Two questions from Zacatecas

[Michael Mccafferty]

John,
I figured Joe or Fran would respond to this message.


Your question #1:

As you realize the postpositional elements in your two phrases are not
related in the sense that the first speaks of the relationship between the
subject of the verb and the whoever "y'all" was, while the second speaks
of the relationship between the verb and the person that the verb is
talking about. There's nothing that would prohibit postpositions with
different referents to appear in the same phrase. *Amixpantzinco
ninoteilhuia itechcopa in Juan sounds good to me. (Course, at some point
Joe and Fran will come in and sort all this out, but I'll keep sticking my
neck out here for a cleaner cut.)

What is curious about your two phrases is that the verb 'complain' seems
to express a different grammatical nature in each; seems we are
seeing two ways of expressing the same idea.

The first: '(It-is-before-y'all)  I-am-complaining  it-is-Juan'


The second: 'it-is-against-him  we-are-complaining  it-is-the-padre'


Your question #2:

Occasionally, rarely, someone will create an utterance with a "semantic"
hierarchy that is traditionally not grammatical by placing an object
pronoun with a **human** referent (not *animate* referent)  over a
object pronoun with a **non-human** referent (not **inanimate** referent.
In other words, the traditional, expected order of indirect object over
direct object and secondary indirect object over primary indirect object
breaks down in favor of a  human/non-human consideration. This doesn't
happen often.

Cheers,

Michael McCafferty

=========================


 On Wed, 10
Jul 2002, John Sullivan, Ph.D. wrote:

> Two questions regarding Classical Nahuatl:
>
> 1. In the sentence, "amixpantzinco ninoteilhuia Juan (a abbreviated form of
> one of the examples from  Lockhart's grammar)", "In your (plural) presence,
> I make a complaint against Juan", how is "Juan" connected to the verb? I see
> that in Molina, this is the form used. However, in the Jalostotitlan
> document I am working on, we see "itechcopa timoteilguia yn tovicario", "we
> make a complaint in relation to our priest." And I believe I have seen this
> form often. Is there a rule in Nahuatl preventing the use of two
> postpositions with one verb, and is this why there is nothing connecting
> Juan to the verb in the first example?
>
> 2. Is animacy only a criterion for deciding whether a noun can be
> pluralized, or is it also a criterion for determining the order and
> hierarchy of verbal object prefixes. If it is, how does this mesh with the
> human/non-human distinction mentioned in the rules on pages 171-173 of
> Campbell and Karttunen's grammar, vol.1, and especially in the specific
> object prefix slot?
>             John Sullivan
>
>
>


Michael McCafferty
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Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana
47405
mmccaffe at indiana.edu