inin ihuan inon

[R. Joe Campbell]

>>From a private discussion with Leonel:
  (I thought some of it might be of general interest and that
   someone might add some details.)


<>One thing I would like to know: are all variants of a word (numerals can have
<>sometimes as many as half a dozen) found elsewhere (so that one have to
<>consider them 'true variants') or else are some of them 'FC-specific' and so
<>'non-standard'?
****
   There is a considerable amount of spelling variation in any Nahuatl
document before the 20th century.  Molina is "fairly" regular, but the FC
has a lot of variation: /n/ dropping, /w/ variation = 'u, o, v, hu, ho, hv',
/ll/ = 'l, ll', /tz ch/ sometimes not spelled 'i.e., they are
dropped) before 's z tz ch', either /i/ or /y/ can be spelled as 'i y
j', etc.  Even *this* amount of variation is less than most documents!
They simply didn't practice "standardization" to the degree that people
in 20th century do.  So it's hard to talk about 'non-standard' in the
16th century except by hind-sight (maybe from the point of view of
Carochi).
   Specifically, I'm not sure what variation in the numerals you have in
mind.  Could you give me a few examples?  Generally, I don't know of any
forms that are 'FC-specific'.


<>Also, how has one to distinguish between say 'Lihuicamina' (which is an
<>obvious transposition error for Ilhuicamina, so there is no need to point it
<>out...)
****I just checked the entire FC and 'Lihuicamina' doesn't appear.
Maybe the spelling error was introduced when it was handled at the
web-site.

<>and 'cohuatl' which is a true variant of 'coatl' I suppose? By the
<>way, which one would you prefer? For me, of the 3 theoretical possibilities,
<>namely 1.coatl, 2.cohuatl (= cowatl) and 3.cohatl I can hardly (if at all)
<>distinguish in pronounciation 1 from 2 but I distinguish well between the first
<>couple and 3, so I would call 2 a somewhat 'pedantic' form of 1 unless it
<>came from *co-huatl in which case 2 should be preferred... What do you think?
****
   Having my own answer in my head (which is where I keep all my
opinions -- even when I let them out), I turned to Mary (whose
linguistic judgement I highly trust) and asked her your question about
#1 and #2.  With no hint from me, she gave me my own answer, which
follows a general principle of Nahuatl phonology (and morphophonemics);
Fran's answer independently matches ours:  it is impossible to know.
Why?  Because Nahuatl has no pronunciation contrast between /owa/ and
/oa/; some dialects (I would say *most*) have a pronunciation rule that
deletes /w/ in /o_a/, but other dialects have one that inserts /w/ in
/oa/, leaving *all* /owa/ and /oa/ sequences as either [oa] (in the
first set of dialects) or [owa] (in the second set of dialects).
A similar thing is true of /iya/ and /ia/ sequences.
   The way to distinguish the presence vs. absence of the /w/ in
apparent /oa/ sequences is alternation in morphological shape.
Example:

1    quicoa        he buys it
2   oquicouh       he bought it

3    quineloa      he stirs it
4   oquineloh      he stirred it

   In #2, the final /w/ (-uh) betrays its underlying presence in #1,
where it is removed in pronunciation.

   /y/ becomes [x] in syllable-final position, but is deleted in the
sequence /i_a/:

1'   quipia        he keeps it
2'  oquipix        he kept it

3'   mihtotia      he dances
4'  omihtotih      he danced

   So 'pia' *does have a /y/ (just as apparent 'coa' has a /w/), but
'ihtotia' does not (just as 'neloa' lacks a /w/).

   To sum up the argument, since 'coa-tl' has its possible '/w/-position'
in a 'protected' place (i.e., the 'a' is never lost and thus never puts
the 'o' in syllable-final position), we cannot see whether a syllable-
final [w] ('-uh') shows up.  Therefore, the spelling selected is not on
linguistic grounds, but on social ones -- I'd go along with the more
frequent 'coatl'.

   To go back to #3, you rejected it correctly.  The 'h' represents a
consonant (the glottal stop) -- putting it into the spelling would be
like inserting *any* consonant which isn't part of the word.  The
problem for us is partly in that the glottal stop isn't a phoneme in
Spanish, English, and I think, Portuguese, so we don't take it
"seriously".


<>Worse still are the frequent omissions of h (the glottal stop) and n: if one
<>were to write true 'classical' Nahuatl should one maintain 'ozomahtli' or write
<>as well 'ozomatli' as it fancies one (this time there is difference of
<>pronounciation as well) and 'cocoah' instead of 'cocoa'?
****  Yes.  The lack of writing the glottal stop ('h') is one of the
serious faults of 16th century orthography.  The failure to mark vowel
length is the other.  Obviously, we can deal with a considerable amount
of spelling variation without great problems; except for the deletion of
'n', most of the variation referred to above is readable.


<>Now just a few nouns: I know the plurals 'cuanacame' and 'xoxotlame': do they
<>have singulars?
**** Yes.  At least, cuanacatl exists (the semantics of it fits my
'cute' category).


Best regards,

Joe