mohottah

[David Wright]

Listeros:

 

I love Joe’s hopping example. It reminds me of thirty years ago when my
Otomi-speaking father-in-law was teaching me how to pronounce the closed
central vowel (written today with an underlined u) over a meal of gorditas,
frijoles and salsa. He held out his spoon with beans in it and emphasized
the pronunciation of the word for bean, ju (underlined u, with an ascending
tonal glide), sticking his head out and exaggerating the position of his
mouth. That mental snapshot will be forever linked to the vowel in my mind.

 

As for reduplication with and without the saltillo, Joe’s teacher’s
demonstration reassured me that I’m “getting” Carochi’s example in the
explanation I recently wrote for a second edition of a textbook. After
briefly explaining the four basic types of reduplication (CVh, CV:, CV with
-ca, CV with -tza), and giving some examples of the first two types, I
explain the semantic distinction between them (each word is written twice,
in italics for traditional spelling and between vertical lines for the
Andrews/Karttunen traditional/phonemic orthography; macrons have been
converted to colons and accents have been eliminated to facilitate
transmission by e-mail):

 

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

 

Un verbo iterativo hecho con la reduplicacion del primer tipo suele tener un
significado distinto a la forma hecha con la reduplicacion del segundo tipo
[aquí se citan a Carochi y a Lockhart, incluyendo una transcripcion de la
confesión de Carochi de que no entiende las sutilezas del asunto]. En las
siguientes palabras-oracion, formadas a partir del verbo transitivo zaca
|zaca|, “acarrear”, se puede observar esta distincion semantica. Primero se
presenta el verbo sin reduplicacion, luego con el primer tipo de
reduplicacion (CV mas saltillo) y finalmente con el segundo tipo (CV con
vocal larga). Observese como la distincion entre ambos tipos es invisible en
la ortografia tradicional, lo cual dificulta la traduccion de los textos
novohispanos que no representan el saltillo ni las vocales largas:

 

-       nitlazaca |nitlazaca| (|ni| + |tla| + |zaca|), “yo acarreo algo (una
vez y desde un lugar)”;

-       nitlazazaca |nitlazahzaca| (|ni| + |tla| + |zah| + |zaca|), “yo
acarreo algo apresuradamente (repetidas veces y desde distintos lugares)”;

-       nitlazazaca |nitlaza:zaca| (|ni| + |tla| + |za:| + |zaca|), “yo
acarreo algo apresuradamente (repetidas veces y desde un lugar)” (Carochi,
2001: 270, 271 [libro 3, capitulo 16, seccion 2]).

 

En las dos formas podemos observar que la reduplicacion proporciona al verbo
un sentido intensificado (expresado por medio de la palabra
“apresuradamente”), en adicion a la idea de la repeticion de la accion.

 

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

 

Suggestions are welcome; this is a work in progress.

 

Saludos desde Guanajuato,

 

David

 

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