Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Nahuatl in the early years

[John Sullivan]

"i:xa:yac" is just the third person singular possessed form of "xa:yacatl",
"face". The last three letters are dropped in this form. Since "xa:yacatl"
is a body part, you will never see it in the unpossessed form. If you add
"cuahuitl", then you can get an unpossessed form, mask: "cuauhxa:yacatl".
    John Sullivan
    Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas

on 8/16/00 8:35 AM, Chichiltic Coyotl at notoca at hotmail.com wrote:

>
>> Paul Anderson wrote
>>
>> “Ixayac”
>> I have this for “face”. It is a rock face, but the two girls call their
>> secret place that because it looks like a human face or mask. (There has
>> been discussion of masks already in the chapter.)
>>
>
> I have a question on i:xa:yac. The following are only my thoughts on the
> meaning so please do not take them as being "gospel".
> I:xa:yac ?appears? to be a compound of i:x-tli (face, eye, surface) and
> xa:yaca-tl (face, mask). I'm assuming two things when these two nouns come
> together - 1) the "x" from xa:yaca-tl is dropped and the length of the vowel
> a: remains the same. This compound ?appears? to translate as "face mask" or
> possibly it's just a doubling up of the words for "face", however, is this a
> logical compound considering that xa:yaca-tl appears to cover both concepts
> of "face" and "mask"? A compound like co:a:xa:yac "snake mask" would appear
> to make more sense. Would xa:yaca-tl by itself suffice as a suitable
> translation for "face mask"?
>
> Did the Nahua have the same concepts for both "face" and "mask"?
>
> Thanks,
>
> EZR
>
>
>
>
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