Molina's Lost Soul.....

Sat Dec 7 18:26:00 UTC 2013

Dear Mr. Tezozomoc:

Alfredo López Austin wrote a pioneering study on what he called the
"entidades anímicas" (partially avoiding words like "alma" and "ánima,"
although the ghost of the latter word haunts his adjective) in early
colonial period sources in Náhuatl, as part of his classic work on the human
body and ideology among the ancient Nahua:

LÓPEZ AUSTIN, Alfredo
1989	Cuerpo humano e ideología, las concepciones de los antiguos nahuas,
3a. ed., 2 vols., México, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas,
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

This was the inspiration for Furst's work, mentioned by Fritz Schwaller in a
recent post:

FURST, Jill Leslie McKeever
1995	The natural history of the soul in ancient Mexico, New
Haven/Londres, Yale University Press.

Both studies highlight the naturalistic vision of humanity, even in areas as
intangible as this, which bears enough of a resemblance to the Christian
concept of the "soul" for the early friars (and modern missionary linguists)
to relate them in their dictionaries. A big difference is that the ancient
Mesoamerican "souls," in general, dissipated after four years, while the
Christian souls were eternal.

Molina gives three apparent synonyms: teyolia, teyolitia and toyolia. The
second looks like a causative verb with an indefinite human object prefix,
te:yo:litia (te:- + yo:li + tia: [a: > a]), which Molina registers as
"Yolitia. nite. dar vida a otro. pr. oniteyoliti."

I see teyolia as an analogous construction, with the causative suffix -a:
instead of the causative suffix -tia:. Thus we would have the indefinite
human object prefix te:-, the verb yo:li, "live," and the causative suffix
-a: (shortening to -a due to word-final position): te:yo:lia (te:- + yo:li +
a: [a: > a]), "he/she/it makes someone live," a verbal sentence used (or
translated by Molina) with a nominal sense. I don't see the intransitive
nature of yo:li as a problem, since the causative form yo:lia: (unattested
in Molina, but analogous to the transitive verb yo:litia:), like all
causative verbs, is necessarily transitive. There are other verbs that can
take more than one causative suffix, so this would not be unusual.

Toyolia looks to me like the causative verb yo:lia: reinterpreted as a noun,
with the first person plural possessive prefix to-: toyo:lia, which can be
loosely translated as "the source of our life."

Siméon's analysis of teyolia and teyolitia as nouns, assuming the existence
of unattested absolutive forms yoliatl and yolitiatl, seems somewhat
reasonable, since the suffix te:- is used as a generic possessive prefix,
but the probable existence of the forms teyolia and teyolitia as causative
verb sentences suggests a verbal origin of both words.

According to López Austin there are two other "entidades anímicas": to:nalli
(related to solar energy and destiny) and ihi:yo:tl (the breath of life).

The same three entities may be found in colonial and modern sources on the
Otomí, who also participated (fully) in the multilingual culture of central
Mexico. It is possible to establish the following correspondences:

te:yo:lia/te:yo:litia/toyo:lia <-> mui/’mui/’bui/mbui

to:nalli <-> nzaki/zaki

ihi:yo:tl <-> ndähi/te

I won't go into the Otomí words here, but I will mention that they are
semantically close to the corresponding Náhuatl terms, and have to do with
heart/stomach/life, energy/vigor, and breath/vitality, respectively.

Saludos desde Guanajuato,

David Wright

-----Mensaje original-----
De: nahuatl-bounces at lists.famsi.org [mailto:nahuatl-bounces at lists.famsi.org]
En nombre de Mr. Tezozomoc
Enviado el: viernes, 6 de diciembre de 2013 05:55 p. m.
Para: nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
Asunto: [Nahuat-l] Molina's Lost Soul.....

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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