copichoa, panoltequi, ordinal sequences of textual space

[Mark David Morris]

Joe,

Thanks for your assistance to these questions.  As usual, you've pointed
out a slip in my analysis; however, I can also confirm a
standard deviation in this 18th-century Tlaxcala Nahuatl from
the Classicial model.  First, tequipanoa is the customary way of saying,
"passing it working."  I was just being goofy, dyslexic or maybe dysgoofic
to think otherwise.  Its most common instance in 18th-century Tlaxcala is
"motequipanolcatzin" your servant.   However, these 18th-century
Tlaxcalteca don't say tequiti, they say tequi, in all cases.  I take this
as a logical extension of the notion, that Luis Reyes also pointed out to
me, that tequi is the cutting done in agricultural labor and from that
has extended to signify work in general.  This is not too surprising to
find in Tlaxcala given that the region, as a whole, shows many signs of
archaic Nahuatl, such as the -tli absolutive ending, e.g. nehuatli.
However, there are a lot of things that occur in 18th-century Nahuatl in
Tlaxcala that do seem very odd.  Since several members of this list have
asked about the comparisons between the Classical 16th-century Nahuatl of
Texcoco (relatives of the Tlaxcalteca Chichimeca nobility no less) and
other dialogues, I include the letter below from my main "informant"
to illustrate the variations that can occur in a Nahuatl text.  The odd
turns and twist of this text also highlight the unenviable
challenge those attempting to reconstruct a Nahuatl past from the tangled
threads of diverse Mexican native traditions confront in the face of such
potential of diversity within one of a hundred native language traditions.

best,
Mark Morris


P.S.  Given that this Telnet shell has no copy function, I am sending the
text through a different account.



















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La muerte tiene permiso a todo

MDM, PhD Candidate
Dept. of History, Indiana Univ.