noun incorporation in Nahuatl

[Michael Mccafferty]

David:

Are you referring to items such as Classical "cacchihua"
(cac[tli]-chihua) 'he/she makes shoes'?

Yes, in this kind of construction the general rather than the specific is
the referent. I *think* I saw one time in the Florentine codex what
appeared to be a specific referent for such a construction, but maybe not.
:)

For the specific, in Classical, you must say "cactli quichihua" or
"quichihua cactli" = "he is making the shoes".

 In modern dialects, I imagine you might see something
like "quinchihua cactin".



On Tue, 7 Dec 2004, David Eddyshaw wrote:

> Quite often in general linguistic discussions of polysynthesis I've
> come across the assertion that incorporated objects in Nahuatl can be
> referential (ie. are active in discourse, can be picked up by pronouns
> etc). For the life of me I can't see this; as far as I can see in fact,
> for a noun stem to be incorporated into a verb as object it actually
> must _not_ refer to any particular entity. Am I just wrong about this?
> Is it something in which Classical Nahuatl differs from some modern
> dialects?
>
> David Eddyshaw
>
>
>