Observaciones gramaticales sobre la lengua Tiruray por un P. Misionero de la Compañía de Jesús. [Grammatical Observations on the Tiruray Language by a Missionary Father of the Society of Jesus]

Description

54 pp., original back cover intact; with l’École Supérieure de Théologie’ label and stamp ‘Seminarum Valsense, Bibliotheca Major’. EXTREMELY RARE AND ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND – LACKING IN MOST COLLECTIONS.

This work is the first grammar book of the Teduray language, attributed to the Mallorcan-born Jesuit missionary and philologist Father Guillermo Bennásar (1845–1902) and printed in Manila (S. Jacinto, 30. Binondo).
Bennásar spent sixteen years at the Tamontaka Mission in Mindanao ministering extensively to the highland Teduray people, mastering their Austronesian language—distinguished by unique features such as a six-vowel system—and compiling this authoritative text alongside his pioneer Tiruray-Spanish and Spanish-Tiruray dictionaries. Featuring a prologue by Father F.J. Simó, S.J., the work systematically details Teduray morphology and syntax and remained the definitive study on the language for generations. The publication is exceptionally rare, with approximately a dozen institutional holdings recorded and no traceable commercial sales records over the last decades.