas".