double auxiliary verb

[r. joe campbell]

John,

   Your double auxiliary verb is double cool -- embedding a borrowing
*and* doubling the auxiliary.

   I checked my notes and found these marked double auxiliaries from
Molina:

nicochtipilcatoc        dormir (con) la cabeza colgada.  1555

nixtlapachonotihuetzi   prostrarse por tierra. 1571 S/N


and these from the Florentine Codex:

necuicuitihuechotoc     (not glossed yet)

xonmocuicuitihuetzto    (not glossed yet)

quehuatiquetztihui      (not glossed yet)

mehuatiquetztiuh        (not glossed yet)


   Since you are working with the living language and not a fixed body of
data, you have the possibility of finding others and even probing at what
your friends find acceptable.  Maybe you'll find a triple!!!

Saludos,

Joe


On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 idiez at MAC.COM wrote:

> Here's something I had never seen before: a double auxiliary verb. It's
> from Veracruz.
> "quimontontinentoqueh tlalli", "they have gone around piling up dirt"
> You start with the Spanish "[a]montonar", "to pile things up",  and add
> the specific object prefix "-qui", and then the auxiliary verb "nemi"
> with the ligature, "-ti". This gives you, "they go around piling up
> dirt ("tlalli"). Then you put that whole thing in its combining form by
> chopping off the last vowel of nemi: "quimontontinen-", and add the
> second auxiliary verb "oc" (a preterite as present tense verb) with
> another ligature "-t[i]", meaning to have done something. It is
> conjugated in the third person plural.
>