-tic

[R. Joe Campbell]

John,

    This is probably a little too much off the top of my head, but I'll try 
to think as I write.
    First, I think that when we're doing grammatical descriptions of a 
modern Nahuatl dialect or of an older dialect like "classical", we should
constantly be asking ourselves whether we think we're formulating a 
structural description or a historical development.  When does anyone 
point out that some variety of the language has restructured some part of 
word formation?

    That aside, it seems to me that too frequently we find ourselves 
describing word formation (i.e., morphology) as if non-basic words (like 
tlacatl, pozoni, cuahuitl, etc.) came from some other surface words.
Now stop me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the word "chantli" occurs as 
an independent word in any of the three Molina dictionaries; and it 
doesn't occur in any sentence of the Florentine Codex (only in a paragraph 
header on p. 275 of the Dibble and Anderson edition).  Let's suppose that 
we had no attestation of the independent word "chantli" (or of various 
other normally possessed entities, like those relating to kinship).
Would anybody doubt that "chan(tli)" (I always unapologetically refer to 
noun morphemes along with their absolutive suffixes for sake of easy 
identification) is a morpheme??  Its existence is supported by the 
occurrence of many words which are parallel to words derived from simple 
noun morphemes:

   nochan
   ninochantia
   chaneh
   mochantzinco
   teopixcachantli



Comments on cuicuilihui....

   I don't know enough about Huaxteca Nahuatl, so I'll refer to similar 
data from the 16th century.  The possible morpheme "ihcuiloa:" which many 
people would believe to be basic is not (the causative is derived from the 
intransitive);  the disappearance of the "ih-" is normal in reduplicated 
forms.  "cuicuilihui" and "cuicuiltic" cannot be derived one from the 
other, and since -ihui intransitives and -tic (noun/adjective) are derived 
from nouns, I would assume the shape of the morpheme to be driven at least 
as deep as "ihcuilli".
   But since that "ih-" looks suspiciously like the one in "ihmati" and 
possibly the one in "ihpotza" -- and "cuilli" *might* be a patientive noun 
derived from "cui" (related, among other things to carving and hand 
strokes), I could imagine a non-cautious analyst going beyond "ihcuilli" 
as the morpheme.


Comments on canahuiya....

   Using the criterion of "where you have to start to get to the various 
word forms", I would assume that there has to be potential form 
"canactli", which is a common patientive noun form from verbs which end in 
-ahua... and "canahuac" looks like the so-called preterit of "canahua".
"canahuiya" looks suspiciously like a 'back-formation', similar to the 
"nipinahua / nipinahui" formation, in which some dialects adjust the 
already intransitive "nipinahua" (ending in -a, a little unusual for 
intransitives) to the more common intransitive -i ending.  ...and the
-ya certainly looks like an intransitive verber: iztaya, xocoya, hueiya,
poyeya, etc, but it doesn't normally (as in "things that I know about") go 
on something that is already a verb (except in the case of verbings with
-ti [become] (e.g., ati[y]a, ahtlehti[y]a, camohpalti[y]a, ceti[y]a,
pocti[y]a, telpochti[y]a, tepitzti[y]a, zoquiti[y]a, etc.).

Iztayohmeh,

Joe



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