two more on Huastecan Nahuatl

idiez at mac.com idiez at mac.com
Tue Jun 24 12:34:59 UTC 2003


There are two further characteristics of Huastecan Nahuatl that puzzle
me:
1. The plural of the future tense has no /k/, while the
conditional/unfulfilled
action construction does. Here's an example:
future singular: "chocaz"
future plural: "chocaceh"
conditional/ unfulfilled action: "chocazquia"
2. Instead of "nimitzilhuia", "I tell  you", we have "nimitzilia" with
the apparent
loss of the /w/ (And it's the same in all tenses). At least one of my
native
speaking friends, pronounces a very slight aspiration before the "l".
Something
like "nimitzihlia". I understand that this is metathesis: a reverse
case of what
Lockhart comments on as the origin of the "-lhuia" applicative suffix
for Class 3
verbs.
	Would anyone like to comment on what's going on in these two cases?

John Sullivan, Ph.D.
Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas, A.C.
Francisco García Salinas 604
Colonia CNOP
Zacatecas, Zac. 98053
México
+52 (492) 768-6048
idiez at mac.com
www.idiez.org.mx



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