Chimalpahin

[Galen Brokaw]

Jose,
I think you are right to point out that to write a language
alphabetically inherently implies a certain level of linguistic
self-consciousness. And, of course, Chimalpahin was producing written
langauge. Nevertheless, in spite of the project of colonial grammarians,
general Nahuatl linguistic practice did not really develop in any kind
of dialogue with a metadiscourse on language such as grammar. So merely
the act of writing it down does not necessarily automatically make the
language conform to foreign grammatical categories. John Sullivan's
project in Zacatecas has been grappling precisely with this issue trying
to come up with organic ways to conceptualize the language in order to
facilitate a Nahuatl linguistic self-reflexiveness that does not of
necessity depend on Spanish or English categories and concepts (please
correct me John if I am misrepresenting the nature of your project). One
might argue that this situation also characterized medieval and early
modern Spanish linguistic practice among most sectors of society. And
frankly, I'm not sure to what extent my argument about the relationship
between the rigidity of formal grammatical categories and alphabetic
writing is or is not universally valid across languages and cultures.
But there was a long tradition of alphabetically written Spanish that
had developed in relation to linguistic metadiscourses that involved
grammar. Eventhough the first Spanish grammar appeared rather late, the
conceptualization of language was still very much influenced by Latin
grammar. After all, grammar was part of the trivium. But one can't help
but suspect that if Nahuatl had pursued the phonographic option, of
which they were clearly aware, and had developed a linguistic
metadiscourse in dialogic relation to it, then their linguistic science
may have looked very different from ours. In other words, perhaps
Nahuatl has a different linguistic ontology regardless of whether or not
you write it alphabetically. Of course, the materiality from which
consciousness and language spring means that there will always be enough
in common that we can certainly adapt our own linguistic metadiscourse
(in a sense we have no other choice) to any language and in many cases
it adapts really well, but don't you often feel that in some cases it
just isn't always quite adequate?
With regard to the possibility of the pun, actually, I just got so
wrapped up in the morphological analysis that I forgot about that part
of your message. First, I don't think we can read anything into the fact
that "cecenteotlatoca" doesn't have a reflexive "mo" while the previous
words do. The earlier "otlatoca" isn't reflexive either. I think there
are semantic and grammatical reasons for this.  The reason it does not
have a "mo" is because they are not following themselves but rather
their respective paths or each other as you suggest. The words
malacachoa and panahuia are transitive verbs requiring objects, so they
  kind of have to use the reflexive "mo". He could have used an
intransitive verb form like malacachihui to avoid using the reflexive
object "mo", but then you wouldn't get the same sense of agency on the
part of the celestial bodies or planes or whatever it is he is talking
about, which is consistent with a Nahuatl cosmology that ascribes
animacy to these kinds of things as indicated by the plural ending "me"
on ilhuicame.
The separation between the sequence of three fairly synonymous
expressions from the final phrase would seem to be consistent with the
attempt to sum it all up with the final phrase, which is also rather
interesting. The "ynic izqui tlanepanoltitimani ilhuicame" means
literally something like "they all lie spread out [mani] stacked up
[nepanolli] in the heavens in that manner [ynic]". The nepanolli that is
embedded there has the sense of things crossed, intersected, or piled up
on top of one another. It is derived from the verb panoa which means "to
cross." So, the word may convey both the notion of crossing in the sense
of movement but also crossing in the sense of an overlapping or piling
up. which is another reason why it seemed like it could have
corresponded to his description of the European cosmology of concentric
heavens.
With regard to the question about the pun on "cecenteotlatoca", I don't
think there is any phonological reason why you couldn't read it as a
pun. The thing about puns, as you know, is that they don't have to be
based on perfect homophony. However, I don't know how you could
determine if it was actually intended to be a pun or if they ever
thought of it in that way, by which I assume you mean that it was
intended to be read as being polysemic. The fact that there was a
tradition of pictographic punning certainly suggests that this kind of
verbal punning went on. Is there any other indication in the text that
calls attention to, or indicates such verbal puns in a more
self-conscious way?
Galen




José Rabasa wrote:
> Galen,
>
> Thanks for this most thorough explanation of the morphology of the
> terms.  I appreciate your indication about the limits of such gramatical
> catgeories as adjetives, nouns and adverbs, and your underscoring that
> oral speech has a more flexible and nebulous ontology that is not
> subject to grammaticalization. But I wonder to what extent we speak of
> Chimalpahin as someone who is not at least in this particular passage
> merely reporting oral speech but developing a self-conscious written
> Nahuatl.
>
> As you point out the otlatoca is attested by Molina, and figures earlier
> in the passage. I cannot answer the question you pose as to the passage
> from -tli in otli to -tla- in otlatoca. But perhaps someone else can say
> something about it. Your silence regarding the possible pun suggests
> that morphologically it makes no sense to derive cecen.teotl.tlatoa.ca,
> "each one by god talk."  Is this correct or does it not make sense
> because of the context, but couldn't it be a parenthetical remark? I
> know this is not the simplest of explanations; given the insistence on
> the repetition of movement in "momamallacachotihui" (como se van
> girando), mpopapanahuitihui (como se van sobrepasando), it would make
> more sense to speak of cecenteotlatoca (como siguen unos a otros), but
> note that the reflexive has been dropped and that a coma separates this
> sequence from Ynic yzqui tlanepanoltitimani yluicame (como todos estan
> juntos en el cielo). In short, if the the alternate morphological
> analysis is correct, there could be a pun ¿no? If not what phonological
> reason could be given to exclude the possibility.
>
> Jose
>
>> Jose,
>> Rikke Marie beat me to the answer, and I think the translation is
>> certainly correct, but I would add a couple of things and a question for
>> Rikke Marie or anybody else.
>> First, it is just interesting to note that Nahuat texts often make our
>> job a lot easier, because as in the case you cite Nahuatl discoruse has
>> a tendency to express the same idea repeatedly using a variety of
>> different words. Such synonymous expressions are not always exactly the
>> same, which helps give you a more complete picture of what is being
>> conveyed. Nevertheless, when they provide a series of more or less
>> synonymous expressions, it makes it easier to figure out any given one
>> of them that may not be as morphologically transparent as the rest.
>> With regard to the specific phrase you mention, it would seem to be
>> clear that the "o" is from "ohtli" or "otli" meaning "road" or "path",
>> and that otlatoca means to follow a path or a road. This is well
>> attested. But I'm curious about the "tla" in this construction. Is it
>> merely a transformation of the absolutive suffix "tli" in order to avoid
>> a short word? Are there a lot of examples of this kind of thing? Or is
>> there another explanation? Of course, the first thing that comes to mind
>> is a kind of fossilized non-specific object pronoun (which is evident in
>> some other verbs), but I really don't know, especially given the fact
>> that it is clear that "toca" does not always appear with this object
>> pronoun. So it certainly isn't always fossilized. I know this doesn't
>> really pose a problem for translation, because "otlatoca" is well
>> attested in other contexts, including the instance just a few words
>> earlier in this same text. So this is just a question to satisfy the
>> morphological rigor that Joe instilled me :-).
>> With regard to "cecente[tl]", part of the problem is that to classify
>> Nahuatl words as nouns, ajectives, and verbs is sometimes misleading.
>> The point is that self-conscious grammar enters into a dialogic
>> relationship with linguistic practice in ways that tend to codify
>> language in clear cut ways that do not necessarily reflect the more
>> flexible and nebulous linguistic ontology of unfettered oral speech that
>> has not been subject to a process of self-conscious grammaticalization.
>> So, although in some cases "cecente-" may seem to function as what we
>> call an ajective, as Rikki Marie points out technically it is a noun
>> because it has that noun root 'te' from 'tetl', and nouns (normally
>> defined in Nahuatl as words that take absolutive suffixes) can be
>> imbedded in verbs to function as either objects or adverbs as defined by
>> modern grammatical categories. With the duplication of the "ce", the
>> "cecente" might be rendered as "each one." The plural "ilhuicame" at the
>> end seems to suggest that it is talking about celestial planes. (Is he
>> talking here perhaps about the European model of concentric heavens?) So
>> it seems to me that the phrase "cecenteotlatoca" could be understood as
>> saying literally "They path-followed in an each-one like way" which
>> would translate more eloquently in English as "Each one followed its
>> path" or maybe even better "They followed their respective paths."
>> Galen
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Rikke Marie Olsen wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Jose
>>>
>>> About cecenteotlatoca. I would analyze it cè-cen-te-ò-tla-toca. I
>>> think the
>>> first cè is distributive. Centetl means simply one. ò is the root for
>>> road.
>>> Tla is the absolutive suffix, which is still attached because
>>> nahauspeakers
>>> dislike short words. Toca is the verb and means follow. All in all
>>> You have
>>> an incorporated noun (or two if You count centetl, which is actually a
>>> numeral, but acts like a noun here because of tetl).
>>> I would translate it: they follow different paths or routes. I haven't
>>> looked at the rest of the sentence, so should probably be ajusted a bit.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Rikke Marie Olsen,
>>> Student at the Departement of Native American Language and Culture,
>>> University of Copenhagen.
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Nahua language and culture discussion
>>> [mailto:NAHUAT-L at LISTS.UMN.EDU]
>>> On Behalf Of José Rabasa
>>> Sent: 26. maj 2005 04:11
>>> To: NAHUAT-L at LISTS.UMN.EDU
>>> Subject: Chimalpahin
>>>
>>> Dear Listeros:
>>>
>>> A group of us in the Bay Area have a Nahuatl workshop in which we
>>> have been reading Chimalpahin's Diario.  We found the following
>>> passage a bit difficult to sort out. It comes from that section in
>>> which Chimalpahin compares Nahuatl and European language on eclipses.
>>> The passage reads:
>>>
>>> "ynic otlatoca ynic momamallacachotihui ynic mopapanahuitihui ynic
>>> cecenteotlatoca, ynic yzqui tlanepanoltitimani ylhuicame" (Rafael
>>> Tena's edition p. 228).
>>>
>>> We are particularly undecided on how to read cecenteotlatoca.
>>> Because of the earlier otlatoca (avanzar, andar) we thought that it
>>> could be a combination of cecentetl and otlatoca but cecentl as an
>>> adjetive could not modify a verb.  The other option would be to read
>>> cecen and teotlatoca (teotl.tlatoa.ca), which would translate as
>>> "each one is god talk." This gets particularly heady given that the
>>> European talk on the planets would amount to theology rather than
>>> science, etc. etc., etc. Is this a pun? Any suggestions?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Jose Rabasa
>>
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