Fwd: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order ; origin of [tl]

[John F. Schwaller]

>Date: Sun, 31 Dec 2000 09:27:11 +0000
>From: Anthony Appleyard <Anthony at buckrogers.demon.co.uk>
>Subject: Re: Nahuatl Dominant Word Order ; origin of [tl]
>
>Please forward to Nahuat-l group:-
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>(1) It has been pointed out that the same Nahuatl sentence could mean
>e.g. "the dog chased the cat" and also "the cat chased the dog" and both
>possible meanings make sense, in a language with no accusative case
>marker and free word order. Could it be that the common Nahuatl habit of
>embedding the object in the verb, arose to resolve such ambiguities?
>
>(2) I found a Nahuatl-related WWW file that said that Nahuatl [tl] arose
>from early Ute-Aztecan [t] when followed by [a] If so, what is the
>origin of [tl] in e.g. "tlehco:" = "to ascend", and in the absolutive
>suffix [-tl(i)]?
>--
>Anthony Appleyard