Nahuatl Word 3

[Frances Karttunen]

on 1/30/04 11:22 AM, r. joe campbell at campbel at INDIANA.EDU wrote:

> The tlacatzitzintin of the BCN urged me to send y'all the following word
> from Book 12 of the Florentine Codex.  They assured me that you would
> enjoy it as much as we did.  (I hope the snow in your driveways is enough,
> but not too much)
>
> otechalihua
>
> he sent us
>
> [What are the parts of this word?]
>
> Saludos,
>
> Joe
>
o:-te:ch-hua:l-ihua-h

The verb is ihua:, one of those infrequent ones that Andrews labels Class D.
They all end in the long vowel a:, which shortens word-finally and before
glottal stop/saltillo.  My analysis of these is that they are just like the
Andrews Class D verbs that end in ia: and oa:.  One can think of them as
ending in -aa:. They form the preterite by dropping final -a: and adding
final saltillo/glottal stop: -aa: > ah.  Not everyone by any means has taken
to my way of describing them.  In any case, there are not a lot of them, so
one can simply memorize a list without much effort.

Among other verbs that behave in the same way are cua: 'to eat something,'
pa: 'to dye something,' zo:ma: 'to frown angrily,' and ma:ma:'to bear/carry
something.'

Can anyone add to the list of Class D verbs?

Fran