From bortiz at mail.earthlink.net Tue Dec 26 22:14:00 2000 From: bortiz at mail.earthlink.net (Bernard Ortiz de Montellano) Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 16:14:00 -0600 Subject: Bierhorst Bashing -- was Looking for a poem... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >Nocnihuan, > As Fritz has pointed out, John Bierhorst is a member of a very small >set of scholars who hold his point of view about a Nahua Ghost Dance. I >don't know enough to comment on the merits of his point of view or that of >his critics, but I am continually distressed at one of the biggest results >of the issue -- it distracts attention from **all the rest of the value** >in his two-volume work on the Cantares. > I just consulted a Nahuatl scholar (whose opinion I respect and >sometimes agree with) <8-< and my question "Do you ever check Bierhorst?" >elicited the answer "Of course!!" Further, "Does it ever help you?" got >the same answer. Since I agreed with the reaction, naturally, my respect >for my colleague grew a notch. > My humble opinion is that the community of Nahuatl scholars would gain >a lot by getting past the knee-jerk reaction to John's work on the basis >of one point of disagreement and take an extended look at the valuable >resource that he provided us with through what was a long period of >careful labor (preparation of the text and making that humongous >vocabulary!). Yotlan. > >Saludos, > >Joe > > >> >> Bierhorst holds that the poems in the Cantares Mexicanos were part of a >> Nahua "Ghost Dance" ritual destined to revivify the essence of fallen >> warriors in a crypto-rebellion against the Spanish. No other scholar who > > has studied the song cycle has been able to discover such a theme. > > Joe it is not just the Ghost Dance idea but the distortions in the Nahuatl he proposes to fit the Procrustean bed. For example, translating words like xochitl and chalchihuitl as "returning souls". It the Aztecs had really believed that this was so these worlds would have plural endings as in citlalme. Have you seen my review in *Tlalocan*? From heatherhess at hotmail.com Fri Dec 1 01:44:06 2000 From: heatherhess at hotmail.com (Heather Hess) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 20:44:06 -0500 Subject: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" Message-ID: Hi! I actually remember seeing a reference of Venus in Nahuatl and can't remember where but this sounds familiar! Yolohtzin >From: David Gloster >Reply-To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu >To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu >Subject: Re: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" >Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 22:33:16 +0100 > >As no one else has yet come forth with an answer, here's my try: > >I seem to remember that Venus had two names in Nahuatl depending on whether >it was >visible as the morning star or the evening star. I think the morning name >was >TLAHUIZCALPANTEUCTLI but I've no way of checking it. Maybe someone with a >dictionary at >hand could look it up and confirm. I'm afraid I can't help you with the >evening version, >though. > >Best of luck >David Gloster > > >Heather Hess wrote: > > > Frances and Listeros: Could you please give the Nahuatl (and spanish) >word > > for Venus. Thanks! Yolohtzin > > _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From heatherhess at hotmail.com Fri Dec 1 02:29:05 2000 From: heatherhess at hotmail.com (Heather Hess) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 21:29:05 -0500 Subject: Tezcatlipoca Message-ID: Does anyone know which foot of Tezcatlipoca's was replaced with a Smoking Mirror? Yolohtzin _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From chapulin_cd at yahoo.com Fri Dec 1 03:36:33 2000 From: chapulin_cd at yahoo.com (Cristobal Aguilar) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 19:36:33 -0800 Subject: Query Message-ID: I need a word and phrase translated into nahuatl. I would greatly appreciate the following words and/or phrases translated... fireman he handles fire he who handles fire he carries fire he waves fire he is waving fire he has fire In particular, the word fireman is of greatest need. I don't have a complete understanding of the nahuatl language so I did not know how to phrase the word and phrases in English. Again, I greatly appreciate any help with this matter. CD chapulin_cd at yahoo.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. http://shopping.yahoo.com/ From mmontcha at oregonvos.net Fri Dec 1 03:54:34 2000 From: mmontcha at oregonvos.net (Matthew Montchalin) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 19:54:34 -0800 Subject: Query In-Reply-To: <20001201033633.4629.qmail@web1701.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, Cristobal Aguilar wrote: |I need a word and phrase translated into nahuatl. I |would greatly appreciate the following words and/or |phrases translated... | | fireman | he handles fire | he who handles fire | he carries fire | he waves fire | he is waving fire | he has fire | |In particular, the word fireman is of greatest need. I could use these terms also. Also, one who is a burn victim or fire victim. What would that be in Nahuatl? Does it make a difference where the person has been burned? For instance, if one's hands are burned, or if one has been burned all over? |I don't have a complete understanding of the nahuatl |language so I did not know how to phrase the word and |phrases in English. Again, I greatly appreciate any |help with this matter. From micc at home.com Fri Dec 1 04:57:45 2000 From: micc at home.com (mario) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 20:57:45 -0800 Subject: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" Message-ID: in the mesoamerican belief system of my ancestors, Venus had two names reflecting its two aspects. In the Nahuatl speaking world, Venus as the morning star was known as TLAHUIZCALPANTEKWTLI": I believe from Tlahuiz(tli) "light, dawn" + cal(li) house + Pan(tli) wall + tekwtli (more commonly written as tecutli or teuctli, both of which do an injustice to the "kw" sound, which is pronounced at the same time) "The lord of the house of the wall of light" or the lord of the house of dawn. Venus as the evening star was known as "Xolotl" which is either "young page" or "Monster" I think that the difference in meaning is probably due to vowel length difference. I lent my trusty Analytical dictionary of Nahuatl by Frances Karttunen, to my son at UCLA, so I am lost as to the finer points of these definitions. I am sure someone more enlightened than myself can fill in the correct facts to this humble offering. Good luck to you!!! mario e. aguilar www.aguila.blanca.com Heather Hess wrote: > Hi! I actually remember seeing a reference of Venus in Nahuatl and can't > remember where but this sounds familiar! Yolohtzin > > >From: David Gloster > >Reply-To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu > >To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu > >Subject: Re: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" > >Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 22:33:16 +0100 > > > >As no one else has yet come forth with an answer, here's my try: > > > >I seem to remember that Venus had two names in Nahuatl depending on whether > >it was > >visible as the morning star or the evening star. I think the morning name > >was > >TLAHUIZCALPANTEUCTLI but I've no way of checking it. Maybe someone with a > >dictionary at > >hand could look it up and confirm. I'm afraid I can't help you with the > >evening version, > >though. > > > >Best of luck > >David Gloster > > > > > >Heather Hess wrote: > > > > > Frances and Listeros: Could you please give the Nahuatl (and spanish) > >word > > > for Venus. Thanks! Yolohtzin > > > > > > _____________________________________________________________________________________ > Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From micc at home.com Fri Dec 1 05:00:10 2000 From: micc at home.com (mario) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 21:00:10 -0800 Subject: Tezcatlipoca Message-ID: Off the top of my head, as a wild guess, I would venture to say the left foot was, since the left (as in latin Siniestre???) was held as the side of magic, sorcery and "the unknown". i.e. huitzilopochtli............... But then again, I could be off on weak footing....... mario Heather Hess wrote: > Does anyone know which foot of Tezcatlipoca's was replaced with a Smoking > Mirror? > > Yolohtzin > > _____________________________________________________________________________________ > Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Fri Dec 1 15:20:01 2000 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 10:20:01 -0500 Subject: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" In-Reply-To: <3A272FC9.C97DF4B6@home.com> Message-ID: This sounds good. Was morning Venus also referred as quelzalcoatl? On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, mario wrote: > in the mesoamerican belief system of my ancestors, Venus had two names reflecting its two > aspects. > > In the Nahuatl speaking world, Venus as the morning star was known as > TLAHUIZCALPANTEKWTLI": I believe from Tlahuiz(tli) "light, dawn" + cal(li) house + > Pan(tli) wall + tekwtli (more commonly written as tecutli or teuctli, both of which do > an injustice to the "kw" sound, which is pronounced at the same time) "The lord of the > house of the wall of light" or the lord of the house of dawn. > > Venus as the evening star was known as "Xolotl" which is either "young page" or "Monster" > > I think that the difference in meaning is probably due to vowel length difference. > > I lent my trusty Analytical dictionary of Nahuatl by Frances Karttunen, to my son at > UCLA, so I am lost as to the finer points of these definitions. > > I am sure someone more enlightened than myself can fill in the correct facts to this > humble > offering. > > Good luck to you!!! > > mario e. aguilar > www.aguila.blanca.com > > Heather Hess wrote: > > > Hi! I actually remember seeing a reference of Venus in Nahuatl and can't > > remember where but this sounds familiar! Yolohtzin > > > > >From: David Gloster > > >Reply-To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu > > >To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu > > >Subject: Re: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" > > >Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 22:33:16 +0100 > > > > > >As no one else has yet come forth with an answer, here's my try: > > > > > >I seem to remember that Venus had two names in Nahuatl depending on whether > > >it was > > >visible as the morning star or the evening star. I think the morning name > > >was > > >TLAHUIZCALPANTEUCTLI but I've no way of checking it. Maybe someone with a > > >dictionary at > > >hand could look it up and confirm. I'm afraid I can't help you with the > > >evening version, > > >though. > > > > > >Best of luck > > >David Gloster > > > > > > > > >Heather Hess wrote: > > > > > > > Frances and Listeros: Could you please give the Nahuatl (and spanish) > > >word > > > > for Venus. Thanks! Yolohtzin > > > > > > > > > > _____________________________________________________________________________________ > > Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com > > Michael McCafferty 307 Memorial Hall Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405 mmccaffe at indiana.edu ******************************************************************************* "So, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" -Chico Marx ******************************************************************************* From micc at home.com Fri Dec 1 15:21:50 2000 From: micc at home.com (mario) Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 07:21:50 -0800 Subject: Calendar Message-ID: The Azteca calendar is not a calendar a all. It is a sun stone that relates the history of the past four suns, and the cycle of the current fifth sun. as such it never ends. Matthew Vogel wrote: > Just a naive question... I heard that the aztec calendar had a definite > end somewhere in the near future. Is this true?, and if so when would that > be? From micc at home.com Fri Dec 1 15:45:40 2000 From: micc at home.com (mario) Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 07:45:40 -0800 Subject: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" Message-ID: TLAHUIZCALPANTEKWTLI was seen as an "aspect" or version of Quetzalcoatl. I understand that there is strong evidence for Venus as the morning star, being a war instigating symbol amongst the Teotihuacano people, and amongst the Maya. Someone else can probably give you better info in that regard. mario www.aguila.blanca.com Michael Mccafferty wrote: > This sounds good. Was morning Venus also referred as quelzalcoatl? > > On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, mario wrote: > > > in the mesoamerican belief system of my ancestors, Venus had two names reflecting its two > > aspects. > > > > In the Nahuatl speaking world, Venus as the morning star was known as > > TLAHUIZCALPANTEKWTLI": I believe from Tlahuiz(tli) "light, dawn" + cal(li) house + > > Pan(tli) wall + tekwtli (more commonly written as tecutli or teuctli, both of which do > > an injustice to the "kw" sound, which is pronounced at the same time) "The lord of the > > house of the wall of light" or the lord of the house of dawn. > > > > Venus as the evening star was known as "Xolotl" which is either "young page" or "Monster" > > > > I think that the difference in meaning is probably due to vowel length difference. > > > > I lent my trusty Analytical dictionary of Nahuatl by Frances Karttunen, to my son at > > UCLA, so I am lost as to the finer points of these definitions. > > > > I am sure someone more enlightened than myself can fill in the correct facts to this > > humble > > offering. > > > > Good luck to you!!! > > > > mario e. aguilar > > www.aguila.blanca.com > > > > Heather Hess wrote: > > > > > Hi! I actually remember seeing a reference of Venus in Nahuatl and can't > > > remember where but this sounds familiar! Yolohtzin > > > > > > >From: David Gloster > > > >Reply-To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu > > > >To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu > > > >Subject: Re: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" > > > >Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 22:33:16 +0100 > > > > > > > >As no one else has yet come forth with an answer, here's my try: > > > > > > > >I seem to remember that Venus had two names in Nahuatl depending on whether > > > >it was > > > >visible as the morning star or the evening star. I think the morning name > > > >was > > > >TLAHUIZCALPANTEUCTLI but I've no way of checking it. Maybe someone with a > > > >dictionary at > > > >hand could look it up and confirm. I'm afraid I can't help you with the > > > >evening version, > > > >though. > > > > > > > >Best of luck > > > >David Gloster > > > > > > > > > > > >Heather Hess wrote: > > > > > > > > > Frances and Listeros: Could you please give the Nahuatl (and spanish) > > > >word > > > > > for Venus. Thanks! Yolohtzin > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _____________________________________________________________________________________ > > > Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com > > > > > > Michael McCafferty > 307 Memorial Hall > Indiana University > Bloomington, Indiana > 47405 > mmccaffe at indiana.edu > > ******************************************************************************* > "So, who you gonna believe, > me or your own eyes?" > > -Chico Marx > > ******************************************************************************* From clayton at indiana.edu Fri Dec 1 15:45:47 2000 From: clayton at indiana.edu (mary l. clayton) Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 10:45:47 -0500 Subject: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" In-Reply-To: <3A272FC9.C97DF4B6@home.com> Message-ID: Mario, I think more than likely, the 'PAN' part is the postposition 'pan' meaning "place", giving the whole "word" the meaning 'dawn-house-place-lord'. And Joe campbell (husband), who is looking over my shoulder as I write, adds that without the 'tekwtli' the word is 'tlahuizcalpan', rather than 'tlahuizcalpantli'. Mary On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, mario wrote: > In the Nahuatl speaking world, Venus as the morning star was known as > TLAHUIZCALPANTEKWTLI": I believe from Tlahuiz(tli) "light, dawn" + > cal(li) house + Pan(tli) wall + tekwtli "The lord of the house of the wall of light" or the lord of the house of dawn. From cberry at cinenet.net Fri Dec 1 18:18:59 2000 From: cberry at cinenet.net (Craig Berry) Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 10:18:59 -0800 Subject: Calendar In-Reply-To: <3A27C20E.6484CBB5@home.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 1 Dec 2000, mario wrote: > The Azteca calendar is not a calendar a all. > It is a sun stone that relates the history of the past four suns, and the > cycle of the current fifth sun. The sunstone is not a calendar per se, but it does display the primary features of the Nahua calendar, including the day signs and the five suns. > as such it never ends. Note that the poster's question was about the calendar, not the sunstone. -- | Craig Berry - http://www.cinenet.net/~cberry/ --*-- "There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter | of fact, it's all dark." - Pink Floyd From micc at home.com Sat Dec 2 02:58:39 2000 From: micc at home.com (mario) Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 18:58:39 -0800 Subject: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" Message-ID: Dear Mary, Thanks for the clarification. I also wondered about the "pan" part. "mary l. clayton" wrote: > Mario, > I think more than likely, the 'PAN' part is the postposition 'pan' > meaning "place", giving the whole "word" the meaning > 'dawn-house-place-lord'. > And Joe campbell (husband), who is looking over my shoulder as I > write, adds that without the 'tekwtli' the word is 'tlahuizcalpan', rather > than 'tlahuizcalpantli'. > > Mary > > On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, mario wrote: > > > In the Nahuatl speaking world, Venus as the morning star was known as > > TLAHUIZCALPANTEKWTLI": I believe from Tlahuiz(tli) "light, dawn" + > > cal(li) house + Pan(tli) wall + tekwtli > > "The lord of the house of the wall of light" or the lord of the house of > dawn. From Rmedinagarcia at aol.com Wed Dec 6 19:26:44 2000 From: Rmedinagarcia at aol.com (Rmedinagarcia at aol.com) Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 14:26:44 EST Subject: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" Message-ID: I read about the relationship between Venus and warfare in Warlords of the Ancient Americas by Peter G. Tsouras. The author writes that Teotihuacan created a military empire in part dictated by 'Star Wars,' a ritualized form of warfare in part dictated by Venus. Below is the footnote for the most relevant proponent of a similar view. I hope it helps. John B. Carlson, "Venus-Regulated Warfare and Ritual Sacrifice in Mesoamerica" ed. by Clive L. N. Ruggles and Nocholas J. Saunders Astronomies and Cultures (1993). From heatherhess at hotmail.com Thu Dec 7 05:29:32 2000 From: heatherhess at hotmail.com (Heather Hess) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 00:29:32 -0500 Subject: Avena Sativa in Nahuatl? Message-ID: Does anyone know the Nahuatl name for Oatstraw (eng.) Avena Sativa (spanish)? Thanks! And thanks for the info regarding Tezcatlipoca's 'left' foot. My computer is being moved so I will get back to the Tezcatlipoca messages on the weekend. Yolohtzin _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From schwallr at selway.umt.edu Thu Dec 7 15:34:17 2000 From: schwallr at selway.umt.edu (John F. Schwaller) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 08:34:17 -0700 Subject: forwarded message Message-ID: >To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu >From: Bernard Ortiz de Montellano >Subject: Re: Avena Sativa in Nahuatl? >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" > > > >Does anyone know the Nahuatl name for Oatstraw (eng.) Avena Sativa > >(spanish)? Thanks! > > > >Oats = avena (Sp) =Avena sativa is an Old World domesticate not a New >World plant > > > > > >And thanks for the info regarding Tezcatlipoca's 'left' foot. > > > >The missing foot is the right foot, at least in the Borgia group codices > > > > My computer is being moved so I will get back to the Tezcatlipoca > >messages on the weekend. > > > >Yolohtzin > > John Frederick Schwaller schwallr at selway.umt.edu Associate Provost 406-243-4722 The University of Montana FAX 406-243-5937 http://www.umt.edu/provost/ From delia at ucla.edu Thu Dec 7 21:43:20 2000 From: delia at ucla.edu (Delia Cosentino) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 16:43:20 -0500 Subject: Nazareo Message-ID: Does anyone know offhand if Xaltocan cacique Pablo Nazareo's Latin letter to the Spanish Crown has been translated and/or analyzed? Any information would be appreciated! Thanks, Delia A. Cosentino UCLA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Huaxyacac at aol.com Thu Dec 7 22:25:50 2000 From: Huaxyacac at aol.com (Huaxyacac at aol.com) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 17:25:50 EST Subject: Nazareo Message-ID: Delia, There are actually several letters. Somewhere I've got a Mexican edition of them with translation, and if no one else comes up with it, I'll dig up the title. Alec Christensen About Anthropology Guide http://anthropology.about.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dcwright at prodigy.net.mx Thu Dec 7 22:47:15 2000 From: dcwright at prodigy.net.mx (David Wright) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 16:47:15 -0600 Subject: Nazareo Message-ID: Delia: Agustín Millares Carlo's Spanish translation of the letter you mention can be had in Epistolario de Nueva España, 1505-1818, vol. 10, Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, compiler, Mexico City, Antigua Librería Robledo, 1940, pp. 109-129; the translator warns that don Pablo's Latin presented a challenge. Saludos, David Wright UVM-PSMA ----- Mensaje original ----- De: Delia Cosentino Para: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu Enviado: Jueves 7 de Diciembre de 2000 3:43 PM Asunto: Nazareo Does anyone know offhand if Xaltocan cacique Pablo Nazareo's Latin letter to the Spanish Crown has been translated and/or analyzed? Any information would be appreciated! Thanks, Delia A. Cosentino UCLA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dcwright at prodigy.net.mx Thu Dec 7 22:53:02 2000 From: dcwright at prodigy.net.mx (David Wright) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 16:53:02 -0600 Subject: Nazareo Message-ID: Alec: My source only has one letter. What are the others? Have other versions been published, besides the Epistolario translation I mentioned in my last note? If so, I would love to have the bibliographical data so that I might track them down. David Wright -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dcwright at prodigy.net.mx Thu Dec 7 22:59:08 2000 From: dcwright at prodigy.net.mx (David Wright) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 16:59:08 -0600 Subject: Nazareo Message-ID: Delia: One more thing: Pedro Carrasco Pizana makes use of Nazareo's letter in his historical reconstruction of the "Reino otomi de Xaltocan". See his book Los otomies, cultura e historia prehispanica de los pueblos mesoamericanos de habla otomiana, Mexico City, Instituto de Historia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico/Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, 1950, pp. 258-260. David Wright -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Huaxyacac at aol.com Mon Dec 11 02:52:21 2000 From: Huaxyacac at aol.com (Huaxyacac at aol.com) Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 21:52:21 EST Subject: Nazareo Message-ID: David, The volume I have is La ensenanza del Latin a los Indios, by Ignacio Osorio Romero, UNAM, 1990. He includes three letters by Nazareo, dated 1556, 1561, and 1566. The third is by far the longest, and that is the one published in ENE. I bought the book several years ago and began dabbling in it with my schoolboy Latin; I never got very far, although I would like to some day. Alec Christensen About Anthropology Guide http://anthropology.about.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From carlossn at ui.boe.es Mon Dec 11 08:15:02 2000 From: carlossn at ui.boe.es (Carlos Santamarina) Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 09:15:02 +0100 Subject: Nazareo Message-ID: Delia: this is the information I have. Good luck: PASO Y TRONCOSO, Francisco del (ed.) 1940 "Carta al rey don Felipe II, de don Pablo Nazareo de Xaltocan...", Epistolario de Nueva España, vol. X (:89-129), México. COMENTARIO: Epistolario de Nueva España, 568 (en latín) y 568bis (traducción al español). Se escribió en "México a 17 de marzo de 1566". Hay un error en la traducción, que José Luis de Rojas ha señalado en "Los indígenas de la Nueva España y la lengua latina". Dona Ferentes. Homenaje a F. Torrent (:107-115), Jesús de la Villa (ed.), Ediciones Clásicas, Madrid. La carta la escribe en latín Pablo Nazareo declarándose descendiente de los señores naturales de Xaltocan y de México, extendiéndose en datos genealógicos, y reclamando posesiones al rey de España. D. Pablo Nazareo "se crió desde su niñez con los doce primeros frailes y con los demás que después dellos fueron á aquella tierra, y era muy virtuoso y muy buen cristiano, y muy bien doctrinado y muy buen latino y retórico, lógico y filósofo, y no mal poeta en todo género de versos, y fué muchos años rector y preceptor en el colegio de los indios desde que se fundó en el Tlatelulco, que llaman Santiago, y tenía algunas pinturas de las antigüedades de aquella tierra (...) y era casado con una hija de un hermano de Motenzuma, llamado D. Juan Axayacac, y (...) tenía gran noticia de todo lo de aquella tierra, y ayudó á los españoles en la conquista della; y lo tenía su yerno D. Pablo en su casa porque estaba muy pobre, aunque él no tenía más que cien pesos que por una Real Cédula se le hizo merced en quitas y vacaciones cada año." [García Icazbalceta, Documentos para la Historia de México, tomo III: XXXI] -- Carlos Santamarina ------------------------------ ------------------------------ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From delia at ucla.edu Mon Dec 11 23:03:16 2000 From: delia at ucla.edu (Delia Cosentino) Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 18:03:16 -0500 Subject: Sahagun Message-ID: Thanks to all for information on don Pablo Nazareo. Now I wonder if anyone is familiar with Banamex's 1982 edition of Sahagun's Historia general and whether or not it might add important value (in terms of content) to a scholarly collection? It was advertised as being "la primera version integra del texto castellano del manuscrito," even though I was under the impression that there was no complete Spanish translation of the Florentine Codex. Is this one actually complete? I am inquiring on behalf of a research institution that is considering the acquisition of this particular edition, which I understand consists of 500 copies printed on rag paper. I am interested in information on how it might specifically supplant or complement other versions of the Historia. Contact me directly if appropriate. Thanks, Delia Cosentino Delia at ucla.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From owner-nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu Mon Dec 11 23:39:12 2000 From: owner-nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu (owner-nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu) Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 16:39:12 -0700 Subject: No subject Message-ID: by server2.umt.edu (8.10.2/8.10.2) with ESMTP id eBBNPtc15786 for ; Mon, 11 Dec 2000 16:25:55 0700 (MST) MessageId: <5.0.0.25.0.20001211162918.01c9f890 at selway.umt.edu> XSender: schwallr at selway.umt.edu XMailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0 Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 16:29:32 0700 To: nahuatl at server2.umt.edu From: "John F. Schwaller" Subject: Subscription MimeVersion: 1.0 ContentType: text/plain; charset="usascii"; format=flowed Sender: owner-nahuat-l at majordomo.umt.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: nahuat-l at majordomo.umt.edu Dear Subscribers, Many of you may be leaving for Christmas vacations. If you plan to be away from your computer for any significant length of time, please consider unsubscribing to this discussion list. If your mailbox becomes full in your absence it can potentially cause serious consequences, as your server will send out error messages. This will be addressed to all 300+ subscribers. Fortunately the majordomo software catches most of the error messages before they are distributed, but some can sneak through and cause real problems. To unsubscribe, please send this message: unsubscribe nahuatl to this address: majordomo at majordomo.umt.edu Thank you all very much. J. F. Schwaller List Owner John Frederick Schwaller schwallr at selway.umt.edu Associate Provost 406-243-4722 The University of Montana FAX 406-243-5937 http://www.umt.edu/history/Nahuatl From CHMuths at aol.com Tue Dec 12 22:02:23 2000 From: CHMuths at aol.com (CHMuths at aol.com) Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 17:02:23 EST Subject: Nazareo Message-ID: Cecy, do you know this? Can one get those books? Love Christa From schwallr at selway.umt.edu Mon Dec 18 18:19:25 2000 From: schwallr at selway.umt.edu (John F. Schwaller) Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 11:19:25 -0700 Subject: Name of creation god Message-ID: I have just finished Kay Almere Read's Book, _Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos_. In it she has the habit of referring to Tecuciztecatl as Tecuiçiztecatl. First of all the c-cedilla (ç) is not needed before the -i- since the -c- will be soft. But the other difference is the Tecuciz-, versus Tecuiciz- Dibble and Anderson consistently name the god Tecuciztecatl. In his book, _Myths of Ancient Mexico_ Graulich gives the god the name of Tecciztecatl and translates it as "He of the Conch Shell" I think that Read is looking at an underlying meaning by changing the spelling to Tecuiciz- Karttunen gives the following: "Tecui:n(i) - for a fire to flare up or for one's heart to pound" This clearly recalls the actions of Tecuciztecatl who along with Nanahuatzin (Nanahuatl) cast themselves into the sacred fire at the creation of the Fifth Sun. The question then becomes, What does Tecuciztecatl mean, as opposed to Tecuiciztecatl? There are lots of other threads to follow, but these are the ones which come to mind. J. F. Schwaller John Frederick Schwaller schwallr at selway.umt.edu Associate Provost 406-243-4722 The University of Montana FAX 406-243-5937 http://www.umt.edu/history/Nahuatl From CCBtlevine at aol.com Tue Dec 19 01:57:24 2000 From: CCBtlevine at aol.com (CCBtlevine at aol.com) Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 20:57:24 EST Subject: Name of creation god Message-ID: In a message dated Mon, 18 Dec 2000 1:21:25 PM Eastern Standard Time, "John F. Schwaller" writes: Graulich gives the god the name of Tecciztecatl and translates it as "He of the Conch Shell" I think that Read is looking at an underlying meaning by changing the spelling to Tecuiciz- Karttunen gives the following: "Tecui:n(i) - for a fire to flare up or for one's heart to pound" This clearly recalls the actions of Tecuciztecatl who along with Nanahuatzin (Nanahuatl) cast themselves into the sacred fire at the creation of the Fifth Sun. The question then becomes, What does Tecuciztecatl mean, as opposed to Tecuiciztecatl? Reply: As far as your comment is about Graulich, I recall reading somewhere, that wearing of a conch shell was a kind of kenning meaning that the person wore a hood. So that the depiction of a person wearing a shell would be a way of saying that the person wore a cape with a hood. As far as Tecuiciztecatl. Perhaps it has something to do with being the lord of the dawn. This is from tecuhtli and iciuh. Tom Levine From malinal at evhr.net Tue Dec 19 04:47:33 2000 From: malinal at evhr.net (alexis wimmer) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 05:47:33 +0100 Subject: Name of creation god Message-ID: John Frederick Schwaller wrote : > I have just finished Kay Almere Read's Book, _Time and Sacrifice in the > Aztec Cosmos_. In it she has the habit of referring to Tecuciztecatl as > Tecuiçiztecatl. First of all the c-cedilla (ç) is not needed before the > -i- since the -c- will be soft. But the other difference is the Tecuciz-, > versus Tecuiciz- Dibble and Anderson consistently name the god > Tecuciztecatl. In his book, _Myths of Ancient Mexico_ Graulich gives the > god the name of Tecciztecatl and translates it as "He of the Conch > Shell" I think that Read is looking at an underlying meaning by changing > the spelling to Tecuiciz- tecuciztli, teucciztli, tecciztli and tecuihciztli are variants of the same noon. tecu- and teuc- are two orthographic variants tec- is a phonetic variant. and tecuih- is an archaic form of teuc-tli, lord. (also spelled tecutli or tecuhtli). See http://www.ifrance.com/nahuatl/t/nahuatlTECUAN.html#TECUIHTLI Alexis. From schwallr at selway.umt.edu Thu Dec 21 15:42:36 2000 From: schwallr at selway.umt.edu (John F. Schwaller) Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 08:42:36 -0700 Subject: Signing off error Message-ID: When I sent out the instructions on how to sign off from the list over the holidays, I inadvertently gave the name of the list as nahuatl It is, of course, nahuat-l I am truly sorry for any confusion and for impugning the intelligence of anyone whom I may have confused John Frederick Schwaller schwallr at selway.umt.edu Associate Provost 406-243-4722 The University of Montana FAX 406-243-5937 http://www.umt.edu/provost/ From davius_sanctex at hotmail.com Tue Dec 26 22:43:47 2000 From: davius_sanctex at hotmail.com (Davius Sanctex) Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 22:43:47 -0000 Subject: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order Message-ID: 1) Word order in classical nahuatl 2) Word order in ancient nahuatl 3) Word order in modern nahuatl _________________________ 1) WORD ORDER IN CLASSICAL NAHUATL Word order in classical nahuatl is very free, althought it seems to exists a dominat word order in wich verb antecedes objetct and subject: VSO: kwa in okichtli in michin 'the man eat the fish' VOS: *kwa in michin in okichtli 'the man eat the fish' (I am not sure wether these two sentences to be equivalent) My question is this: Is there some rule related to relative animacy of agent and pacient determining preference by any of these two forms (like in some mayan languages)? ___________________________________ 2) WORD ORDER IN ANCIENT NAHUATL It seems that dominant order in ancient nahuatl had been SOV, mainly because nahuatl is very consistent head-adjunct language (pospositions, adjectives antecedes nouns also relatives do) and on the light of Greenberg tendencies seems natural to be a SOV language also. And in addition we have the evidence of related languages like huichol indicates: Huichol: nee uuki ne.wa.zeiyas.tia Nahuatl: newa ichpochtli ni.kim.itt.ati.lia 'I showed anything to the girls' Is reasonable this to argue that ancient nahuatl was SOV language? It is possible that change in dominant order were caused by totonac-tepehuan incluence or by otomang influence? _________________________ 3) WORD ORDER IN MODERN N�HUATL In Guerrero state dialects of modern nahuatl, and under influence of spanish, the main order is SVO like that of spanish. But is this situation general? I believe that this is not case in some dialects like that of Ameyaltepec, is it? _________________________ _________________________ 1) ORDEN SINT�CTICO EN N�HUATL CL�SICO El orden sint�ctico en n�huatl cl�sico es muy libre, sin embargo parece existir un orden dominante en el que el verbo antecede a objeto y sujeto: VOS: kwa in okichtli in michin 'el hombre se come el pez' VOS: *kwa in michin in okichtli 'el hombre se come el pez' (no estoy seguro de la segunda de ellas, con ese significado) Pero existe alguna regla relacionada con el grado de animaci�n respectivo de agente y paciente que determine una preferencia sobre una u otra tal como sucede en las lenguas mayas. _________________________ 2) ORDEN SINT�CTICO EN N�HUATL ANTIGUO Parece que el orden sint�ctico en antiguo n�huatl pudiera haber sido SOV, principalmente porque el n�huatl es un lengua modificado-modifificador bastante consistente y a la luz del trabajo de Greenberg parece natural que tambi�n fuera una lengua de tipo SOV. Adem�s tenemos la evidencia de lenguas emparentadas, como el huichol: Huichol: nee uuki ne.wa.zeiyas.tia Nahuatl: newa ichpochtli ni.kim.itt.ati.lia 'Yo se lo mostr� a las chicas' �Es razonalbe argumentar en base a esto que en n�huatl era una lengua tipo SOV? �Es psoible que este cambio en el orden sint�ctico dominante se debiera al totonaco/tepehua o a alguna lengua otomang? _________________________ 3) WORD ORDER IN MODERN N�HUATL En los dialectos del estado de Guerrero, y bajo influencia del castellano, el orden principal es SVO como el de esta lengua. Pero sucede esto en todos los otros dialectos? Creo que no es el caso, en algunos dialecto como el dialecto de Ameyaltepec, es as�? _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From macswan at asu.edu Wed Dec 27 03:09:02 2000 From: macswan at asu.edu (Jeff MacSwan) Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 20:09:02 -0700 Subject: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Davius and others, I wrote a paper on this that might be of some interest. It discusses Nahuatl basic word order in the modern varieties in connection with Mark Baker's recent proposals in his book _Polysynthesis Parameter_. Baker claims that modern Natuatl word order remains extremely flexible, due to its being a pronominal argument language. I argue that it is not flexible, and that Nahuatl is not a pronominal argument language. The article, which appeared in the Southwest J of Linguistics, is available online at http://www.public.asu.edu/~macswan/swjl.pdf Quoting Davius Sanctex : > 1) Word order in classical nahuatl > 2) Word order in ancient nahuatl > 3) Word order in modern nahuatl > _________________________ > 1) WORD ORDER IN CLASSICAL NAHUATL > > Word order in classical nahuatl is very free, althought it > seems to exists a dominat word order in wich verb antecedes > objetct and subject: > > VSO: kwa in okichtli in michin 'the man eat the fish' > VOS: *kwa in michin in okichtli 'the man eat the fish' > > (I am not sure wether these two sentences to be equivalent) > My question is this: Is there some rule related to relative > animacy of agent and pacient determining preference by any > of these two forms (like in some mayan languages)? > ___________________________________ > 2) WORD ORDER IN ANCIENT NAHUATL > > It seems that dominant order in ancient nahuatl had been SOV, > mainly because nahuatl is very consistent head-adjunct language > (pospositions, adjectives antecedes nouns also relatives do) > and on the light of Greenberg tendencies seems natural to be > a SOV language also. And in addition we have the evidence of > related languages like huichol indicates: > > Huichol: nee uuki ne.wa.zeiyas.tia > Nahuatl: newa ichpochtli ni.kim.itt.ati.lia > 'I showed anything to the girls' > > Is reasonable this to argue that ancient nahuatl was SOV > language? It is possible that change in dominant order were > caused by totonac-tepehuan incluence or by otomang influence? > > _________________________ > 3) WORD ORDER IN MODERN NÁHUATL > > In Guerrero state dialects of modern nahuatl, and under > influence of spanish, the main order is SVO like that of > spanish. But is this situation general? > I believe that this is not case in some dialects like that > of Ameyaltepec, is it? > > _________________________ > _________________________ > 1) ORDEN SINTÁCTICO EN NÁHUATL CLÁSICO > > El orden sintáctico en náhuatl clásico es muy libre, sin embargo > parece existir un orden dominante en el que el verbo antecede a > objeto y sujeto: > > VOS: kwa in okichtli in michin 'el hombre se come el pez' > VOS: *kwa in michin in okichtli 'el hombre se come el pez' > > (no estoy seguro de la segunda de ellas, con ese significado) > Pero existe alguna regla relacionada con el grado de animación > respectivo de agente y paciente que determine una preferencia > sobre una u otra tal como sucede en las lenguas mayas. > _________________________ > 2) ORDEN SINTÁCTICO EN NÁHUATL ANTIGUO > > Parece que el orden sintáctico en antiguo náhuatl pudiera > haber sido SOV, principalmente porque el náhuatl es un lengua > modificado-modifificador bastante consistente y a la luz del > trabajo de Greenberg parece natural que también fuera una lengua > de tipo SOV. Además tenemos la evidencia de lenguas emparentadas, > como el huichol: > > Huichol: nee uuki ne.wa.zeiyas.tia > Nahuatl: newa ichpochtli ni.kim.itt.ati.lia > 'Yo se lo mostré a las chicas' > > ¿Es razonalbe argumentar en base a esto que en náhuatl era > una lengua tipo SOV? ¿Es psoible que este cambio en el orden > sintáctico dominante se debiera al totonaco/tepehua o a > alguna lengua otomang? > > _________________________ > 3) WORD ORDER IN MODERN NÁHUATL > > En los dialectos del estado de Guerrero, y bajo influencia > del castellano, el orden principal es SVO como el de esta > lengua. Pero sucede esto en todos los otros dialectos? > > Creo que no es el caso, en algunos dialecto como el dialecto > de Ameyaltepec, es así? > > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at > http://www.hotmail.com. > > -------------------------- Jeff MacSwan, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Language and Literacy Arizona State University PO Box 872011 Tempe, AZ 85287-2011 (480) 965-4967 (voice) (480) 965-4942 (fax) macswan at asu.edu (email) coe.asu.edu/macswan (web) From schwallr at selway.umt.edu Wed Dec 27 15:36:02 2000 From: schwallr at selway.umt.edu (John F. Schwaller) Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 08:36:02 -0700 Subject: Fwd: we-exclusive Message-ID: >Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 21:50:27 +0000 >From: anthony.appleyard at umist.ac.uk >Sender: Anthony Appleyard >Subject: we-exclusive > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >On 16 May 2000 "r. joe campbell" (Subject: Re: we, >you, y'all) wrote in response to a query by me:- > > >, > > The answer to both of questions is "yes". In,, the > > first person prefix 'ni-' is combined with the plural suffix '-h' to > > yield a first person plural exclusive (i.e., 'we, excluding you') > > which contrasts with their first person plural inclusive (i.e., the > > """normal""" `we', shared with all other dialects). So: > > nipata:ni I fly nipata:nih we (not incl. you) fly > > tipata:nih we (general) fly > > tipata:ni you fly > > [[Note that it is a 't' dialect -- that is, where other dialects have > > the "expected" /tl/, Mecayapan, like some other eastern dialects, has > > /t/]] > >Do these dialects also have special forms for "the house belonging to >us-exclusive" and for the separate pronoun "we-exclusive", which would >be distinct from {tocal} and {tehhua:n(tin)}? If so, what are they? Is >the separate pronoun form *{nehhua:n(tin)}? >-- >Anthony Appleyard From schwallr at selway.umt.edu Fri Dec 29 15:31:28 2000 From: schwallr at selway.umt.edu (John F. Schwaller) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 08:31:28 -0700 Subject: Fwd: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order Message-ID: >Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 13:17:27 +0000 >From: Anthony Appleyard >Subject: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Davius Sanctex wrote:- > > Word order in classical nahuatl is very free, although it > > seems to exists a dominant word order in which verb antecedes > > object and subject: > > > VSO: kwa in okichtli in michin 'the man eat the fish' > > VOS: *kwa in michin in okichtli 'the man eat the fish' > > (I am not sure whether these two sentences to be equivalent) ... > >In that sort of sentence, with no case endings and free word order, how >is subject is distinguished from object when the distinction is >necessary? For example, anyone who has seen "Jaws" will know that the >above sentence also makes sense with the subject and object swopped. And >there are many other possible sentences where both alternative parsings >make sense, much more so than with this example. >Citlalya:ni: >Anthony Appleyard From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Fri Dec 29 17:40:58 2000 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 12:40:58 -0500 Subject: Fwd: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.0.20001229083055.02528ec0@selway.umt.edu> Message-ID: I'm not up on word order in the modern dialects, but check out Andrews' Analytical Grammar of Nahuatl. He has a lot to say on the subject of word order. Michael On Fri, 29 Dec 2000, John F. Schwaller wrote: > > >Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 13:17:27 +0000 > >From: Anthony Appleyard > >Subject: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order > >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > Davius Sanctex wrote:- > > > Word order in classical nahuatl is very free, although it > > > seems to exists a dominant word order in which verb antecedes > > > object and subject: > > > > > VSO: kwa in okichtli in michin 'the man eat the fish' > > > VOS: *kwa in michin in okichtli 'the man eat the fish' > > > (I am not sure whether these two sentences to be equivalent) ... > > > >In that sort of sentence, with no case endings and free word order, how > >is subject is distinguished from object when the distinction is > >necessary? For example, anyone who has seen "Jaws" will know that the > >above sentence also makes sense with the subject and object swopped. And > >there are many other possible sentences where both alternative parsings > >make sense, much more so than with this example. > >Citlalya:ni: > >Anthony Appleyard > > Michael McCafferty 307 Memorial Hall Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405 mmccaffe at indiana.edu ******************************************************************************* "So, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" -Chico Marx ******************************************************************************* From davius_sanctex at hotmail.com Fri Dec 29 20:12:04 2000 From: davius_sanctex at hotmail.com (Davius Sanctex) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 20:12:04 -0000 Subject: Fwd: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order Message-ID: >VSO: kwa in okichtli in michin 'the man eat the fish' >VOS: *kwa in michin in okichtli 'the man eat the fish' >(I am not sure whether these two sentences to be equivalent) ... >>In that sort of sentence, with no case endings and free word order, how is >>subject is distinguished from object when the distinction is >>necessary? The problem in practices is less accusate; usually a sentence involves two participants of different animacity and it is usual that subject is higher in animacity participant. On the other hand, in many occurrences who is subject and who is object is determined contextually. >For example, anyone who has seen "Jaws" will know that the above sentence >also makes sense with the subject and object >swopped. And there are many other possible sentences where both > >alternative parsings make sense, much more so than with this example. I am not sure is both sentences above are correct with the sense stated, it is possible to be ambiguous sentences of this form. Ma tlakwalkan! David S�nchez _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From karttu at nantucket.net Fri Dec 29 20:15:22 2000 From: karttu at nantucket.net (Frances Karttunen) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 15:15:22 -0500 Subject: Fwd: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order Message-ID: Because it does not mark case on noun phrases, Nahuatl tolerates an enormous amount of ambiguity, not just between subject and direct object, but among direct and oblique objects. One wonders how speakers manage (or managed before Spanish-influenced word-order at least moved subject noun phrases around to preceding the verb). But that is the way with languages. Some languages don't distinguish gender in third-person pronouns (no he/she in Nahuatl or Finnish, as two examples). Some languages do without plural marking (Nahuatl in the case of inanimate nouns). Some omit copula verbs unless they have some really specific role in the sentence (Russian and Nahuatl being alike in this respect.) Some languages do without a future tense (Finnish, which has none at all, and a lot of colloquial Latin American Spanish, which replace the morphological future tense with a periphrastic construction made with ir a). It's a source of endless amazement to people who study multiple languages how varied they are in what they overtly mark (specificity versus nonspecificity in Nahuatl, for instance) and what they express covertly or not at all. (In Finnish the fact that an action will take place in the future rather than happening right now is sometimes revealed by the case of the direct object. Who would have guessed?) Fran ---------- >From: "John F. Schwaller" >To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu >Subject: Fwd: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order >Date: Fri, Dec 29, 2000, 10:31 AM > > >>Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 13:17:27 +0000 >>From: Anthony Appleyard >>Subject: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order >>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> Davius Sanctex wrote:- >> > Word order in classical nahuatl is very free, although it >> > seems to exists a dominant word order in which verb antecedes >> > object and subject: >> >> > VSO: kwa in okichtli in michin 'the man eat the fish' >> > VOS: *kwa in michin in okichtli 'the man eat the fish' >> > (I am not sure whether these two sentences to be equivalent) ... >> >>In that sort of sentence, with no case endings and free word order, how >>is subject is distinguished from object when the distinction is >>necessary? For example, anyone who has seen "Jaws" will know that the >>above sentence also makes sense with the subject and object swopped. And >>there are many other possible sentences where both alternative parsings >>make sense, much more so than with this example. >>Citlalya:ni: >>Anthony Appleyard > From davius_sanctex at hotmail.com Fri Dec 29 21:35:45 2000 From: davius_sanctex at hotmail.com (Davius Sanctex) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 21:35:45 -0000 Subject: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order Message-ID: Dear Jeff MacSwan: I have read carefully your paper on polysunthesis parameter. I thing it is a good work, but I dislike general tone it is too controversial and it seems a a personal attack. One way or another, it is a valuable paper; although it is too collateral to the question of diachronic change in dominant word order. I don't know the work of Baker, and I will silent about the matter. One of my criticism to the paper are: 1) The examples ob langages having properties 2c-2n without being polysinthetic are irrelevant as yourself say and don't disclaim Baker's work. If we discuss the validity of statement "A implies B" it is sophistic mention examples with "B but not A" (these examples are irrelevant). 2)I have carried out a chi-2 stadistical test of the samples you give in page 105 and the result is that there are by no means homogeneous (X2 = 53,91 muy lejos del valor l�mite que es 21,1 dispongo de los c�lculos detallados!). Probabily the samples are excesively reduced to be statiscally significant. In fact, with a confidence of 0,95 the samples don't represent the same population and therefore they correspond to diferent styles. Comparaision by pairs are: Text 1 Text 2 Text 3 Text 4 Text 5 Text 1 __ 12,79 26,56 12,97 5,58 Text 2 __ __ 8,21 4,89 3,58 Text 3 __ __ __ 21,40 7,22 Text 4 __ __ __ __ 6,35 greater this value more the difference between the two samples) Values superior to 7,82 (with confidence 95%) indicate that the two samples are statiscally not homogeneous, for a condidence greater thant 97,5% values must be superior to . Homogeneity: Text 1 Text 2 Text 3 Text 4 Text 5 Text 1 __ no no no yes Text 2 __ __ no yes yes Text 3 __ __ __ no yes Text 4 __ __ __ __ yes Text 1 is (see values of X2) strongly different from others. Text 2 and text 4 are similar, and finally text 5 is similar to all others. Claims that Southeast Puebla Nahuatl is otherwise valuable, as exemple (5) in page 104 shows, but I don't see valuable the evidence from text because they are too different and reduced. Ma tlacualcan ____________________________________________ David S�nchez Molina, Ph. D Profesor Asociado Structures Design in Industrial Engineering Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya Barcelona, Spain david.sanchez-molina at upc.es davius_sanctex at upc.es _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From S.Levack at btinternet.com Fri Dec 29 22:12:16 2000 From: S.Levack at btinternet.com (Simon Levack) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 22:12:16 -0000 Subject: Non-verbal communication Message-ID: Can anyone point me towards any good sources of reference (ideally web-based) on body language and gestures among Nahua speakers - I mean the sort of thing a modern northern European might communicate by nodding or shaking the head, shrugging, raising the eyebrows, etc? Thank you Simon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davius_sanctex at hotmail.com Fri Dec 29 22:40:19 2000 From: davius_sanctex at hotmail.com (Davius Sanctex) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 22:40:19 -0000 Subject: Reduplication Message-ID: 1) Reduplication in nouns 2) How does reduplication work in verbs? _______________ 1) REDUPLICATION IN NOUNS Nahuatl uses reduplication for two purposes. In nouns it forms plurals like in: sg. to:ch-in /pl. TO:-to:ch-tin 'rabbit' sg. koyo-tl / pl. KO:-koyo-h 'coyote' sg. koa-tl / pl. KO:-koa-h 'snake' sg. tepe:tl / pl. TE:tepe:-meh 'mountain' (and inanimate???) sg. tlaka-tl / pl. TLA:-tlaka-h 'person' sg. teo:-tl / pl. TE:-teo:-meh 'god' Here the rule is simple, first consonant and vowel (lengthened) are reapted, this feature may be that of proto-language; Papago shows: sg. bana / pl. BA:bana = koyo-tl 'coyote' sg. tini / pl. TI:tini = ten-tli 'mouth' sg. kuna / pl. KU:kuna = mamic-tli 'husband' _________________ 2) REDUPLICATION IN VERBS In verbs reduplication indicates frequentative actions. The rule is not simple. Sometimes reduplications first vowel is lengthened. Other is second vowel: me-ME:ya 'to flow out' a:-se-SE:ya 'to cold by means of water; to rot' pi-pi:na-wi 'to feel ashamed' In others, it seems no vowel to be long: kwe-kwets-oa 'to twist' te-pa-pa�iw-a 'to flat' Are there some rule that determines reduplication type in verbs? _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From macswan at asu.edu Fri Dec 29 22:42:31 2000 From: macswan at asu.edu (macswan at asu.edu) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 15:42:31 -0700 Subject: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 29 Dec 2000, Davius Sanctex wrote: > Dear Jeff MacSwan: > > I have read carefully your paper on polysunthesis > parameter. I thing it is a good work, but I dislike > general tone it is too controversial and it seems a > a personal attack. Sorry you got that impression, David. In fact there is not the slightest hint of a personal attack in my paper. I say Baker makes "ingenius" proposals, and show great respect for his work. But I argue that his basic proposals are wrong, so naturally there is controversy abounding in the text. If you don't like controversy, then you should stand clear of academic writing quite generally. > One way or another, it is a valuable > paper; although it is too collateral to the question of > diachronic change in dominant word order. The paper is not about diachronic change in Nahuatl. You'll find it equally peripheral to any number of topics you care to enumerate. > I don't know the work of Baker, and I will silent about > the matter. One of my criticism to the paper are: > > 1) The examples ob langages having properties 2c-2n without > being polysinthetic are irrelevant as yourself say and don't > disclaim Baker's work. If we discuss the validity of statement > "A implies B" it is sophistic mention examples with "B but not > A" (these examples are irrelevant). This is a good point, which I do point out in the paper. Baker says that all languages which have properties a and b also have c-n. To show this is false, it is sufficient to exhibit one example of a language which has a and b but lacks any one of c-n. I point this out explicitly in the paper, in the context of implicational universals, but want to make a stronger point which guards against quick and easy revisions of the thesis: I wanted to show that for any property c-n, there are languages which have a-b and not one of these, and languages which do not have a-b but do have one of these. In other words, there is no relationship between the cluster of properties Baker outlines. I said all of this in the article, on page 111, where I write: "It should be emphasized that Baker's claims about polysynthetic languages are implicational in nature. If a language has 2a and 2b, then it will also have 2c-2n. To refute this claim, one must simply exhibit a language which has 2a and 2b but lacks one or more of 2c-2n, as I have done here. In additional, however, by pointing out that the linguistic features 2c-2n are in fact quite common across a wide range of languages, I have tried to suggest that the particular cluster of features Baker observes for Mohawk and attributes to other polysynthetic languages is a coincidence and not a consequence of 2a and 2b..." > 2)I have carried out a chi-2 stadistical test of the samples you > give in page 105 and the result is that there are by no means > homogeneous (X2 = 53,91 muy lejos del valor l�mite que es 21,1 > dispongo de los c�lculos detallados!). Probabily the samples are > excesively reduced to be statiscally significant. In fact, with a confidence > of 0,95 the samples don't represent the same population > and therefore they correspond to diferent styles. Comparaision by > pairs are: > ..... > Text 1 is (see values of X2) strongly different from others. > Text 2 and text 4 are similar, and finally text 5 is similar > to all others. Interesting observations, but clearly not relevant to any point I was making. My interest was in showing what is grammatically permissible in Southeast Puebla Nahuatl, not in analyzing stylistic variation amoung storytelling in SE Puebla Nahuatl. Also, because text invites characteristic variation, I caution against exclusive reliance on this sort of evidence, and focus instead on grammaticality judgments collected from native speakers. Taken together, all the evidence suggests that SE Puebla Nahuatl is an SVO language which allows postverbal subjects and occasionally preverbal objects for purposes of focus and contrast. > Claims that Southeast Puebla Nahuatl is otherwise valuable, > as exemple (5) in page 104 shows, but I don't see valuable > the evidence from text because they are too different and > reduced. I think the textual evidence is extremely valuable, and while writers may have tended to use one permissible word order more than another, collectively they defined the same range of permissible word orders that the native speakers (example 5, page 104) did. Thus, with respect to grammaticality -- the topic of the paper -- they are not more varied than the native speaker judgments. The full text of the article is available at http://www.public.asu.edu/~macswan/swjl.pdf Jeff MacSwan Arizona State University From karttu at nantucket.net Fri Dec 29 23:07:45 2000 From: karttu at nantucket.net (Frances Karttunen) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 18:07:45 -0500 Subject: Reduplication Message-ID: Una Canger wrote pretty comprehensively about all forms of reduplication back in the early 80s in a special memorial issue of Texas Linguistic Forum for Fernando Horcasitas. Or have a look in Joe Campbell's and my Foundation Course in Nahuatl Grammar. There are some types of reduplication in regional dialects that we didn't discuss, though. For instance, around Milpa Alta and in Canoa, honorific forms of singular animate nouns reduplicate, which I found very confusing. Fran ---------- >From: "Davius Sanctex" >To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu >Subject: Reduplication >Date: Fri, Dec 29, 2000, 5:40 PM > > > 1) Reduplication in nouns > 2) How does reduplication work in verbs? > _______________ > > 1) REDUPLICATION IN NOUNS > Nahuatl uses reduplication for two purposes. In nouns it forms plurals like > in: > > sg. to:ch-in /pl. TO:-to:ch-tin 'rabbit' > sg. koyo-tl / pl. KO:-koyo-h 'coyote' > sg. koa-tl / pl. KO:-koa-h 'snake' > sg. tepe:tl / pl. TE:tepe:-meh 'mountain' (and inanimate???) > sg. tlaka-tl / pl. TLA:-tlaka-h 'person' > sg. teo:-tl / pl. TE:-teo:-meh 'god' > > Here the rule is simple, first consonant and vowel (lengthened) are reapted, > this feature may be that of proto-language; Papago shows: > > sg. bana / pl. BA:bana = koyo-tl 'coyote' > sg. tini / pl. TI:tini = ten-tli 'mouth' > sg. kuna / pl. KU:kuna = mamic-tli 'husband' > _________________ > > 2) REDUPLICATION IN VERBS > In verbs reduplication indicates frequentative actions. The rule is not > simple. Sometimes reduplications first vowel is lengthened. Other is second > vowel: > > me-ME:ya 'to flow out' > a:-se-SE:ya 'to cold by means of water; to rot' > pi-pi:na-wi 'to feel ashamed' > > In others, it seems no vowel to be long: > > kwe-kwets-oa 'to twist' > te-pa-pašiw-a 'to flat' > > Are there some rule that determines reduplication type in verbs? > > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > From davius_sanctex at hotmail.com Sat Dec 30 00:09:03 2000 From: davius_sanctex at hotmail.com (Davius Sanctex) Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 00:09:03 -0000 Subject: Nahuatl names and natality in aztec empire Message-ID: A nice mathematical argument relating name "Teyacapan" to average number for children in Aztec Empire. ____________________________ Bob McCaa points that in a census of 1540 in a group of 1205 women, 313 were named "Teyacapan" (= first born), i.e. 25,04%: I will show that these data implies that the average number per family was at most 5,135 and that 6,88% of couples had not any child! _________________________________________ This number can be related to the average number of children in a family. We assume: 1) Nearly all first born female babies was named "Teyacapan" 2) The probability of borns by unit of time remain uniform for a community and population is stationary. First step: Second hypothesis implies borns can be well modelized by a Poisson distribution, thus the probability of a couple to have k kids is P(k): P(k)= exp(-m)*(m^k)/k! [Where m is the average number of children] Second step: Thus if the probability of a child to belong to a familiy with exactly k kids is p(k): p(k) = P(k)/(1-P(0)) [p(0) is the % of families that have no kid]. Thirst step: If we take a woman at random the probability of being the first kid in a family of k kids is just 1/k [= q(k)]. And thus the probability that a woman to be the first baby of a family is r: r = p(1)*q(1) + p(2)*q(2) + ...+ p(k)*q(k) + ... = = P(1)/1 + p(2)/2 + ...+ p(k)/k + ... = 25,04% This last equation enable us to evaluate m. For m = 5,135 k P(k) p(k) p(k)/k 0 0,00588 __ 1 0,03022 0,03039 0,03039 2 0,07759 0,07805 0,03902 3 0,13282 0,13361 0,04453 4 0,17053 0,17154 0,04288 5 0,17515 0,17618 0,03523 6 0,14991 0,15079 0,02513 7 0,10997 0,11063 0,01580 8 0,07059 0,07101 0,00887 9 0,04028 0,04052 0,00450 sum 0,2498 = 24,98% This shows that the average number must be of order 5,135. Moreover, of this table we deduce that 5,88 % = P(0) of couples have not babies and the majority (17,51%) have 5 babies. The number of families with 9 is 4,02% ... _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From davius_sanctex at hotmail.com Sat Dec 30 00:11:19 2000 From: davius_sanctex at hotmail.com (Davius Sanctex) Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 00:11:19 -0000 Subject: Nahuatl names and natality in aztec empire Message-ID: A nice mathematical argument relating name "Teyacapan" to average number for children in Aztec Empire. ____________________________ Bob McCaa points that in a census of 1540 in a group of 1205 women, 313 were named "Teyacapan" (= first born), i.e. 25,04%: http:/www.umt.edu/history/nahuatl/names.html I will show that these data implies that the average number per family was at most 5,135 and that 6,88% of couples had not any child! _________________________________________ This number can be related to the average number of children in a family. We assume: 1) Nearly all first born female babies was named "Teyacapan" 2) The probability of borns by unit of time remain uniform for a community and population is stationary. First step: Second hypothesis implies borns can be well modelized by a Poisson distribution, thus the probability of a couple to have k kids is P(k): P(k)= exp(-m)*(m^k)/k! [Where m is the average number of children] Second step: Thus if the probability of a child to belong to a familiy with exactly k kids is p(k): p(k) = P(k)/(1-P(0)) [p(0) is the % of families that have no kid]. Thirst step: If we take a woman at random the probability of being the first kid in a family of k kids is just 1/k [= q(k)]. And thus the probability that a woman to be the first baby of a family is r: r = p(1)*q(1) + p(2)*q(2) + ...+ p(k)*q(k) + ... = = P(1)/1 + p(2)/2 + ...+ p(k)/k + ... = 25,04% This last equation enable us to evaluate m. For m = 5,135 k P(k) p(k) p(k)/k 0 0,00588 __ 1 0,03022 0,03039 0,03039 2 0,07759 0,07805 0,03902 3 0,13282 0,13361 0,04453 4 0,17053 0,17154 0,04288 5 0,17515 0,17618 0,03523 6 0,14991 0,15079 0,02513 7 0,10997 0,11063 0,01580 8 0,07059 0,07101 0,00887 9 0,04028 0,04052 0,00450 sum 0,2498 = 24,98% This shows that the average number must be of order 5,135. Moreover, of this table we deduce that 5,88 % = P(0) of couples have not babies and the majority (17,51%) have 5 babies. The number of families with 9 is 4,02% ... _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From davius_sanctex at hotmail.com Sat Dec 30 00:39:55 2000 From: davius_sanctex at hotmail.com (Davius Sanctex) Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 00:39:55 -0000 Subject: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order Message-ID: >Sorry you got that impression, David. Excuse me, I acted impertinently! Disc�lpeme fui algo impertinente! >If you don't like controversy, then you should >stand clear of academic writing quite generally. I know well this situation :) spanish academic world also makes use of controversial style too much often! >The paper is not about diachronic change in Nahuatl. Certainly, my interest was primarily in diachronic change, but one way or another I thank you for your fantastic article. >"It should be emphasized that Baker's claims about polysynthetic >languages >are implicational in nature. If a language has 2a and 2b, >then it will >also have 2c-2n. To refute this claim, one must simply >exhibit a language >which has 2a and 2b but lacks one or more of >2c-2n, as I have done here. >In additional, however, by pointing out >that the linguistic features 2c-2n >are in fact quite common across a >wide range of languages, I have tried to >suggest that the particular >cluster of features Baker observes for Mohawk >and attributes to other polysynthetic languages is a coincidence and not a >consequence >of 2a and 2b..." Oh yes, but what about a more intrincated implication, for example, "2a and 2b and Condition X always implies some of conditions 2c-2n" �Le parece posible salvar la propuesta de Baker de esa manera? (complicando un poco la premisa). >>Text 1 is (see values of X2) strongly different from others. >>Text 2 and text 4 are similar, and finally text 5 is similar >>to all others. >Interesting observations, but clearly not relevant to any point I was >making. Certainly! >I caution against exclusive reliance on this sort of evidence, and >focus >instead on grammaticality judgments collected from native >speakers. Lo le�, no lo pas� por alto. El art�culo lo explicita muy claramente. >Taken together, all the evidence suggests that SE Puebla Nahuatl is >an SVO >language which allows postverbal subjects and occasionally >preverbal >objects for purposes of focus and contrast. La primera muestra, "Ceh huelta onia Acapulco", la de Lidia Cedillo, es claramente diferente del resto, y curiosamente tambi�n parece preferir VS (althought the text is very short), �tiene alguna idea de porqu� sucede eso con el habla de esa determinada hablante? >I think the textual evidence is extremely valuable, and while writers >may >have tended to use one permissible word order more than another, > >collectively they defined the same range of permissible word orders >that >the native speakers (example 5, page 104) did. Yes, and if one excludes from text the aberrant text 1 the evidence is more clear; by these reason I think that it can be problematic the choice of text (there is highly variable if one don't take care). Tank you, for all, Jeff. David S. (UPC, Barcelona, Spain) _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From juergen.stowasser at univie.ac.at Sat Dec 30 21:21:50 2000 From: juergen.stowasser at univie.ac.at (Juergen Stowasser) Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 22:21:50 +0100 Subject: e-mail Enrique Florescano Message-ID: Does anybody know the actual e-mail of Enrique Florescano? Thanks Juergen Stowasser -- Juergen Stowasser Burggasse 114/2/8 A-1070 Wien - Vien(n)a Austria tel: 01/ 524 54 60 v 0676/ 398 66 79 http://www.univie.ac.at/meso From bortiz at mail.earthlink.net Tue Dec 26 22:14:00 2000 From: bortiz at mail.earthlink.net (Bernard Ortiz de Montellano) Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 16:14:00 -0600 Subject: Bierhorst Bashing -- was Looking for a poem... In-Reply-To: Message-ID: >Nocnihuan, > As Fritz has pointed out, John Bierhorst is a member of a very small >set of scholars who hold his point of view about a Nahua Ghost Dance. I >don't know enough to comment on the merits of his point of view or that of >his critics, but I am continually distressed at one of the biggest results >of the issue -- it distracts attention from **all the rest of the value** >in his two-volume work on the Cantares. > I just consulted a Nahuatl scholar (whose opinion I respect and >sometimes agree with) <8-< and my question "Do you ever check Bierhorst?" >elicited the answer "Of course!!" Further, "Does it ever help you?" got >the same answer. Since I agreed with the reaction, naturally, my respect >for my colleague grew a notch. > My humble opinion is that the community of Nahuatl scholars would gain >a lot by getting past the knee-jerk reaction to John's work on the basis >of one point of disagreement and take an extended look at the valuable >resource that he provided us with through what was a long period of >careful labor (preparation of the text and making that humongous >vocabulary!). Yotlan. > >Saludos, > >Joe > > >> >> Bierhorst holds that the poems in the Cantares Mexicanos were part of a >> Nahua "Ghost Dance" ritual destined to revivify the essence of fallen >> warriors in a crypto-rebellion against the Spanish. No other scholar who > > has studied the song cycle has been able to discover such a theme. > > Joe it is not just the Ghost Dance idea but the distortions in the Nahuatl he proposes to fit the Procrustean bed. For example, translating words like xochitl and chalchihuitl as "returning souls". It the Aztecs had really believed that this was so these worlds would have plural endings as in citlalme. Have you seen my review in *Tlalocan*? From heatherhess at hotmail.com Fri Dec 1 01:44:06 2000 From: heatherhess at hotmail.com (Heather Hess) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 20:44:06 -0500 Subject: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" Message-ID: Hi! I actually remember seeing a reference of Venus in Nahuatl and can't remember where but this sounds familiar! Yolohtzin >From: David Gloster >Reply-To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu >To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu >Subject: Re: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" >Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 22:33:16 +0100 > >As no one else has yet come forth with an answer, here's my try: > >I seem to remember that Venus had two names in Nahuatl depending on whether >it was >visible as the morning star or the evening star. I think the morning name >was >TLAHUIZCALPANTEUCTLI but I've no way of checking it. Maybe someone with a >dictionary at >hand could look it up and confirm. I'm afraid I can't help you with the >evening version, >though. > >Best of luck >David Gloster > > >Heather Hess wrote: > > > Frances and Listeros: Could you please give the Nahuatl (and spanish) >word > > for Venus. Thanks! Yolohtzin > > _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From heatherhess at hotmail.com Fri Dec 1 02:29:05 2000 From: heatherhess at hotmail.com (Heather Hess) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 21:29:05 -0500 Subject: Tezcatlipoca Message-ID: Does anyone know which foot of Tezcatlipoca's was replaced with a Smoking Mirror? Yolohtzin _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From chapulin_cd at yahoo.com Fri Dec 1 03:36:33 2000 From: chapulin_cd at yahoo.com (Cristobal Aguilar) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 19:36:33 -0800 Subject: Query Message-ID: I need a word and phrase translated into nahuatl. I would greatly appreciate the following words and/or phrases translated... fireman he handles fire he who handles fire he carries fire he waves fire he is waving fire he has fire In particular, the word fireman is of greatest need. I don't have a complete understanding of the nahuatl language so I did not know how to phrase the word and phrases in English. Again, I greatly appreciate any help with this matter. CD chapulin_cd at yahoo.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. http://shopping.yahoo.com/ From mmontcha at oregonvos.net Fri Dec 1 03:54:34 2000 From: mmontcha at oregonvos.net (Matthew Montchalin) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 19:54:34 -0800 Subject: Query In-Reply-To: <20001201033633.4629.qmail@web1701.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, Cristobal Aguilar wrote: |I need a word and phrase translated into nahuatl. I |would greatly appreciate the following words and/or |phrases translated... | | fireman | he handles fire | he who handles fire | he carries fire | he waves fire | he is waving fire | he has fire | |In particular, the word fireman is of greatest need. I could use these terms also. Also, one who is a burn victim or fire victim. What would that be in Nahuatl? Does it make a difference where the person has been burned? For instance, if one's hands are burned, or if one has been burned all over? |I don't have a complete understanding of the nahuatl |language so I did not know how to phrase the word and |phrases in English. Again, I greatly appreciate any |help with this matter. From micc at home.com Fri Dec 1 04:57:45 2000 From: micc at home.com (mario) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 20:57:45 -0800 Subject: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" Message-ID: in the mesoamerican belief system of my ancestors, Venus had two names reflecting its two aspects. In the Nahuatl speaking world, Venus as the morning star was known as TLAHUIZCALPANTEKWTLI": I believe from Tlahuiz(tli) "light, dawn" + cal(li) house + Pan(tli) wall + tekwtli (more commonly written as tecutli or teuctli, both of which do an injustice to the "kw" sound, which is pronounced at the same time) "The lord of the house of the wall of light" or the lord of the house of dawn. Venus as the evening star was known as "Xolotl" which is either "young page" or "Monster" I think that the difference in meaning is probably due to vowel length difference. I lent my trusty Analytical dictionary of Nahuatl by Frances Karttunen, to my son at UCLA, so I am lost as to the finer points of these definitions. I am sure someone more enlightened than myself can fill in the correct facts to this humble offering. Good luck to you!!! mario e. aguilar www.aguila.blanca.com Heather Hess wrote: > Hi! I actually remember seeing a reference of Venus in Nahuatl and can't > remember where but this sounds familiar! Yolohtzin > > >From: David Gloster > >Reply-To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu > >To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu > >Subject: Re: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" > >Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 22:33:16 +0100 > > > >As no one else has yet come forth with an answer, here's my try: > > > >I seem to remember that Venus had two names in Nahuatl depending on whether > >it was > >visible as the morning star or the evening star. I think the morning name > >was > >TLAHUIZCALPANTEUCTLI but I've no way of checking it. Maybe someone with a > >dictionary at > >hand could look it up and confirm. I'm afraid I can't help you with the > >evening version, > >though. > > > >Best of luck > >David Gloster > > > > > >Heather Hess wrote: > > > > > Frances and Listeros: Could you please give the Nahuatl (and spanish) > >word > > > for Venus. Thanks! Yolohtzin > > > > > > _____________________________________________________________________________________ > Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From micc at home.com Fri Dec 1 05:00:10 2000 From: micc at home.com (mario) Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 21:00:10 -0800 Subject: Tezcatlipoca Message-ID: Off the top of my head, as a wild guess, I would venture to say the left foot was, since the left (as in latin Siniestre???) was held as the side of magic, sorcery and "the unknown". i.e. huitzilopochtli............... But then again, I could be off on weak footing....... mario Heather Hess wrote: > Does anyone know which foot of Tezcatlipoca's was replaced with a Smoking > Mirror? > > Yolohtzin > > _____________________________________________________________________________________ > Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Fri Dec 1 15:20:01 2000 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 10:20:01 -0500 Subject: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" In-Reply-To: <3A272FC9.C97DF4B6@home.com> Message-ID: This sounds good. Was morning Venus also referred as quelzalcoatl? On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, mario wrote: > in the mesoamerican belief system of my ancestors, Venus had two names reflecting its two > aspects. > > In the Nahuatl speaking world, Venus as the morning star was known as > TLAHUIZCALPANTEKWTLI": I believe from Tlahuiz(tli) "light, dawn" + cal(li) house + > Pan(tli) wall + tekwtli (more commonly written as tecutli or teuctli, both of which do > an injustice to the "kw" sound, which is pronounced at the same time) "The lord of the > house of the wall of light" or the lord of the house of dawn. > > Venus as the evening star was known as "Xolotl" which is either "young page" or "Monster" > > I think that the difference in meaning is probably due to vowel length difference. > > I lent my trusty Analytical dictionary of Nahuatl by Frances Karttunen, to my son at > UCLA, so I am lost as to the finer points of these definitions. > > I am sure someone more enlightened than myself can fill in the correct facts to this > humble > offering. > > Good luck to you!!! > > mario e. aguilar > www.aguila.blanca.com > > Heather Hess wrote: > > > Hi! I actually remember seeing a reference of Venus in Nahuatl and can't > > remember where but this sounds familiar! Yolohtzin > > > > >From: David Gloster > > >Reply-To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu > > >To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu > > >Subject: Re: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" > > >Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 22:33:16 +0100 > > > > > >As no one else has yet come forth with an answer, here's my try: > > > > > >I seem to remember that Venus had two names in Nahuatl depending on whether > > >it was > > >visible as the morning star or the evening star. I think the morning name > > >was > > >TLAHUIZCALPANTEUCTLI but I've no way of checking it. Maybe someone with a > > >dictionary at > > >hand could look it up and confirm. I'm afraid I can't help you with the > > >evening version, > > >though. > > > > > >Best of luck > > >David Gloster > > > > > > > > >Heather Hess wrote: > > > > > > > Frances and Listeros: Could you please give the Nahuatl (and spanish) > > >word > > > > for Venus. Thanks! Yolohtzin > > > > > > > > > > _____________________________________________________________________________________ > > Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com > > Michael McCafferty 307 Memorial Hall Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405 mmccaffe at indiana.edu ******************************************************************************* "So, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" -Chico Marx ******************************************************************************* From micc at home.com Fri Dec 1 15:21:50 2000 From: micc at home.com (mario) Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 07:21:50 -0800 Subject: Calendar Message-ID: The Azteca calendar is not a calendar a all. It is a sun stone that relates the history of the past four suns, and the cycle of the current fifth sun. as such it never ends. Matthew Vogel wrote: > Just a naive question... I heard that the aztec calendar had a definite > end somewhere in the near future. Is this true?, and if so when would that > be? From micc at home.com Fri Dec 1 15:45:40 2000 From: micc at home.com (mario) Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 07:45:40 -0800 Subject: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" Message-ID: TLAHUIZCALPANTEKWTLI was seen as an "aspect" or version of Quetzalcoatl. I understand that there is strong evidence for Venus as the morning star, being a war instigating symbol amongst the Teotihuacano people, and amongst the Maya. Someone else can probably give you better info in that regard. mario www.aguila.blanca.com Michael Mccafferty wrote: > This sounds good. Was morning Venus also referred as quelzalcoatl? > > On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, mario wrote: > > > in the mesoamerican belief system of my ancestors, Venus had two names reflecting its two > > aspects. > > > > In the Nahuatl speaking world, Venus as the morning star was known as > > TLAHUIZCALPANTEKWTLI": I believe from Tlahuiz(tli) "light, dawn" + cal(li) house + > > Pan(tli) wall + tekwtli (more commonly written as tecutli or teuctli, both of which do > > an injustice to the "kw" sound, which is pronounced at the same time) "The lord of the > > house of the wall of light" or the lord of the house of dawn. > > > > Venus as the evening star was known as "Xolotl" which is either "young page" or "Monster" > > > > I think that the difference in meaning is probably due to vowel length difference. > > > > I lent my trusty Analytical dictionary of Nahuatl by Frances Karttunen, to my son at > > UCLA, so I am lost as to the finer points of these definitions. > > > > I am sure someone more enlightened than myself can fill in the correct facts to this > > humble > > offering. > > > > Good luck to you!!! > > > > mario e. aguilar > > www.aguila.blanca.com > > > > Heather Hess wrote: > > > > > Hi! I actually remember seeing a reference of Venus in Nahuatl and can't > > > remember where but this sounds familiar! Yolohtzin > > > > > > >From: David Gloster > > > >Reply-To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu > > > >To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu > > > >Subject: Re: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" > > > >Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 22:33:16 +0100 > > > > > > > >As no one else has yet come forth with an answer, here's my try: > > > > > > > >I seem to remember that Venus had two names in Nahuatl depending on whether > > > >it was > > > >visible as the morning star or the evening star. I think the morning name > > > >was > > > >TLAHUIZCALPANTEUCTLI but I've no way of checking it. Maybe someone with a > > > >dictionary at > > > >hand could look it up and confirm. I'm afraid I can't help you with the > > > >evening version, > > > >though. > > > > > > > >Best of luck > > > >David Gloster > > > > > > > > > > > >Heather Hess wrote: > > > > > > > > > Frances and Listeros: Could you please give the Nahuatl (and spanish) > > > >word > > > > > for Venus. Thanks! Yolohtzin > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _____________________________________________________________________________________ > > > Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com > > > > > > Michael McCafferty > 307 Memorial Hall > Indiana University > Bloomington, Indiana > 47405 > mmccaffe at indiana.edu > > ******************************************************************************* > "So, who you gonna believe, > me or your own eyes?" > > -Chico Marx > > ******************************************************************************* From clayton at indiana.edu Fri Dec 1 15:45:47 2000 From: clayton at indiana.edu (mary l. clayton) Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 10:45:47 -0500 Subject: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" In-Reply-To: <3A272FC9.C97DF4B6@home.com> Message-ID: Mario, I think more than likely, the 'PAN' part is the postposition 'pan' meaning "place", giving the whole "word" the meaning 'dawn-house-place-lord'. And Joe campbell (husband), who is looking over my shoulder as I write, adds that without the 'tekwtli' the word is 'tlahuizcalpan', rather than 'tlahuizcalpantli'. Mary On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, mario wrote: > In the Nahuatl speaking world, Venus as the morning star was known as > TLAHUIZCALPANTEKWTLI": I believe from Tlahuiz(tli) "light, dawn" + > cal(li) house + Pan(tli) wall + tekwtli "The lord of the house of the wall of light" or the lord of the house of dawn. From cberry at cinenet.net Fri Dec 1 18:18:59 2000 From: cberry at cinenet.net (Craig Berry) Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 10:18:59 -0800 Subject: Calendar In-Reply-To: <3A27C20E.6484CBB5@home.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 1 Dec 2000, mario wrote: > The Azteca calendar is not a calendar a all. > It is a sun stone that relates the history of the past four suns, and the > cycle of the current fifth sun. The sunstone is not a calendar per se, but it does display the primary features of the Nahua calendar, including the day signs and the five suns. > as such it never ends. Note that the poster's question was about the calendar, not the sunstone. -- | Craig Berry - http://www.cinenet.net/~cberry/ --*-- "There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter | of fact, it's all dark." - Pink Floyd From micc at home.com Sat Dec 2 02:58:39 2000 From: micc at home.com (mario) Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 18:58:39 -0800 Subject: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" Message-ID: Dear Mary, Thanks for the clarification. I also wondered about the "pan" part. "mary l. clayton" wrote: > Mario, > I think more than likely, the 'PAN' part is the postposition 'pan' > meaning "place", giving the whole "word" the meaning > 'dawn-house-place-lord'. > And Joe campbell (husband), who is looking over my shoulder as I > write, adds that without the 'tekwtli' the word is 'tlahuizcalpan', rather > than 'tlahuizcalpantli'. > > Mary > > On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, mario wrote: > > > In the Nahuatl speaking world, Venus as the morning star was known as > > TLAHUIZCALPANTEKWTLI": I believe from Tlahuiz(tli) "light, dawn" + > > cal(li) house + Pan(tli) wall + tekwtli > > "The lord of the house of the wall of light" or the lord of the house of > dawn. From Rmedinagarcia at aol.com Wed Dec 6 19:26:44 2000 From: Rmedinagarcia at aol.com (Rmedinagarcia at aol.com) Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 14:26:44 EST Subject: Query: Nahuatl for "Venus" Message-ID: I read about the relationship between Venus and warfare in Warlords of the Ancient Americas by Peter G. Tsouras. The author writes that Teotihuacan created a military empire in part dictated by 'Star Wars,' a ritualized form of warfare in part dictated by Venus. Below is the footnote for the most relevant proponent of a similar view. I hope it helps. John B. Carlson, "Venus-Regulated Warfare and Ritual Sacrifice in Mesoamerica" ed. by Clive L. N. Ruggles and Nocholas J. Saunders Astronomies and Cultures (1993). From heatherhess at hotmail.com Thu Dec 7 05:29:32 2000 From: heatherhess at hotmail.com (Heather Hess) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 00:29:32 -0500 Subject: Avena Sativa in Nahuatl? Message-ID: Does anyone know the Nahuatl name for Oatstraw (eng.) Avena Sativa (spanish)? Thanks! And thanks for the info regarding Tezcatlipoca's 'left' foot. My computer is being moved so I will get back to the Tezcatlipoca messages on the weekend. Yolohtzin _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com From schwallr at selway.umt.edu Thu Dec 7 15:34:17 2000 From: schwallr at selway.umt.edu (John F. Schwaller) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 08:34:17 -0700 Subject: forwarded message Message-ID: >To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu >From: Bernard Ortiz de Montellano >Subject: Re: Avena Sativa in Nahuatl? >Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" > > > >Does anyone know the Nahuatl name for Oatstraw (eng.) Avena Sativa > >(spanish)? Thanks! > > > >Oats = avena (Sp) =Avena sativa is an Old World domesticate not a New >World plant > > > > > >And thanks for the info regarding Tezcatlipoca's 'left' foot. > > > >The missing foot is the right foot, at least in the Borgia group codices > > > > My computer is being moved so I will get back to the Tezcatlipoca > >messages on the weekend. > > > >Yolohtzin > > John Frederick Schwaller schwallr at selway.umt.edu Associate Provost 406-243-4722 The University of Montana FAX 406-243-5937 http://www.umt.edu/provost/ From delia at ucla.edu Thu Dec 7 21:43:20 2000 From: delia at ucla.edu (Delia Cosentino) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 16:43:20 -0500 Subject: Nazareo Message-ID: Does anyone know offhand if Xaltocan cacique Pablo Nazareo's Latin letter to the Spanish Crown has been translated and/or analyzed? Any information would be appreciated! Thanks, Delia A. Cosentino UCLA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Huaxyacac at aol.com Thu Dec 7 22:25:50 2000 From: Huaxyacac at aol.com (Huaxyacac at aol.com) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 17:25:50 EST Subject: Nazareo Message-ID: Delia, There are actually several letters. Somewhere I've got a Mexican edition of them with translation, and if no one else comes up with it, I'll dig up the title. Alec Christensen About Anthropology Guide http://anthropology.about.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dcwright at prodigy.net.mx Thu Dec 7 22:47:15 2000 From: dcwright at prodigy.net.mx (David Wright) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 16:47:15 -0600 Subject: Nazareo Message-ID: Delia: Agust?n Millares Carlo's Spanish translation of the letter you mention can be had in Epistolario de Nueva Espa?a, 1505-1818, vol. 10, Francisco del Paso y Troncoso, compiler, Mexico City, Antigua Librer?a Robledo, 1940, pp. 109-129; the translator warns that don Pablo's Latin presented a challenge. Saludos, David Wright UVM-PSMA ----- Mensaje original ----- De: Delia Cosentino Para: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu Enviado: Jueves 7 de Diciembre de 2000 3:43 PM Asunto: Nazareo Does anyone know offhand if Xaltocan cacique Pablo Nazareo's Latin letter to the Spanish Crown has been translated and/or analyzed? Any information would be appreciated! Thanks, Delia A. Cosentino UCLA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dcwright at prodigy.net.mx Thu Dec 7 22:53:02 2000 From: dcwright at prodigy.net.mx (David Wright) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 16:53:02 -0600 Subject: Nazareo Message-ID: Alec: My source only has one letter. What are the others? Have other versions been published, besides the Epistolario translation I mentioned in my last note? If so, I would love to have the bibliographical data so that I might track them down. David Wright -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dcwright at prodigy.net.mx Thu Dec 7 22:59:08 2000 From: dcwright at prodigy.net.mx (David Wright) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2000 16:59:08 -0600 Subject: Nazareo Message-ID: Delia: One more thing: Pedro Carrasco Pizana makes use of Nazareo's letter in his historical reconstruction of the "Reino otomi de Xaltocan". See his book Los otomies, cultura e historia prehispanica de los pueblos mesoamericanos de habla otomiana, Mexico City, Instituto de Historia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico/Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, 1950, pp. 258-260. David Wright -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Huaxyacac at aol.com Mon Dec 11 02:52:21 2000 From: Huaxyacac at aol.com (Huaxyacac at aol.com) Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 21:52:21 EST Subject: Nazareo Message-ID: David, The volume I have is La ensenanza del Latin a los Indios, by Ignacio Osorio Romero, UNAM, 1990. He includes three letters by Nazareo, dated 1556, 1561, and 1566. The third is by far the longest, and that is the one published in ENE. I bought the book several years ago and began dabbling in it with my schoolboy Latin; I never got very far, although I would like to some day. Alec Christensen About Anthropology Guide http://anthropology.about.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From carlossn at ui.boe.es Mon Dec 11 08:15:02 2000 From: carlossn at ui.boe.es (Carlos Santamarina) Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 09:15:02 +0100 Subject: Nazareo Message-ID: Delia: this is the information I have. Good luck: PASO Y TRONCOSO, Francisco del (ed.) 1940 "Carta al rey don Felipe II, de don Pablo Nazareo de Xaltocan...", Epistolario de Nueva Espa?a, vol. X (:89-129), M?xico. COMENTARIO: Epistolario de Nueva Espa?a, 568 (en lat?n) y 568bis (traducci?n al espa?ol). Se escribi? en "M?xico a 17 de marzo de 1566". Hay un error en la traducci?n, que Jos? Luis de Rojas ha se?alado en "Los ind?genas de la Nueva Espa?a y la lengua latina". Dona Ferentes. Homenaje a F. Torrent (:107-115), Jes?s de la Villa (ed.), Ediciones Cl?sicas, Madrid. La carta la escribe en lat?n Pablo Nazareo declar?ndose descendiente de los se?ores naturales de Xaltocan y de M?xico, extendi?ndose en datos geneal?gicos, y reclamando posesiones al rey de Espa?a. D. Pablo Nazareo "se cri? desde su ni?ez con los doce primeros frailes y con los dem?s que despu?s dellos fueron ? aquella tierra, y era muy virtuoso y muy buen cristiano, y muy bien doctrinado y muy buen latino y ret?rico, l?gico y fil?sofo, y no mal poeta en todo g?nero de versos, y fu? muchos a?os rector y preceptor en el colegio de los indios desde que se fund? en el Tlatelulco, que llaman Santiago, y ten?a algunas pinturas de las antig?edades de aquella tierra (...) y era casado con una hija de un hermano de Motenzuma, llamado D. Juan Axayacac, y (...) ten?a gran noticia de todo lo de aquella tierra, y ayud? ? los espa?oles en la conquista della; y lo ten?a su yerno D. Pablo en su casa porque estaba muy pobre, aunque ?l no ten?a m?s que cien pesos que por una Real C?dula se le hizo merced en quitas y vacaciones cada a?o." [Garc?a Icazbalceta, Documentos para la Historia de M?xico, tomo III: XXXI] -- Carlos Santamarina ------------------------------ ------------------------------ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From delia at ucla.edu Mon Dec 11 23:03:16 2000 From: delia at ucla.edu (Delia Cosentino) Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 18:03:16 -0500 Subject: Sahagun Message-ID: Thanks to all for information on don Pablo Nazareo. Now I wonder if anyone is familiar with Banamex's 1982 edition of Sahagun's Historia general and whether or not it might add important value (in terms of content) to a scholarly collection? It was advertised as being "la primera version integra del texto castellano del manuscrito," even though I was under the impression that there was no complete Spanish translation of the Florentine Codex. Is this one actually complete? I am inquiring on behalf of a research institution that is considering the acquisition of this particular edition, which I understand consists of 500 copies printed on rag paper. I am interested in information on how it might specifically supplant or complement other versions of the Historia. Contact me directly if appropriate. Thanks, Delia Cosentino Delia at ucla.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From owner-nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu Mon Dec 11 23:39:12 2000 From: owner-nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu (owner-nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu) Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 16:39:12 -0700 Subject: No subject Message-ID: by server2.umt.edu (8.10.2/8.10.2) with ESMTP id eBBNPtc15786 for ; Mon, 11 Dec 2000 16:25:55 0700 (MST) MessageId: <5.0.0.25.0.20001211162918.01c9f890 at selway.umt.edu> XSender: schwallr at selway.umt.edu XMailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.0 Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 16:29:32 0700 To: nahuatl at server2.umt.edu From: "John F. Schwaller" Subject: Subscription MimeVersion: 1.0 ContentType: text/plain; charset="usascii"; format=flowed Sender: owner-nahuat-l at majordomo.umt.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: nahuat-l at majordomo.umt.edu Dear Subscribers, Many of you may be leaving for Christmas vacations. If you plan to be away from your computer for any significant length of time, please consider unsubscribing to this discussion list. If your mailbox becomes full in your absence it can potentially cause serious consequences, as your server will send out error messages. This will be addressed to all 300+ subscribers. Fortunately the majordomo software catches most of the error messages before they are distributed, but some can sneak through and cause real problems. To unsubscribe, please send this message: unsubscribe nahuatl to this address: majordomo at majordomo.umt.edu Thank you all very much. J. F. Schwaller List Owner John Frederick Schwaller schwallr at selway.umt.edu Associate Provost 406-243-4722 The University of Montana FAX 406-243-5937 http://www.umt.edu/history/Nahuatl From CHMuths at aol.com Tue Dec 12 22:02:23 2000 From: CHMuths at aol.com (CHMuths at aol.com) Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 17:02:23 EST Subject: Nazareo Message-ID: Cecy, do you know this? Can one get those books? Love Christa From schwallr at selway.umt.edu Mon Dec 18 18:19:25 2000 From: schwallr at selway.umt.edu (John F. Schwaller) Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 11:19:25 -0700 Subject: Name of creation god Message-ID: I have just finished Kay Almere Read's Book, _Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos_. In it she has the habit of referring to Tecuciztecatl as Tecui?iztecatl. First of all the c-cedilla (?) is not needed before the -i- since the -c- will be soft. But the other difference is the Tecuciz-, versus Tecuiciz- Dibble and Anderson consistently name the god Tecuciztecatl. In his book, _Myths of Ancient Mexico_ Graulich gives the god the name of Tecciztecatl and translates it as "He of the Conch Shell" I think that Read is looking at an underlying meaning by changing the spelling to Tecuiciz- Karttunen gives the following: "Tecui:n(i) - for a fire to flare up or for one's heart to pound" This clearly recalls the actions of Tecuciztecatl who along with Nanahuatzin (Nanahuatl) cast themselves into the sacred fire at the creation of the Fifth Sun. The question then becomes, What does Tecuciztecatl mean, as opposed to Tecuiciztecatl? There are lots of other threads to follow, but these are the ones which come to mind. J. F. Schwaller John Frederick Schwaller schwallr at selway.umt.edu Associate Provost 406-243-4722 The University of Montana FAX 406-243-5937 http://www.umt.edu/history/Nahuatl From CCBtlevine at aol.com Tue Dec 19 01:57:24 2000 From: CCBtlevine at aol.com (CCBtlevine at aol.com) Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 20:57:24 EST Subject: Name of creation god Message-ID: In a message dated Mon, 18 Dec 2000 1:21:25 PM Eastern Standard Time, "John F. Schwaller" writes: Graulich gives the god the name of Tecciztecatl and translates it as "He of the Conch Shell" I think that Read is looking at an underlying meaning by changing the spelling to Tecuiciz- Karttunen gives the following: "Tecui:n(i) - for a fire to flare up or for one's heart to pound" This clearly recalls the actions of Tecuciztecatl who along with Nanahuatzin (Nanahuatl) cast themselves into the sacred fire at the creation of the Fifth Sun. The question then becomes, What does Tecuciztecatl mean, as opposed to Tecuiciztecatl? Reply: As far as your comment is about Graulich, I recall reading somewhere, that wearing of a conch shell was a kind of kenning meaning that the person wore a hood. So that the depiction of a person wearing a shell would be a way of saying that the person wore a cape with a hood. As far as Tecuiciztecatl. Perhaps it has something to do with being the lord of the dawn. This is from tecuhtli and iciuh. Tom Levine From malinal at evhr.net Tue Dec 19 04:47:33 2000 From: malinal at evhr.net (alexis wimmer) Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 05:47:33 +0100 Subject: Name of creation god Message-ID: John Frederick Schwaller wrote : > I have just finished Kay Almere Read's Book, _Time and Sacrifice in the > Aztec Cosmos_. In it she has the habit of referring to Tecuciztecatl as > Tecui?iztecatl. First of all the c-cedilla (?) is not needed before the > -i- since the -c- will be soft. But the other difference is the Tecuciz-, > versus Tecuiciz- Dibble and Anderson consistently name the god > Tecuciztecatl. In his book, _Myths of Ancient Mexico_ Graulich gives the > god the name of Tecciztecatl and translates it as "He of the Conch > Shell" I think that Read is looking at an underlying meaning by changing > the spelling to Tecuiciz- tecuciztli, teucciztli, tecciztli and tecuihciztli are variants of the same noon. tecu- and teuc- are two orthographic variants tec- is a phonetic variant. and tecuih- is an archaic form of teuc-tli, lord. (also spelled tecutli or tecuhtli). See http://www.ifrance.com/nahuatl/t/nahuatlTECUAN.html#TECUIHTLI Alexis. From schwallr at selway.umt.edu Thu Dec 21 15:42:36 2000 From: schwallr at selway.umt.edu (John F. Schwaller) Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 08:42:36 -0700 Subject: Signing off error Message-ID: When I sent out the instructions on how to sign off from the list over the holidays, I inadvertently gave the name of the list as nahuatl It is, of course, nahuat-l I am truly sorry for any confusion and for impugning the intelligence of anyone whom I may have confused John Frederick Schwaller schwallr at selway.umt.edu Associate Provost 406-243-4722 The University of Montana FAX 406-243-5937 http://www.umt.edu/provost/ From davius_sanctex at hotmail.com Tue Dec 26 22:43:47 2000 From: davius_sanctex at hotmail.com (Davius Sanctex) Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 22:43:47 -0000 Subject: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order Message-ID: 1) Word order in classical nahuatl 2) Word order in ancient nahuatl 3) Word order in modern nahuatl _________________________ 1) WORD ORDER IN CLASSICAL NAHUATL Word order in classical nahuatl is very free, althought it seems to exists a dominat word order in wich verb antecedes objetct and subject: VSO: kwa in okichtli in michin 'the man eat the fish' VOS: *kwa in michin in okichtli 'the man eat the fish' (I am not sure wether these two sentences to be equivalent) My question is this: Is there some rule related to relative animacy of agent and pacient determining preference by any of these two forms (like in some mayan languages)? ___________________________________ 2) WORD ORDER IN ANCIENT NAHUATL It seems that dominant order in ancient nahuatl had been SOV, mainly because nahuatl is very consistent head-adjunct language (pospositions, adjectives antecedes nouns also relatives do) and on the light of Greenberg tendencies seems natural to be a SOV language also. And in addition we have the evidence of related languages like huichol indicates: Huichol: nee uuki ne.wa.zeiyas.tia Nahuatl: newa ichpochtli ni.kim.itt.ati.lia 'I showed anything to the girls' Is reasonable this to argue that ancient nahuatl was SOV language? It is possible that change in dominant order were caused by totonac-tepehuan incluence or by otomang influence? _________________________ 3) WORD ORDER IN MODERN N?HUATL In Guerrero state dialects of modern nahuatl, and under influence of spanish, the main order is SVO like that of spanish. But is this situation general? I believe that this is not case in some dialects like that of Ameyaltepec, is it? _________________________ _________________________ 1) ORDEN SINT?CTICO EN N?HUATL CL?SICO El orden sint?ctico en n?huatl cl?sico es muy libre, sin embargo parece existir un orden dominante en el que el verbo antecede a objeto y sujeto: VOS: kwa in okichtli in michin 'el hombre se come el pez' VOS: *kwa in michin in okichtli 'el hombre se come el pez' (no estoy seguro de la segunda de ellas, con ese significado) Pero existe alguna regla relacionada con el grado de animaci?n respectivo de agente y paciente que determine una preferencia sobre una u otra tal como sucede en las lenguas mayas. _________________________ 2) ORDEN SINT?CTICO EN N?HUATL ANTIGUO Parece que el orden sint?ctico en antiguo n?huatl pudiera haber sido SOV, principalmente porque el n?huatl es un lengua modificado-modifificador bastante consistente y a la luz del trabajo de Greenberg parece natural que tambi?n fuera una lengua de tipo SOV. Adem?s tenemos la evidencia de lenguas emparentadas, como el huichol: Huichol: nee uuki ne.wa.zeiyas.tia Nahuatl: newa ichpochtli ni.kim.itt.ati.lia 'Yo se lo mostr? a las chicas' ?Es razonalbe argumentar en base a esto que en n?huatl era una lengua tipo SOV? ?Es psoible que este cambio en el orden sint?ctico dominante se debiera al totonaco/tepehua o a alguna lengua otomang? _________________________ 3) WORD ORDER IN MODERN N?HUATL En los dialectos del estado de Guerrero, y bajo influencia del castellano, el orden principal es SVO como el de esta lengua. Pero sucede esto en todos los otros dialectos? Creo que no es el caso, en algunos dialecto como el dialecto de Ameyaltepec, es as?? _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From macswan at asu.edu Wed Dec 27 03:09:02 2000 From: macswan at asu.edu (Jeff MacSwan) Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2000 20:09:02 -0700 Subject: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Davius and others, I wrote a paper on this that might be of some interest. It discusses Nahuatl basic word order in the modern varieties in connection with Mark Baker's recent proposals in his book _Polysynthesis Parameter_. Baker claims that modern Natuatl word order remains extremely flexible, due to its being a pronominal argument language. I argue that it is not flexible, and that Nahuatl is not a pronominal argument language. The article, which appeared in the Southwest J of Linguistics, is available online at http://www.public.asu.edu/~macswan/swjl.pdf Quoting Davius Sanctex : > 1) Word order in classical nahuatl > 2) Word order in ancient nahuatl > 3) Word order in modern nahuatl > _________________________ > 1) WORD ORDER IN CLASSICAL NAHUATL > > Word order in classical nahuatl is very free, althought it > seems to exists a dominat word order in wich verb antecedes > objetct and subject: > > VSO: kwa in okichtli in michin 'the man eat the fish' > VOS: *kwa in michin in okichtli 'the man eat the fish' > > (I am not sure wether these two sentences to be equivalent) > My question is this: Is there some rule related to relative > animacy of agent and pacient determining preference by any > of these two forms (like in some mayan languages)? > ___________________________________ > 2) WORD ORDER IN ANCIENT NAHUATL > > It seems that dominant order in ancient nahuatl had been SOV, > mainly because nahuatl is very consistent head-adjunct language > (pospositions, adjectives antecedes nouns also relatives do) > and on the light of Greenberg tendencies seems natural to be > a SOV language also. And in addition we have the evidence of > related languages like huichol indicates: > > Huichol: nee uuki ne.wa.zeiyas.tia > Nahuatl: newa ichpochtli ni.kim.itt.ati.lia > 'I showed anything to the girls' > > Is reasonable this to argue that ancient nahuatl was SOV > language? It is possible that change in dominant order were > caused by totonac-tepehuan incluence or by otomang influence? > > _________________________ > 3) WORD ORDER IN MODERN N?HUATL > > In Guerrero state dialects of modern nahuatl, and under > influence of spanish, the main order is SVO like that of > spanish. But is this situation general? > I believe that this is not case in some dialects like that > of Ameyaltepec, is it? > > _________________________ > _________________________ > 1) ORDEN SINT?CTICO EN N?HUATL CL?SICO > > El orden sint?ctico en n?huatl cl?sico es muy libre, sin embargo > parece existir un orden dominante en el que el verbo antecede a > objeto y sujeto: > > VOS: kwa in okichtli in michin 'el hombre se come el pez' > VOS: *kwa in michin in okichtli 'el hombre se come el pez' > > (no estoy seguro de la segunda de ellas, con ese significado) > Pero existe alguna regla relacionada con el grado de animaci?n > respectivo de agente y paciente que determine una preferencia > sobre una u otra tal como sucede en las lenguas mayas. > _________________________ > 2) ORDEN SINT?CTICO EN N?HUATL ANTIGUO > > Parece que el orden sint?ctico en antiguo n?huatl pudiera > haber sido SOV, principalmente porque el n?huatl es un lengua > modificado-modifificador bastante consistente y a la luz del > trabajo de Greenberg parece natural que tambi?n fuera una lengua > de tipo SOV. Adem?s tenemos la evidencia de lenguas emparentadas, > como el huichol: > > Huichol: nee uuki ne.wa.zeiyas.tia > Nahuatl: newa ichpochtli ni.kim.itt.ati.lia > 'Yo se lo mostr? a las chicas' > > ?Es razonalbe argumentar en base a esto que en n?huatl era > una lengua tipo SOV? ?Es psoible que este cambio en el orden > sint?ctico dominante se debiera al totonaco/tepehua o a > alguna lengua otomang? > > _________________________ > 3) WORD ORDER IN MODERN N?HUATL > > En los dialectos del estado de Guerrero, y bajo influencia > del castellano, el orden principal es SVO como el de esta > lengua. Pero sucede esto en todos los otros dialectos? > > Creo que no es el caso, en algunos dialecto como el dialecto > de Ameyaltepec, es as?? > > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at > http://www.hotmail.com. > > -------------------------- Jeff MacSwan, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Language and Literacy Arizona State University PO Box 872011 Tempe, AZ 85287-2011 (480) 965-4967 (voice) (480) 965-4942 (fax) macswan at asu.edu (email) coe.asu.edu/macswan (web) From schwallr at selway.umt.edu Wed Dec 27 15:36:02 2000 From: schwallr at selway.umt.edu (John F. Schwaller) Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 08:36:02 -0700 Subject: Fwd: we-exclusive Message-ID: >Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 21:50:27 +0000 >From: anthony.appleyard at umist.ac.uk >Sender: Anthony Appleyard >Subject: we-exclusive > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >On 16 May 2000 "r. joe campbell" (Subject: Re: we, >you, y'all) wrote in response to a query by me:- > > >, > > The answer to both of questions is "yes". In,, the > > first person prefix 'ni-' is combined with the plural suffix '-h' to > > yield a first person plural exclusive (i.e., 'we, excluding you') > > which contrasts with their first person plural inclusive (i.e., the > > """normal""" `we', shared with all other dialects). So: > > nipata:ni I fly nipata:nih we (not incl. you) fly > > tipata:nih we (general) fly > > tipata:ni you fly > > [[Note that it is a 't' dialect -- that is, where other dialects have > > the "expected" /tl/, Mecayapan, like some other eastern dialects, has > > /t/]] > >Do these dialects also have special forms for "the house belonging to >us-exclusive" and for the separate pronoun "we-exclusive", which would >be distinct from {tocal} and {tehhua:n(tin)}? If so, what are they? Is >the separate pronoun form *{nehhua:n(tin)}? >-- >Anthony Appleyard From schwallr at selway.umt.edu Fri Dec 29 15:31:28 2000 From: schwallr at selway.umt.edu (John F. Schwaller) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 08:31:28 -0700 Subject: Fwd: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order Message-ID: >Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 13:17:27 +0000 >From: Anthony Appleyard >Subject: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > Davius Sanctex wrote:- > > Word order in classical nahuatl is very free, although it > > seems to exists a dominant word order in which verb antecedes > > object and subject: > > > VSO: kwa in okichtli in michin 'the man eat the fish' > > VOS: *kwa in michin in okichtli 'the man eat the fish' > > (I am not sure whether these two sentences to be equivalent) ... > >In that sort of sentence, with no case endings and free word order, how >is subject is distinguished from object when the distinction is >necessary? For example, anyone who has seen "Jaws" will know that the >above sentence also makes sense with the subject and object swopped. And >there are many other possible sentences where both alternative parsings >make sense, much more so than with this example. >Citlalya:ni: >Anthony Appleyard From mmccaffe at indiana.edu Fri Dec 29 17:40:58 2000 From: mmccaffe at indiana.edu (Michael Mccafferty) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 12:40:58 -0500 Subject: Fwd: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.0.20001229083055.02528ec0@selway.umt.edu> Message-ID: I'm not up on word order in the modern dialects, but check out Andrews' Analytical Grammar of Nahuatl. He has a lot to say on the subject of word order. Michael On Fri, 29 Dec 2000, John F. Schwaller wrote: > > >Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 13:17:27 +0000 > >From: Anthony Appleyard > >Subject: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order > >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > Davius Sanctex wrote:- > > > Word order in classical nahuatl is very free, although it > > > seems to exists a dominant word order in which verb antecedes > > > object and subject: > > > > > VSO: kwa in okichtli in michin 'the man eat the fish' > > > VOS: *kwa in michin in okichtli 'the man eat the fish' > > > (I am not sure whether these two sentences to be equivalent) ... > > > >In that sort of sentence, with no case endings and free word order, how > >is subject is distinguished from object when the distinction is > >necessary? For example, anyone who has seen "Jaws" will know that the > >above sentence also makes sense with the subject and object swopped. And > >there are many other possible sentences where both alternative parsings > >make sense, much more so than with this example. > >Citlalya:ni: > >Anthony Appleyard > > Michael McCafferty 307 Memorial Hall Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405 mmccaffe at indiana.edu ******************************************************************************* "So, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?" -Chico Marx ******************************************************************************* From davius_sanctex at hotmail.com Fri Dec 29 20:12:04 2000 From: davius_sanctex at hotmail.com (Davius Sanctex) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 20:12:04 -0000 Subject: Fwd: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order Message-ID: >VSO: kwa in okichtli in michin 'the man eat the fish' >VOS: *kwa in michin in okichtli 'the man eat the fish' >(I am not sure whether these two sentences to be equivalent) ... >>In that sort of sentence, with no case endings and free word order, how is >>subject is distinguished from object when the distinction is >>necessary? The problem in practices is less accusate; usually a sentence involves two participants of different animacity and it is usual that subject is higher in animacity participant. On the other hand, in many occurrences who is subject and who is object is determined contextually. >For example, anyone who has seen "Jaws" will know that the above sentence >also makes sense with the subject and object >swopped. And there are many other possible sentences where both > >alternative parsings make sense, much more so than with this example. I am not sure is both sentences above are correct with the sense stated, it is possible to be ambiguous sentences of this form. Ma tlakwalkan! David S?nchez _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From karttu at nantucket.net Fri Dec 29 20:15:22 2000 From: karttu at nantucket.net (Frances Karttunen) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 15:15:22 -0500 Subject: Fwd: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order Message-ID: Because it does not mark case on noun phrases, Nahuatl tolerates an enormous amount of ambiguity, not just between subject and direct object, but among direct and oblique objects. One wonders how speakers manage (or managed before Spanish-influenced word-order at least moved subject noun phrases around to preceding the verb). But that is the way with languages. Some languages don't distinguish gender in third-person pronouns (no he/she in Nahuatl or Finnish, as two examples). Some languages do without plural marking (Nahuatl in the case of inanimate nouns). Some omit copula verbs unless they have some really specific role in the sentence (Russian and Nahuatl being alike in this respect.) Some languages do without a future tense (Finnish, which has none at all, and a lot of colloquial Latin American Spanish, which replace the morphological future tense with a periphrastic construction made with ir a). It's a source of endless amazement to people who study multiple languages how varied they are in what they overtly mark (specificity versus nonspecificity in Nahuatl, for instance) and what they express covertly or not at all. (In Finnish the fact that an action will take place in the future rather than happening right now is sometimes revealed by the case of the direct object. Who would have guessed?) Fran ---------- >From: "John F. Schwaller" >To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu >Subject: Fwd: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order >Date: Fri, Dec 29, 2000, 10:31 AM > > >>Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 13:17:27 +0000 >>From: Anthony Appleyard >>Subject: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order >>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> Davius Sanctex wrote:- >> > Word order in classical nahuatl is very free, although it >> > seems to exists a dominant word order in which verb antecedes >> > object and subject: >> >> > VSO: kwa in okichtli in michin 'the man eat the fish' >> > VOS: *kwa in michin in okichtli 'the man eat the fish' >> > (I am not sure whether these two sentences to be equivalent) ... >> >>In that sort of sentence, with no case endings and free word order, how >>is subject is distinguished from object when the distinction is >>necessary? For example, anyone who has seen "Jaws" will know that the >>above sentence also makes sense with the subject and object swopped. And >>there are many other possible sentences where both alternative parsings >>make sense, much more so than with this example. >>Citlalya:ni: >>Anthony Appleyard > From davius_sanctex at hotmail.com Fri Dec 29 21:35:45 2000 From: davius_sanctex at hotmail.com (Davius Sanctex) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 21:35:45 -0000 Subject: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order Message-ID: Dear Jeff MacSwan: I have read carefully your paper on polysunthesis parameter. I thing it is a good work, but I dislike general tone it is too controversial and it seems a a personal attack. One way or another, it is a valuable paper; although it is too collateral to the question of diachronic change in dominant word order. I don't know the work of Baker, and I will silent about the matter. One of my criticism to the paper are: 1) The examples ob langages having properties 2c-2n without being polysinthetic are irrelevant as yourself say and don't disclaim Baker's work. If we discuss the validity of statement "A implies B" it is sophistic mention examples with "B but not A" (these examples are irrelevant). 2)I have carried out a chi-2 stadistical test of the samples you give in page 105 and the result is that there are by no means homogeneous (X2 = 53,91 muy lejos del valor l?mite que es 21,1 dispongo de los c?lculos detallados!). Probabily the samples are excesively reduced to be statiscally significant. In fact, with a confidence of 0,95 the samples don't represent the same population and therefore they correspond to diferent styles. Comparaision by pairs are: Text 1 Text 2 Text 3 Text 4 Text 5 Text 1 __ 12,79 26,56 12,97 5,58 Text 2 __ __ 8,21 4,89 3,58 Text 3 __ __ __ 21,40 7,22 Text 4 __ __ __ __ 6,35 greater this value more the difference between the two samples) Values superior to 7,82 (with confidence 95%) indicate that the two samples are statiscally not homogeneous, for a condidence greater thant 97,5% values must be superior to . Homogeneity: Text 1 Text 2 Text 3 Text 4 Text 5 Text 1 __ no no no yes Text 2 __ __ no yes yes Text 3 __ __ __ no yes Text 4 __ __ __ __ yes Text 1 is (see values of X2) strongly different from others. Text 2 and text 4 are similar, and finally text 5 is similar to all others. Claims that Southeast Puebla Nahuatl is otherwise valuable, as exemple (5) in page 104 shows, but I don't see valuable the evidence from text because they are too different and reduced. Ma tlacualcan ____________________________________________ David S?nchez Molina, Ph. D Profesor Asociado Structures Design in Industrial Engineering Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya Barcelona, Spain david.sanchez-molina at upc.es davius_sanctex at upc.es _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From S.Levack at btinternet.com Fri Dec 29 22:12:16 2000 From: S.Levack at btinternet.com (Simon Levack) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 22:12:16 -0000 Subject: Non-verbal communication Message-ID: Can anyone point me towards any good sources of reference (ideally web-based) on body language and gestures among Nahua speakers - I mean the sort of thing a modern northern European might communicate by nodding or shaking the head, shrugging, raising the eyebrows, etc? Thank you Simon -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davius_sanctex at hotmail.com Fri Dec 29 22:40:19 2000 From: davius_sanctex at hotmail.com (Davius Sanctex) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 22:40:19 -0000 Subject: Reduplication Message-ID: 1) Reduplication in nouns 2) How does reduplication work in verbs? _______________ 1) REDUPLICATION IN NOUNS Nahuatl uses reduplication for two purposes. In nouns it forms plurals like in: sg. to:ch-in /pl. TO:-to:ch-tin 'rabbit' sg. koyo-tl / pl. KO:-koyo-h 'coyote' sg. koa-tl / pl. KO:-koa-h 'snake' sg. tepe:tl / pl. TE:tepe:-meh 'mountain' (and inanimate???) sg. tlaka-tl / pl. TLA:-tlaka-h 'person' sg. teo:-tl / pl. TE:-teo:-meh 'god' Here the rule is simple, first consonant and vowel (lengthened) are reapted, this feature may be that of proto-language; Papago shows: sg. bana / pl. BA:bana = koyo-tl 'coyote' sg. tini / pl. TI:tini = ten-tli 'mouth' sg. kuna / pl. KU:kuna = mamic-tli 'husband' _________________ 2) REDUPLICATION IN VERBS In verbs reduplication indicates frequentative actions. The rule is not simple. Sometimes reduplications first vowel is lengthened. Other is second vowel: me-ME:ya 'to flow out' a:-se-SE:ya 'to cold by means of water; to rot' pi-pi:na-wi 'to feel ashamed' In others, it seems no vowel to be long: kwe-kwets-oa 'to twist' te-pa-pa?iw-a 'to flat' Are there some rule that determines reduplication type in verbs? _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From macswan at asu.edu Fri Dec 29 22:42:31 2000 From: macswan at asu.edu (macswan at asu.edu) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 15:42:31 -0700 Subject: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Fri, 29 Dec 2000, Davius Sanctex wrote: > Dear Jeff MacSwan: > > I have read carefully your paper on polysunthesis > parameter. I thing it is a good work, but I dislike > general tone it is too controversial and it seems a > a personal attack. Sorry you got that impression, David. In fact there is not the slightest hint of a personal attack in my paper. I say Baker makes "ingenius" proposals, and show great respect for his work. But I argue that his basic proposals are wrong, so naturally there is controversy abounding in the text. If you don't like controversy, then you should stand clear of academic writing quite generally. > One way or another, it is a valuable > paper; although it is too collateral to the question of > diachronic change in dominant word order. The paper is not about diachronic change in Nahuatl. You'll find it equally peripheral to any number of topics you care to enumerate. > I don't know the work of Baker, and I will silent about > the matter. One of my criticism to the paper are: > > 1) The examples ob langages having properties 2c-2n without > being polysinthetic are irrelevant as yourself say and don't > disclaim Baker's work. If we discuss the validity of statement > "A implies B" it is sophistic mention examples with "B but not > A" (these examples are irrelevant). This is a good point, which I do point out in the paper. Baker says that all languages which have properties a and b also have c-n. To show this is false, it is sufficient to exhibit one example of a language which has a and b but lacks any one of c-n. I point this out explicitly in the paper, in the context of implicational universals, but want to make a stronger point which guards against quick and easy revisions of the thesis: I wanted to show that for any property c-n, there are languages which have a-b and not one of these, and languages which do not have a-b but do have one of these. In other words, there is no relationship between the cluster of properties Baker outlines. I said all of this in the article, on page 111, where I write: "It should be emphasized that Baker's claims about polysynthetic languages are implicational in nature. If a language has 2a and 2b, then it will also have 2c-2n. To refute this claim, one must simply exhibit a language which has 2a and 2b but lacks one or more of 2c-2n, as I have done here. In additional, however, by pointing out that the linguistic features 2c-2n are in fact quite common across a wide range of languages, I have tried to suggest that the particular cluster of features Baker observes for Mohawk and attributes to other polysynthetic languages is a coincidence and not a consequence of 2a and 2b..." > 2)I have carried out a chi-2 stadistical test of the samples you > give in page 105 and the result is that there are by no means > homogeneous (X2 = 53,91 muy lejos del valor l?mite que es 21,1 > dispongo de los c?lculos detallados!). Probabily the samples are > excesively reduced to be statiscally significant. In fact, with a confidence > of 0,95 the samples don't represent the same population > and therefore they correspond to diferent styles. Comparaision by > pairs are: > ..... > Text 1 is (see values of X2) strongly different from others. > Text 2 and text 4 are similar, and finally text 5 is similar > to all others. Interesting observations, but clearly not relevant to any point I was making. My interest was in showing what is grammatically permissible in Southeast Puebla Nahuatl, not in analyzing stylistic variation amoung storytelling in SE Puebla Nahuatl. Also, because text invites characteristic variation, I caution against exclusive reliance on this sort of evidence, and focus instead on grammaticality judgments collected from native speakers. Taken together, all the evidence suggests that SE Puebla Nahuatl is an SVO language which allows postverbal subjects and occasionally preverbal objects for purposes of focus and contrast. > Claims that Southeast Puebla Nahuatl is otherwise valuable, > as exemple (5) in page 104 shows, but I don't see valuable > the evidence from text because they are too different and > reduced. I think the textual evidence is extremely valuable, and while writers may have tended to use one permissible word order more than another, collectively they defined the same range of permissible word orders that the native speakers (example 5, page 104) did. Thus, with respect to grammaticality -- the topic of the paper -- they are not more varied than the native speaker judgments. The full text of the article is available at http://www.public.asu.edu/~macswan/swjl.pdf Jeff MacSwan Arizona State University From karttu at nantucket.net Fri Dec 29 23:07:45 2000 From: karttu at nantucket.net (Frances Karttunen) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 18:07:45 -0500 Subject: Reduplication Message-ID: Una Canger wrote pretty comprehensively about all forms of reduplication back in the early 80s in a special memorial issue of Texas Linguistic Forum for Fernando Horcasitas. Or have a look in Joe Campbell's and my Foundation Course in Nahuatl Grammar. There are some types of reduplication in regional dialects that we didn't discuss, though. For instance, around Milpa Alta and in Canoa, honorific forms of singular animate nouns reduplicate, which I found very confusing. Fran ---------- >From: "Davius Sanctex" >To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu >Subject: Reduplication >Date: Fri, Dec 29, 2000, 5:40 PM > > > 1) Reduplication in nouns > 2) How does reduplication work in verbs? > _______________ > > 1) REDUPLICATION IN NOUNS > Nahuatl uses reduplication for two purposes. In nouns it forms plurals like > in: > > sg. to:ch-in /pl. TO:-to:ch-tin 'rabbit' > sg. koyo-tl / pl. KO:-koyo-h 'coyote' > sg. koa-tl / pl. KO:-koa-h 'snake' > sg. tepe:tl / pl. TE:tepe:-meh 'mountain' (and inanimate???) > sg. tlaka-tl / pl. TLA:-tlaka-h 'person' > sg. teo:-tl / pl. TE:-teo:-meh 'god' > > Here the rule is simple, first consonant and vowel (lengthened) are reapted, > this feature may be that of proto-language; Papago shows: > > sg. bana / pl. BA:bana = koyo-tl 'coyote' > sg. tini / pl. TI:tini = ten-tli 'mouth' > sg. kuna / pl. KU:kuna = mamic-tli 'husband' > _________________ > > 2) REDUPLICATION IN VERBS > In verbs reduplication indicates frequentative actions. The rule is not > simple. Sometimes reduplications first vowel is lengthened. Other is second > vowel: > > me-ME:ya 'to flow out' > a:-se-SE:ya 'to cold by means of water; to rot' > pi-pi:na-wi 'to feel ashamed' > > In others, it seems no vowel to be long: > > kwe-kwets-oa 'to twist' > te-pa-pa?iw-a 'to flat' > > Are there some rule that determines reduplication type in verbs? > > _________________________________________________________________________ > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. > From davius_sanctex at hotmail.com Sat Dec 30 00:09:03 2000 From: davius_sanctex at hotmail.com (Davius Sanctex) Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 00:09:03 -0000 Subject: Nahuatl names and natality in aztec empire Message-ID: A nice mathematical argument relating name "Teyacapan" to average number for children in Aztec Empire. ____________________________ Bob McCaa points that in a census of 1540 in a group of 1205 women, 313 were named "Teyacapan" (= first born), i.e. 25,04%: I will show that these data implies that the average number per family was at most 5,135 and that 6,88% of couples had not any child! _________________________________________ This number can be related to the average number of children in a family. We assume: 1) Nearly all first born female babies was named "Teyacapan" 2) The probability of borns by unit of time remain uniform for a community and population is stationary. First step: Second hypothesis implies borns can be well modelized by a Poisson distribution, thus the probability of a couple to have k kids is P(k): P(k)= exp(-m)*(m^k)/k! [Where m is the average number of children] Second step: Thus if the probability of a child to belong to a familiy with exactly k kids is p(k): p(k) = P(k)/(1-P(0)) [p(0) is the % of families that have no kid]. Thirst step: If we take a woman at random the probability of being the first kid in a family of k kids is just 1/k [= q(k)]. And thus the probability that a woman to be the first baby of a family is r: r = p(1)*q(1) + p(2)*q(2) + ...+ p(k)*q(k) + ... = = P(1)/1 + p(2)/2 + ...+ p(k)/k + ... = 25,04% This last equation enable us to evaluate m. For m = 5,135 k P(k) p(k) p(k)/k 0 0,00588 __ 1 0,03022 0,03039 0,03039 2 0,07759 0,07805 0,03902 3 0,13282 0,13361 0,04453 4 0,17053 0,17154 0,04288 5 0,17515 0,17618 0,03523 6 0,14991 0,15079 0,02513 7 0,10997 0,11063 0,01580 8 0,07059 0,07101 0,00887 9 0,04028 0,04052 0,00450 sum 0,2498 = 24,98% This shows that the average number must be of order 5,135. Moreover, of this table we deduce that 5,88 % = P(0) of couples have not babies and the majority (17,51%) have 5 babies. The number of families with 9 is 4,02% ... _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From davius_sanctex at hotmail.com Sat Dec 30 00:11:19 2000 From: davius_sanctex at hotmail.com (Davius Sanctex) Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 00:11:19 -0000 Subject: Nahuatl names and natality in aztec empire Message-ID: A nice mathematical argument relating name "Teyacapan" to average number for children in Aztec Empire. ____________________________ Bob McCaa points that in a census of 1540 in a group of 1205 women, 313 were named "Teyacapan" (= first born), i.e. 25,04%: http:/www.umt.edu/history/nahuatl/names.html I will show that these data implies that the average number per family was at most 5,135 and that 6,88% of couples had not any child! _________________________________________ This number can be related to the average number of children in a family. We assume: 1) Nearly all first born female babies was named "Teyacapan" 2) The probability of borns by unit of time remain uniform for a community and population is stationary. First step: Second hypothesis implies borns can be well modelized by a Poisson distribution, thus the probability of a couple to have k kids is P(k): P(k)= exp(-m)*(m^k)/k! [Where m is the average number of children] Second step: Thus if the probability of a child to belong to a familiy with exactly k kids is p(k): p(k) = P(k)/(1-P(0)) [p(0) is the % of families that have no kid]. Thirst step: If we take a woman at random the probability of being the first kid in a family of k kids is just 1/k [= q(k)]. And thus the probability that a woman to be the first baby of a family is r: r = p(1)*q(1) + p(2)*q(2) + ...+ p(k)*q(k) + ... = = P(1)/1 + p(2)/2 + ...+ p(k)/k + ... = 25,04% This last equation enable us to evaluate m. For m = 5,135 k P(k) p(k) p(k)/k 0 0,00588 __ 1 0,03022 0,03039 0,03039 2 0,07759 0,07805 0,03902 3 0,13282 0,13361 0,04453 4 0,17053 0,17154 0,04288 5 0,17515 0,17618 0,03523 6 0,14991 0,15079 0,02513 7 0,10997 0,11063 0,01580 8 0,07059 0,07101 0,00887 9 0,04028 0,04052 0,00450 sum 0,2498 = 24,98% This shows that the average number must be of order 5,135. Moreover, of this table we deduce that 5,88 % = P(0) of couples have not babies and the majority (17,51%) have 5 babies. The number of families with 9 is 4,02% ... _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From davius_sanctex at hotmail.com Sat Dec 30 00:39:55 2000 From: davius_sanctex at hotmail.com (Davius Sanctex) Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 00:39:55 -0000 Subject: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order Message-ID: >Sorry you got that impression, David. Excuse me, I acted impertinently! Disc?lpeme fui algo impertinente! >If you don't like controversy, then you should >stand clear of academic writing quite generally. I know well this situation :) spanish academic world also makes use of controversial style too much often! >The paper is not about diachronic change in Nahuatl. Certainly, my interest was primarily in diachronic change, but one way or another I thank you for your fantastic article. >"It should be emphasized that Baker's claims about polysynthetic >languages >are implicational in nature. If a language has 2a and 2b, >then it will >also have 2c-2n. To refute this claim, one must simply >exhibit a language >which has 2a and 2b but lacks one or more of >2c-2n, as I have done here. >In additional, however, by pointing out >that the linguistic features 2c-2n >are in fact quite common across a >wide range of languages, I have tried to >suggest that the particular >cluster of features Baker observes for Mohawk >and attributes to other polysynthetic languages is a coincidence and not a >consequence >of 2a and 2b..." Oh yes, but what about a more intrincated implication, for example, "2a and 2b and Condition X always implies some of conditions 2c-2n" ?Le parece posible salvar la propuesta de Baker de esa manera? (complicando un poco la premisa). >>Text 1 is (see values of X2) strongly different from others. >>Text 2 and text 4 are similar, and finally text 5 is similar >>to all others. >Interesting observations, but clearly not relevant to any point I was >making. Certainly! >I caution against exclusive reliance on this sort of evidence, and >focus >instead on grammaticality judgments collected from native >speakers. Lo le?, no lo pas? por alto. El art?culo lo explicita muy claramente. >Taken together, all the evidence suggests that SE Puebla Nahuatl is >an SVO >language which allows postverbal subjects and occasionally >preverbal >objects for purposes of focus and contrast. La primera muestra, "Ceh huelta onia Acapulco", la de Lidia Cedillo, es claramente diferente del resto, y curiosamente tambi?n parece preferir VS (althought the text is very short), ?tiene alguna idea de porqu? sucede eso con el habla de esa determinada hablante? >I think the textual evidence is extremely valuable, and while writers >may >have tended to use one permissible word order more than another, > >collectively they defined the same range of permissible word orders >that >the native speakers (example 5, page 104) did. Yes, and if one excludes from text the aberrant text 1 the evidence is more clear; by these reason I think that it can be problematic the choice of text (there is highly variable if one don't take care). Tank you, for all, Jeff. David S. (UPC, Barcelona, Spain) _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. From juergen.stowasser at univie.ac.at Sat Dec 30 21:21:50 2000 From: juergen.stowasser at univie.ac.at (Juergen Stowasser) Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 22:21:50 +0100 Subject: e-mail Enrique Florescano Message-ID: Does anybody know the actual e-mail of Enrique Florescano? Thanks Juergen Stowasser -- Juergen Stowasser Burggasse 114/2/8 A-1070 Wien - Vien(n)a Austria tel: 01/ 524 54 60 v 0676/ 398 66 79 http://www.univie.ac.at/meso