altepetl

[idiez at MAC.COM]

Fran remarks here that "altepetl" is an exceptional form. I'd like to 
comment on another aspect its exceptionalness. The modern náhuatl from 
Veracruz that I work with does not used possessive suffixes with some 
kinds of nouns. Here they are:
1. agentive nouns: tepahtihquetl (doctor), tepahtianih (doctors), 
notepahtihquetl (my doctor), notepahtianih (my doctors)
2. "-n" nouns: cuauhtochin (rabbit), cuauhtochimeh (rabbits), 
nocuauhtochin (my rabbit), nocuauhtochimeh (my rabbits)
There are two more words that stand out in my mind which don't take 
possessive suffixes:
3. montli: nomontli (my son-in-law), I don`t remember right now what 
the plural form is like.
4. altepetl: noaltepetl

John Sullivan

On May 29, 2005, at 11:53 AM, Frances Karttunen wrote:

>
> On May 29, 2005, at 5:24 AM, Rikke Marie Olsen wrote:
>
>>
>> I think altepetl is a fossilized form. We have already discussed 
>> (Chimalpahin) and largely agreed that there are exeptional forms, 
>> where monosyllable verbs keeps the absolutive suffix in composites 
>> and incorporations.
>>  
>> I believe that the original form was atl-tepetl. Only if you try to 
>> pronounce it, it will sound more and more like al-tepetl the more you 
>> say it. In other words I see it as an assimilation of ‘tl’ in front 
>> of ‘t’ gives ‘lt’.
>>  
>>
>
> Widely across extant Nahuatl writing one finds alternation between the 
> difrasismo atl tepetl and the word altepetl with no discernable 
> difference in reference.  Whether one word or two, the reference is to 
> the concept of the Nahua corporate community and hardly to literal 
> water and hills.
>
> The corresponding possessed forms (first person here by way of 
> example) are nauh tepeuh (two words) and naltepeuh (one word).  If the 
> latter were an unexceptional compound word, the absolutive and 
> possessed forms would be *atepetl, natepeuh respectively, which to my 
> knowledge are totally unattested. The "l" is always in there.
>
> One could think of altepetl hovering in the interstice between 
> difrasismo (two words) and regular compound word (one word composed of 
> two stems, only the second of which carries suffixes), but on the 
> other hand, the complex morphology of Nahuatl treats altepetl as a 
> unitary word.  As Joe has said before, it's an exceptional case, one 
> of those things one learns as a unit instead of constructing by rule.  
> Every language has such lexical items.
>
> As to José's broader questions, I hope he isn't selling short us 
> contemporary linguists and what we do.  The thrust of our profession 
> is to discern by research across languages what categories are common 
> to human languages (even if not historically, "genetically" related) 
> and the dimensions on which variation can and does take place.  This, 
> of course, is not what 16th- and 17th-century grammarians were up to 
> and is not what modern prescriptivists do, but it IS what linguists do 
> and has been for well over a century.
>
> Back in the 1970s Bill Bright provided his students at UCLA with notes 
> on Nahuatl that pointed out that the earliest grammars of Nahuatl best 
> represent the language on its own terms.  In the 18th and 19th 
> centuries, as later grammarians tried to impose their particular 
> theoretical molds on Nahuatl, their descriptions of the language grew 
> ever more off-the-mark and unusable. I hope that beginning early in 
> the 20th century, and particularly gathering force since the 1970s, we 
> have gotten back to an understanding of Nahuatl on its own structural 
> terms.
>
John Sullivan, Ph.D.
Profesor de lengua y cultura nahua
Unidad Académica de Idiomas
Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas
Director
Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas, A.C.
Tacuba 152, int. 47
Centro Histórico
Zacatecas, Zac. 98000
México
Oficina: +52 (492) 925-3415
Fax: +52 (492) 925-3416
Domicilio: +52 (492) 768-6048
Celular: +52 (492) 544-5985
idiez at mac.com
www.idiez.org.mx
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