Vowel ù in the “Arte” (1765) of Andrés Febrés. Mapuche phonology in the missionary- colonial tradition of Chile

Abstract

Andrés Febrés and other missionary-colonial linguists faced the difficult task of representing the sounds of languages previously unknown for them in writing. In this article, the object of study is how the close central unrounded vowel /ɨ/ is written and pronounced in “El Arte de la lengua general del Reyno de Chile” of Andrés Febrés” (1765). The reason is that this sound of Mapudungun was a novelty for the Jesuit priest, and because its historiographical approach has been different from the vowels of Spanish, being known as “the sixth vowel of Mapudungun” up to the present. This work undertakes a comparative analysis with other grammars of the Chilean tradition from that period (Valdivia, 1606 and Havestadt, 1777). We conclude that the three authors had access to resources, descriptive methods, and common objectives for studying Mapudungun, but they differ in certain decisions like the organization of the grammar (phonic) topics, systematization and the presentation of the phonological system of Mapudungun, and how they addressed the /ɨ/.