Why huica rather than cuica?

[R. Joe Campbell]

    I don't know about the dialectal distribution of cuica --> huica, but
the change is a partially familiar one to me.  "Partially" here means that 
the environment for the change is more free than the one in Hueyapan, 
Morelos.
    In Hueyapan, a series of changes happens intervocalically (i.e., 
between vowels):

  /w/ becomes [v]:

      huetzi      he falls
    nivetzi       I fall

  /k/ becomes [g]: (this will necessitate the 'k' spelling for klarity)

      calaqui
      kalagi      he enters
    nigalagi      I enter

  /kw/ becomes [gw] (and further softens to [w]):

      cualani
      kwalani     he gets angry
    niwalani      I get angry

This set of changes is not impeded by word boundaries:

     amo cualli   devil, bad one (in neighboring Santa Cruz)
     amo walle    devil, bad one (in Hueyapan)

   The voicing (or relaxation change) of /k/ to [g] is a relatively common 
one in Nahuatl dialects; the /kw/ to [w] change is a parallel one, but I
haven't seen it in all the "/k/ to [g]" dialects.
   I would expect that a dialect which yields "tlen huicani" has a 
voicing/relaxation process which is more free than that of Hueyapan
(i.e., ...doesn't require a preceding vowel).

Saludos

Joe

p.s.  ...and just to anticipate another possible hypothesis, I seriously 
doubt that "kw --> w" involves a simple loss of the 'k' element from the 
/kw/ unit phoneme.


On Tue, 21 Mar 2006, John F. Schwaller wrote:

> Now that we have established that in some dialect words such as cuica or 
> cuicani become huica or huicani, can anyone give me a reasonable explanation 
> why it happens?
>