still a few questions (fwd)

[R. Joe Campbell]

   After a four day trip, I found that my message of 20 Oct had been in
escrow with repeated attempts to deliver without success, so I am
forwarding it with optimism.
Joe

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 1999 10:54:57 -0500 (EST)
From: "R. Joe Campbell" <campbel at indiana.edu>
To: Leonel Hermida <leonelhermida at netc.pt>
Cc: nahuat-list <nahuat-l at umt.umt.edu>
Subject: Re: still a few questions

Tlen tai, Leonel,
   I put *** where I have a comment...

> quiza = come out, emerge
> quix-tia (some phonetic peculiarity here)= cause to be(come)
*** On the semantics of quixtia, I like to think of it as being an event
rather than a being.  quixtia is commonly used to talk about extraction --
to take something out of the house, your pocket, etc.  --Even to talk
about taking someone out of office or one's self out of a bad situation
(e.g., battle)... oninotzinquixtih -- I backed out.

   The z to x change is called palatalization (z and t are dentals and x
and ch are their respective palatals).  Somebody else can explain this
better than I can, but basically a now relatively opaque historical
process palatalized some stems in their causative and benefactive (some
people call it applicative) forms, so we learn their alternative forms by
memory, not as the result of some regular phonological process.

> I have two more questions: is it safe to put mana = offer? (I could not
> find it in my basic morpheme list) ( I know that mictia= kill is a causative
> of miqui=die).
*** The basic morpheme is mani; it forms its causative by adding the
causative -a.  I believe it best to think that there are 2 causative -a's:
one that absorbs the preceding vowel and the other that does not.
(in inverse order in the following examples)


   pozoni      it boils
   nicpozonia  i cause it to boil, i boil it

   nicalaqui   i enter
   niccalaquia i insert it, i cause it to go in


   mani        it lies extended (like water in a puddle)
   quimana     he lays it down (causes it to lie flat)
               The causative mana is then generalized to mean put and is
               frequently used to mean place on the alter as an offering.

   temi        it fills up (e.g. a jug)
   tictema     you fill it, you cause it to fill


> Does tla- mean 'something' and is it direct object to mana
> and mictia? Shall one conclude that the direct object must be expressed
> in the (transitive) verbal 'complex' even if this is in a 'dummy' way
> (tla-), so to speak?
*** Yes, Nahuatl *requires* (almost always) the expression of objects on
transitive verbs, so if there is no *specific* object, we use the
non-specific ones:

   nic-cua in nacatl       I eat (the) meat (c is a redundant reference
                           to nacatl
   ni-tla-cua              I eat

   ni-c-mictia noyaouh     I kill my enemy (just an imaginary example)
   ni-te-mictia            I kill, I kill somebody

> Or, putting it in another way, has a transitive verb to be made to 'agree'
> both with its subject (prefix 'zero' in this case) and with its direct
> object (prefix tla- here)?
*** Well put.

> One more thing while I have your attention. It will be found perhaps too
> trivial, but what are the functions of the particle 'in' which is ubiquitous
> everywhere?
*** This one is one I hope to see someone else's answer on first....

Best regards,

Joe