Molina's Lost Soul.....

[Mr. Tezozomoc]

In the 
Nahuatl to Spanish side of Molina's dictionary we read: "Teyolia. el alma, o 
anima." But, did we believe in a soul?  On the 
surface, teyoliatl looks like a noun. If we try to break it down we get teyoli 
and atl, ATL, water. So we say "okay, it's some kind of water". 

yoli 
looks like the verb YOLi, to live. So now we think it must some how be related 
to aguas vivas, and te must be TE, some one, people. 

But yoli 
cannot be YOLi because YOLi is intransitive and cannot take, the object 
TE. 
We could 
say teyoli is TEYOLiH, the preterit of TEYOLiA, to make some one live. 

But verbs 
are connected to nouns by CA. So we should expect TEYOLiHCAATL We're way off! 
Besides, life is YOLiZTLi. Let's take a different approach. 

What if 
it's not a noun? What if it's a verb disguised as a noun? 
If we 
remove the noun marker we're left with teyolia. This looks like a transitive 
verb YoLiA or YOLiA, with the nonspecific human object TE. 
I haven't 
come upon such a verb. But there are many i/iA verb pairs (aQUi/aQUiA, 
OLINi/OLINiA, iHUiNTi/iHUiNTiA, etc). 

So, we 
could say there might be a pair YOLi/YOLiA. Then, TEYOLiA would meen "it makes 
people live". And, TEYOLiATL would be the thing that makes people live. 

That's 
not how you nominalize verbs. If there was a verb YOLiA, we'd get 4 agentive 
nouns: TEYOLiHQUi, TEYOLiANi, TEYOLIZQUi, and YOLIZTLi. But not 
TEYOLiATL. 

In the 
Spanish to Nahuatl section of Molina's dictionary we read: "Alma o anima. 
teyolia, teyolitia, teanima." 

teyolia 
would be TEYOLiA, he/she makes make people live. But not even Molina has a verb 
YOLiA. 

And don't 
even think teyolia could be someone's YOLiA, 'cause this would be 
TEYOLiAUH. 
teyolitia 
is TEYOLITiA, he/she makes people live. YOLi has 2 causative forms: YOLiLTiA and 
YOLITiA. But not YOLiA. 

teanima 
is a Spanish/Nahuatl hybrid. It'd meen someone's soul.The use of Spanish anima 
indicates this is a foreign concept. 

The 
frailes used Spanhuatl for foreign things. Like peral quauitl, pear tree; hicox, 
fig; tiox, god; angelotin, angels; colos, cross; etc. 

All the 
early grammarians were frailes. That's why we find alma, confesion, pecado, 
fiesta de guardar, bautismo, salvacion, dios, etc. 

We have 
to consider that some terms may have been coined to answer como se dice esto o 
aquello. 

Simeon 
also has teyoliatl. But he based his dictionary on Molina's. 

Bierhorst 
doesn't have it. Which meens it's not used in the Cantares. Karttunen doesn't 
have it either. Which meens she couldn't make sense of it. 

"Ex Nihilo"
It seems, 
at least to me, that teyoliatl is a word invented to name something the friars 
were describing. 
The 
foreignness of the concept is reflected in its ungrammatical construction. 


>From Ruben Ramirez "Huitzilmazatzin"




  		 	   		  
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