Huitlacoche or Cuitlacoche

[alexis wimmer]

-----Message d'origine-----
De : r. joe campbell <campbel at indiana.edu>
À : nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu <nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu>
Date : dimanche 15 octobre 2000 04:36
Objet : Re: Huitlacoche or Cuitlacoche


>
>
>On Sat, 14 Oct 2000, alexis wimmer wrote:
>>
>> it is an other bird whoose name could perhaps be related to
cuitla-coch-in
>>  ?) : cocho or coch-o :tl, the white-fronted parrot Amazona abifrons.
>>
>> Alexis.
>>
>>
>
>
>Alexis,
>   In order for a morphological identity to be credible, of course, we
>need a traceable form relationship.  But if we don't have a semantic path
>too, we're in the same situation as with the well-known "-ling" in
>English.  Nobody is willing to argue for a proportional relationship here:
>
>   boy : boyling  ::  prince : princeling
>
>   Of course, sometimes the semantic paths are not obvious -- we are not
>in the position to see things from inside the mind of the Nahuatl speaker
>-- and that includes his knowledge of the culture and the world.  So when
>the path is not obvious, someone needs to be our pathfinder -- supply an
>interpretation.  One not very good example is:
>
>   ni-cualani       I get angry
>
>   nic-cuacualatza  I boil it (totally unrelated to boyling example above)
>
>Everyone agrees that 'cuacualatza' is an example of a set of regularly
>derived reduplicated transitive verbs from intransitive ones ending in -ni
>(usually).  But is the semantic interpretation credible?  "I
>continually/repeatedly make it angry" = "I boil it"?  In this case, we
>don't have to stretch our imagination at all -- boiling water does seem
>angry (and we know that the opposite extension of meaning is used in the
>case of 'pozoni' "it boils" and 'ni-yollo-popozoca' "I get angry [I
>heart-boil]").
>
>   How do we relate the parrot and the smut?   }8-)
>
>Best regards,
>
>Joe
>

Joe

indeed I don’t see any relationship between parrot and smut (boy and
boyling!) and the one who wrot :

> inic motocayotia cuitlacochtototl: itech tlaantli in itlatol,
> in quitoa *cuitlacoch*, cuitlacoch, tarati, tarat, tatatati,
> tatatati, titiriti, tiriti:.
> it is named cuitlacochtototl, which is taken from its
> song, because it says cuitlacoch, cuitlacoch, tarati, tarat,
> tatatati, tatatati, titiriti, tiriti. (b.11 f.6 p.51).

did also.

This implies that the word *cuitlacochin* refers to two homonyms  : the name
for smut and the name of a bird.
Between both apears a merely accidental relationship, an onomatopoeia..
The only true problem is then the etymology of *cuitlacochin*, mazorca de
mayz danada o degenerada
Nevertheless the ending  *-in* does me think to a name of a little animal, a
bird for instance
 In the list you gave only 6/29 words doesn’t refers to
(little) animals :

 capolin capolin cherry
 ma:tla:lin matlalin dark green
 mexixin mexixin common-cress
 to:lin tolin reed
 xomalin xomalin feather grass
 zo:to:lin zotolin palm

sincerely,


Alexis