Citlalin vs. Citlalli

[Campbell, R. Joe]

Nocnihua,

   The ci:tlalin/citlalli discussion has been interesting to me,
partly because of my chuckle whenever I see another jewelry store
with a sign labeled "Citlalli" (please forgive my etymological
leaning).

   One point that we should all keep in mind is that languages
change, and, as fond as some of us are of words or morphemes at some
earlier stage, we should be willing to recognize changes when and if
they take place.  It is fairly clear that in the 16th century,
'ci:tlalin' existed as a word, since both Molina and Sahagun record
it multiple times (but without vowel length).  It is also clear that
final -n dropping was happening, since they also both record
'citlali' and Sahagun records 'citlalli'.

   The path that 'citlalin' (from here on, I suppress notation of
vowel length) can (and probably does) take to arrive at 'citlalli' is:

    citlalin  --->  citlali   (-n dropping)
    citlali   --->  citlalli  (re-interpretation as an -li noun)
                          [there are no word final -li nouns that
                           are not of the -tli or -lli class]

   A factor which contributes to the ambiguousness of class
membership (i.e., -lli vs. -in) for nouns is that their possessive
forms show no contrast:

    citlalin       nocitlal

    comalli        nocomal


   One minor factor in slowing the perception of certain "-n
dropped" nouns as joining the -lli noun class is that some -in nouns
are borrowed into Spanish, like 'chapulin' and 'capulin'.  With
regard to these borrowings, there is a question as to what weight
they might carry in the consciousness of Nahuatl speakers.  In
communities with a large percentage of monolingual Nahuatl speakers,
the fact that a few monolingual Spanish speaker pronounce 'chapulin'
might not be very relevant.
   As for bilingual speakers (of varying degrees), my guess is
that influence in one direction or the other would depend on their
degree of bilingualism and the degree of influence of monolingual
Spanish speakers.  I know that one of my friends from Oapan
(Morelos) drops word final -n in Spanish (with no trace of nasality
on the preceding vowel) in the same way that he treats Nahuatl
words.

   come (they eat) (for comen) [Spanish]

   patlani (it flies)  opatla (it flew, for opatlan) [Nahuatl]


   When we consider the "validity" of 'citlalli', we usually don't
consider a basic question:  What do the native speakers of the
various modern variations of Nahuatl think?  My fear is that many of
the judgements offered are those of us outsiders who have no
intuitions about the necessary facts such as whether the 'l' element
is long or short.

   I have included below a list of '-in' morphemes, along with their
frequencies of occurrence in the Molina dictionaries and the
Florentine Codex.  The stems that end in 'l' are separated from the
others.  It should be noted that stems that end in a consonant
*other* than 'l' don't result in the same sort of tantalizing
problem that those in 'll' do.  When 'michin' drops its 'n', the
absolutive form might seem to be 'michi', and the possessed form
'nomich' would hint that the classes of absolutive nouns are
now:

  -tli
  -li
  -i

BUT that -i class would clearly stand alone and it would not cause
the head scratching that 'citlali' is causing. And there is no
reason why 'citlali' and words like it might not belong to this new
-i class.

Joe

note 1: The confusion of 'l' and 'll' in Molina and Sahagun
(Florentine Codex) is something that I have been tabulating.
As of the present, their frequency is:

   l for ll:  179
   ll for l:  179

The identity of the frequencies is a coincidence, depending on my
identifying and labeling examples (in July 2007, they were 92 and
122, respectively).


note 2: From the historical point of view, 'ollin' is an interesting
re-interpretation.  Although it is normally written 'ollin' and
probably thought of as a noun, it is in fact the preterit form of
the verb 'o:li:ni', so the 'll' is an innovation not likely to have
come from native users of the language.


  acocilin     10
  capolin     102
  chacalin     17
  chamolin      7
  chapolin     46
  chipolin     11
  chiquimolin  18
  chopilin      4
  ci:tlalin    94
  cilin        14
  cuetzpalin   55
  cuezalin     47
  ma:tla:lin   60
  metolin      15
  ocuilin     176
  pipiyolin    12
  tamazolin    17
  temolin      16
  to:lin      429
  to:tolin    335
  tocuilin     12
  xohuilin     24
  xomalin      25
  za:yo:lin    63
  zo:to:lin    14

* * * * * * *

  a:xin        48
  cohuixin      2
  cui:xin       6
  hua:xin       9
  huixachin    11
  huixin        2
  ma:pachin     3
  mexixin      13
  michin      314
  quimichin    92
  tapayaxin     7




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