ihcequi doing it=?windows-1252?Q?=92s_?=applicative thing

SASAKI Mitsuya hawatari21centuries at gmail.com
Wed Nov 2 17:01:11 UTC 2011


Jonathan,

Thanks. Your point made me realize that I was quite unconscious about 
the difference between the two, the anticausative and the agentless passive.

Among the various kinds of V1/V2 relations you illustrated, the relation 
between ihseki(Vt)/ihseki(Vi) looks similar to, as you noted, those in 
the Balsas examples of TLA-less intransitivization, with backgrounded 
(perhaps culturally specified) agent.

Maybe corresponding to this, Molina's dictionary has hui:tecqui "one who 
beats" (from hui:tequi "to beat, azotar") for the translation of 
"herido", as if hui:tequi were an intransitive verb "to be beaten", but 
I'm not sure if I can say this is another example of ihcequi-type V1/V2 
alternation.

Mitsuya SASAKI
The Department of Linguistics, the University of Tokyo
ll116003 at mail.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp

(As for me I should confess that I've only dealt with Classical Nahuatl 
data so far, and now am trying to get in touch with a modern speaker...)

(2011/11/02 22:50), Jonathan Amith wrote:
> Hi Mitsuya (is that correct),
>
> What is your area of study. I'm sort of disconnected. In central
> Guerrero there is a lot of relexification but the morphosyntax is not as
> affected. In the Sierra Norte de Puebla there is a type of language
> ideology of purity that leads to all sorts of calques and invented
> terms. Thus from Spanish "me sale" (it turns out for me, as in "no me
> sale", it doesn't give me results) SNP has ne:chki:sa ! Likewise yowi is
> "transitivized" as ne:chyahki "me fue" as in "me fue bien") and tikwi is
> reflexively marked though an intransitive motikwi a calque from Spanish
> "se prende". These are all quite old. In Guerrero young kids start to
> say "nimoto:ka:"  verbal morphology on the noun stem to:ka:- for 'me
> llamo'. In SNP they say nimono:tsa.
>
> Likewise tla-/ta- is being used differently. Young kids in Oapan say
> tlakiawi (maybe a little different than kiawi indicating a place that
> has a lot of rain rather than the event itself) and tlamomowi 'to be
> scared (in a place). In SNP one finds mono:tsa 'it is called (person,
> object) and motano:tsa 'it is called (a place such as a village)'.
>
> Reflexively marked bodily function verbs in SNP that beging with ihC
> retain or lose the /o/ of the reflexive depending on the nature of the event
>
> ihso:ta   (never expressed without an object)
>
> mihso:ta 'to throw up'
>
> moihso:ta 'to throw up on oneself'
>
> kihso:ta 'to throw up [e.g., blood]
>
> kihso:ta 'to throw up on [e.g., a person]
>
> Verbs that are V1/V2 with no morphological change show a lot of
> different types of relations
>
> ahsi (V1) vs. ahsi (V2) are quite different 'to arrive (there) [vs.
> ehko] and 'to catch' (an object thrown, a prisoner fleeing)
>
> posteki (V1) vs. posteki (V2) 'to break' (sth long and brittle, like a
> rod or tree branch) can be a real intransitive with a patientive S of V1
> but no implied agentivity, i.e., sth can just break with no volitional
> agentivity. This is what Dixon in his book on valency change refers to
> as ambitransitive.
>
> Balsas:
>
> to:ka (V1)  vs. -to:ka  (V2)  the 'intransitive 'to:ka' has a culturally
> specified meaning of 'to plant maize' and in Balsas can never take tla-
> (but can take te:- with the sense of 'to bury'). In SNP one has tato:ka
> with the meaning of 'to plant maize'.  In Balsas then, absence of tla-
> is culturally specific. Tuggy has talked about tla- as culturally
> specified object (e.g., in Balsas o:tlapilo:to is understood outside of
> any defining context as 'he went to fish (hanging lines from stakes in
> the river) and there is some literature on the culturally specific
> meaning of these types of "antipassives" Thus English 'I am eating' has
> a culturally specified meaning of "a meal"
>
> ihseki (V1) vs. ihseki  (V2) this is more the case, as you note, of an
> implied agent. In Nahuatl agents of passives can never be expressed
> obliquely (whereas objects of antipassives can be! at least in Balsas,
> with ika). So I am not sure whether one is best to characterize this an
> an anticausative or an agentless passive. Any thoughts?  It is different
> from the case in posteki as ihseki can never occur without human
> intervention. In a way it is like SNP chi:wi though without the
> morphological derivation.
>
> Amberber in the book by Dixon and Aikhenvald notes, p. 315: "If an event
> encoded by a transitive predicate can be conceptualized as taking place
> without the intervention of an external causer, the event can be cast in
> the anticausative"  Since ihseki cannot occur in this manner, then
> perhaps your use of anticausative is different than that implied by
> Amberber (and Levin and Rappaport, whom he cites).
>
> Cf. notsakwa in Balsas. It can be passive or anticausative
>
> niman notsakwas ka:mpa o:timotek 'the place/cut where you cut yourself
> will heal (close up) rapidly'   No agent
>
> ma notsakwa 'let it be closed' (a door, e.g, a group of people is
> leaving and I say ma notsakwa as a suggestion about the door or window
> but without an overtly expressed agent)
>
> On Tue, Nov 1, 2011 at 10:19 AM, SASAKI Mitsuya
> <hawatari21centuries at gmail.com <mailto:hawatari21centuries at gmail.com>>
> wrote:
>
>     John,
>
>     Es increíble qué rápido encuentras los buenos ejemplos.
>     Entonces, quizás podemos decir que ihcequi tenía dos estructuras
>     argumentales distintas. No sabía que este tema era tan interesante.
>
>
>     Mitsuya SASAKI
>     The Department of Linguistics, the University of Tokyo
>     ll116003 at mail.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.__jp
>     <mailto:ll116003 at mail.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp>
>
>     (2011/11/01 22:38), John Sullivan wrote:
>
>         Piyali Mitsuya,
>                 Efectivamente, ihcequi tiene una forma tanto
>         intransitiva [ihcequi (ihcequi).  it toasts, it
>         roasts.<ihcequi>. b.11 f.14 p.142|)]  como transitiva [ihcequi ,
>         qu- (qu-ihcequi).  they roast it; they toast it.<p33- ihcequi>.
>         b.2 f.7 p.127|].
>                 Y sí, ¡qué chido!
>         John
>
>         On Nov 1, 2011, at 7:55 AM, SASAKI Mitsuya wrote:
>
>             John,
>
>             Thanks for the comment and the data.
>             Now the only remaining problem with this construal is that
>             we have to assume two "ihcequi"'s, intransitive and
>             transitive, like "ahci(vt/vi)".
>             Que chida academia!
>
>             Mitsuya SASAKI
>             The Department of Linguistics, the University of Tokyo
>             ll116003 at mail.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.__jp
>             <mailto:ll116003 at mail.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp>
>
>             (2011/11/01 11:50), John Sullivan wrote:
>
>                 Ok Mitsuya and demás listeros,
>                         Half of the temporarily constituted and soon to
>                 be dissolved Nahuatl morphology academy here at Notre
>                 Dame thinks that perhaps:
>                 1. te-, “non-specific human object” + ihcequi
>                 (intransitive), “corn toasts or is toasted” + -ia
>                 (applicative) + -ya (imperfect tense suffix) =
>                 teihcequiaya, “corn was toasted for people”
>                 2. qui, “3rd person singular specific object” + ihcequi
>                 (transitive), “to toast something” + ya, (imperfect
>                 tense suffix) = quihcequiya, “she was toasting it”
>                 and the other half is reluctant to make a commitment to
>                 a firm decision on the matter.
>                 John
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