The use of XIHUIT

[Frances Karttunen]

Some thoughts on Howard's information about Nahuat (or would one say Pipil?)
usage in El Salvador:

> I will wait for you = ni-yauj ni-mits-cheya kiuni


In niyauj we see translation of the Spanish periphrastic use of ir (voy) for
the future followed by the verb phrase, here in the Nahuat present tense
form rather than the future form (which would end in -z, I suppose).

> Wait for me = ti-yauj ti-nech-cheya kiuni.

And here we see real innovation for the obtative/imperative:  the
translation of ir again to  -yauj with the second-person indicative ti-
prefix rather than second-person obtative xi- with both verbs.

> Regarding "chi" and "chiua" (CHIHUA);  the latter is used here but  only in
> infinite and future constructs In all other cases the UA suffix is dropped

Since chi:hua belongs to the class that drops its final vowel to form one of
its stems in Nahuatl, it's not surprising to learn that in El Salvador
Nahuat the final vowel is gone a lot of the time.  In Nahuatl the preterite
stem is chi:uh, where the final [w] is often pronounced as [h] or is hardly
audible at all.

> although there is a rare use of a preterit "Chiuak"

This is either an example of the retention of a very conservative preterite
form, or it is a generalization of chihua to the class of invariant verb
stems that always add final [-k].

> past participle: chijtuk
> ye uipta naja ni-chijtuk se nuhuitsut  (The day before yesterday I was
> making a hoe)

This looks like the Nahuatl -toc construction made of the ligature -ti- plus
the preterite-as-present verb oc, giving -toc (phonetically [-tok]). In
Nahuatl it has been reanalyzed as a past participle/adjective on the model
of Spanish.

> passive: chi-at
> niyauj ni-uika ne kuauit pal nik-chiat se nuhuitsut ( I go to carry the
> wood for to make a hoe)

I would call this purposive rather than passive.  In Nahuatl, the full
ending is -ti:hui, but in the present singular it is -ti:uh, so 'I go to
(Verb)' would be ni-c-chi:hua-ti:uh (Verb phrase), which seems to correspond
closely with nik-chia-t.


> "chi" or " chij" also seems to appear in such words as chijcultic (chij (to
> make) + cultic (something twisted)

In Zacapoaxtla Nahuat there is a verb chihco:loa: that means 'to twist or to
move in a serpentine manner' if used reflexively or 'to twist something.'
The verb is also found in Molina's dictionary.  I think it may be related to
chico 'to the side' rather than to the verb chi:hua.


> e.g. yeka-chiua naui tunal pal tikualat ka-nikan. (must make four days to
> come to be here)

Looks like a translation of Spanish hace to chi:hua to me.


> Regarding "xiuit", I have spoken to my tutors, ( the campesinos of Tacuba)
> and they are adamant in maintaining their strange use of the word.

I have often wondered about the two meanings of Nahuatl xihuitl, meaning
'grass, green stone, etc.' on the one hand, and 'year' on the other (not to
be confused with xi:huitl 'comet' which is distinguished from the other
word(s) by vowel length).

Someone has suggested that the 'year' sense is because in the calendar there
was the binding of the years, and it was like tying up a bundle of grass.
This strikes me as rather thin reasoning.  Maybe there just happen to be two
homophonous words.  It happens in English, so why shouldn't it happen in
other languages?

I am pretty confident that the extension of the use of xiuh- as an
intensifier meaning 'hot' has to do with the Mesoamerican way of dealing
with the color spectrum.  If something is quite hot, in English we say it is
red hot.  If it is even hotter, we say it is white hot.  But astronomers
talk about blue stars (which are hotter than red stars).  In the
Mesoamerican version of the color spectrum, there is a part of the continuum
that is deemed blue-green: the color of grass, turquoise, quetzal plumage,
etc.  One can see how very hot things would be blue-green hot.

> "chiyakiya yek"  (making good or the right time is coming)

Looks like using chi:hua to translate Spanish hace once again.

Doing calques on Spanish constructions like the periphrastic future and
idiomatic constructions with tener, hacer, etc., has a long documented
history for Central Mexican Nahuatl, so it's not surprising to see similar
innovations in El Salvador.

Fran