Nahuatl Digest, Vol 251, Issue 4

[Magnus Pharao Hansen]

Listeros

You should all take a look at Una Canger's Five Studies of Nahuatl Verbs in
-Oa, because in this book she goes into quite some detail about the
histories of the different verbal endings such as -ca,-ni, -wa, -wi, -tza.
It is clear from her account that it is not the case that we can simply
postulate historical verbs with the ending -qui or -ca to account for the
-ctli ending because the different endings create different kinds of verbs.

What is the grain of this is that we have a morphonphonetic alternation
between /k/ and /w/  in certain words, I am quite convinced that this is a
significant historical phenomenon that can be addressed only by a detailed
study of the Nahuan and Uto-Aztecan historical phonemics. I did some
research on this in 2009 and am in the process of writing up the results.

What got me interested is that in many dialects the alternation is not
twofold between /k/ and /w/ but threefodl between /k/, /w/ and /n/. Where n
is the reflex in word final position after long vowel, k is the reflex
syllable finally before *t and w is the reflex between vowels. This
actually gets to a proposal studied by R. Joe Campbell in IJAL in 1976, and
also proposed by Benjamin Lee Whorf in his Milpa Alta sketch in which he
suggests that Proto-Nahuatl had a phoneme  /ŋw/ with a nasal reflex in
Tepoztlan Nahuatl. Dakin and Ryesky notes is also the case for all the
dialects of Morelos, and which is in fact also the case for many Zongolica
dialects, at least historically.Then my hunch, which I haven't yet fully
made into an argument is that the k/w/n  alternation can be reconstructed
back to the same phoneme that gives an alternatione between g/n/m/w/mw in
general Uto-Aztecan (sometimes reconstructed as a nasal final feature,
sometimes as a lenis nasal, and sometimes as an ŋw).

I am still working on this, but I'll be presenting some of my data at the
Northeastern conference in New Haven in May.

best,
Magnus


On 1 March 2012 13:00, <nahuatl-request at lists.famsi.org> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
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>   1. Re: tlacoyoctli, tlacotoctli /and/ /coyoctli/ (Michael McCafferty)
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Michael McCafferty <mmccaffe at indiana.edu>
> To: nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
> Cc:
> Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2012 12:51:51 -0500
> Subject: Re: [Nahuat-l] tlacoyoctli, tlacotoctli /and/ /coyoctli/
> On the same page, he also adds:
>
> "Nouns meaning "a thing of such-and-such a color" are created by this
> means from incorporated-noun-as-adverb compounds formed on the matric
> e:hua, 'to arise':
>
> (ti:c-e-c)-tli = a chalk-colored thing [ < (ti:c-e:-hua) < (ti:za)tl +
> e:hua)]"
>
>
> (Note occepa that la voyelle shortens.)
>
>
> Michael
>
>
>
-- 
Magnus Pharao Hansen
PhD. student
Department of Anthropology

Brown University
128 Hope St.
Providence, RI 02906

*magnus_pharao_hansen at brown.edu*
US: 001 401 651 8413
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