Tloc, nahuac, tech, tlan

Michael McCafferty mmccaffe at indiana.edu
Sat Nov 21 02:48:38 UTC 2009


Quoting David Wright <dcwright at prodigy.net.mx>:

> Joe:
>
>
>
> I was a bit puzzled by the "poss" label for the ne element in these
> constructions, having previously only conceived of this morpheme as an
> "indefinite reflexive prefix." Then I saw Andrews' brief treatment of this
> as a "reciprocative possessor morph" meaning "one another's" and "each
> other's" (Introduction to classical Nahuatl, 2nd. ed., p. 107). He says this
> morpheme is "highly infrequent" and has a "more restricted meaning" than the
> homophonous indefinite reflexive prefix (which he labels "a shuntline
> reflexive/reciprocative-object morph" in his text [p. 57] and, mercifully,
> "reflexive pronoun" in the index [p. 671]). Examples aren't provided in the
> places I just cited, although he discusses nepan on pp. 484 and 485: "*nepan
> = on one another, over one another [This NNC, whose possessor pronoun shows
> reciprocal possession, occurs only as an imbed and as the source for the
> adjectival NNC nepa:pan (...)]." So a bit of light begins to shine through
> my mental fog.
>

I enjoyed reading your message, David. It also brought to mind a few 
possible uses of this, and I don't know if Andrews mentions these or 
not since his index is sometimes useless. In any event, here's what I 
remember:

tonehuan, amonehuan, innehuan 'we/us two', 'you two', they/them two'.

This ne- is also seen, I *think*, in necoc and necoccampa 'on both 
sides, from both sides'. Yeah, this is surely the same animal since we 
can also say
nenecoc with basically the same meaning but implying more people, more things.

Best,

Michael


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