first two for Joe

Campbell, R. Joe campbel at indiana.edu
Wed Dec 2 04:57:58 UTC 2009


John Sullivan is having trouble getting his mail through to the list 
and he asked me to forward his message to amehhuantzitzin.

Joe

**************************


Piljotzin,
	Here is what the IDIEZ bunch has come up for your first two words.
1. cuecuezo, nitla.
	a). zo:, "to pierce s.t." is transitive so the "cuecue" element has to 
be adverbial.
	b). We didn?t take into account anything built on "cuel",  just "cue"
	c) There are a number of words that have what seems to be this "cue" 
element and all share the meaning of "pleating, ondulating". Here they 
are: cue:itl, "skirt"; cuetlaxtic, "withered"; cuetl?ni, "what a worm 
does when you touch it; what a fish does when it?s on land" (goes to 
cuecuetlaca); cuemoni, "how a far off object looks when viewed through 
heat waves" (goes to cuecuemoca).
	d). So it seems that cue(h)cuezo: might mean "to puncture s.t. 
repeatedly in a pleated or ondulating fashion", in other words, "to 
stitch s.t."

2. a:te:noa:, nitla.
	a). First a:te:ntli, "riverbank".
	b). I understand there are three kinds of -o?: the verber -o? that 
forms intransitive verbs like tlaxcalo?. This can?t be the one we?re 
looking for since a:te:no? is transitive; the -oa: used for turning 
Spanish verbs into Nahuatl verbs (transitive or instransitive); and the 
causative -o? that starts with an intransitive verb ending in 
-ihui/-ahui. I think the problem is that many of these causative verbs 
have either lost of perhaps never had the -ihui source verb.
	c). Here is a verb in Modern Huastecan Nahuatl that I think is 
analogous to a:te:no?. ce:ntla:lihui, "for things (like beans) to 
become scattered all over on the ground"; ce:ntla:loa:, nic., "to 
scatter things (by accident) al over on the ground". I think that the 
tla:lli root here is working in the same why that it works with tlaloc, 
almost in an adverbial way: to become "groundy/on the ground".
	d). There is probably no a:te:nihui, but it would probably mean 
something like "to be riverbanky/on the riverbank". And the causative 
a:te:noa: would be to put things (tla-) [your ass] on the riverbank.
John


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