"Tlal"

[Frances Karttunen]

>From: Mark David Morris <mdmorris at indiana.edu>
>To: nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu
>Subject: Re: "Tlal"
>Date: Wed, Jul 26, 2000, 3:32 PM
>

> Amos,
>
> Tlalcahua as something forgotten is composed of the non-specific something
> prefix tla and the verb ilcahua, which I would break into il- denoting
> something "mental" and cahua, "to leave," e.g. niccahua in comitl itech
> mocal," I left my bowl at your house.
>
> best,
> Mark


This is a case where attention to vowel length distinctions is very helpful.

tla:lca:hua 'to give up land/place' < tla:l 'land' and ca:hua 'to leave,
relinguish something'

tlalca:hua 'to forget some nonspecific thing' < tla- (nonspecific object
prefix) and (i)lca:hua 'to forget something'  (The (i) is in parenthesis to
indicate that it drops out when prefixes like tla-, no-, and mo- precede
it.)

tlalca:huilli is a noun derived from tla-(i)lca:hua and means 'something
forgotten or forgettable'  It's not derived in any way from tla:l-li 'land.'

Just because vowel-length marking was not part of the orthography of Nahuatl
(with the helpful exception of writers associated with Horacio Carochi)
doesn't mean that distinctive vowel length was not attended to by Nahuatl
speakers.

There is a world of false etymology out there (lots in Simeon's dictionary)
that has arisen from failure to pay attention to contrastive vowel length.

Fran Karttunen