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[Anthony Appleyard]

John Joseph Sullivan Hendricks <jsullivan at prodigy.net.mx> wrote:-
...
 > 3. "nipixtos" = preterite form of "piya" + "ti" ligature, + "o" (to be
 > lying) + "s" (future). This is the Nahuatl equivalent of the past
 > subjunctive in Spanish.
 > I'm not going to analyze anything else, because its in all the grammars.
 > What is interesting to me is the productivity of the auxiliary verb "o":
 > A) "-tok", nikwalantok = I am angry. ...
Sorry to be petty, but does this "lying" mean "tell a lie" or "lie down"? "To
lie" is to me the classical example of a word with two meanings that language
dictionaries often list without saying which meaning applies. I had this with
Greek {keimai} and Russian {lgat'}, and in both cases I did not find which
meaning was meant until I found a use in context where only one of the two
meanings made sense. In this case, I can tell which it is because I have seen
the rain god's name Tlaloc analyzed as "ground lie-down -er" = "that which
lies down on the ground", i.e. a description of surface water left by rain.
Citlalyani