Chimalpahin

[José Rabasa]

Dear Galen and Henry,

First, I want to thank Henry for pointing out 
that god-talk would not have the verb-form tlatoa 
but the nominal-form teotlatolli.  This leads me 
to the question of the terms we use for speaking 
about Nahautl, the issue that Galen raised with 
respect to my observation that adjectives cannot 
modify verbs, an observation that missed what 
Rikke said about the function of centetl as a 
noun.  Henry points out that the terms we used 
derive from Latin grammar, to which I would add 
that Latin provided throughout the Middle Ages 
the "scientific" metalanguage for speaking about 
language.  Grammar had a closer meaning to logic 
than to a mere arte de la lengua. The traces of 
this metalinguistic practice can be found in 
modern semiotics--take the concept of sign for 
starters.  What guarantees that the terms we use 
today to describe non-European languages does not 
miss "unexpected phenomena" and might very well 
produce a  conceptual formulation that transforms 
the original language through it linguistic 
reduction (in sixteenth-century understanding as 
ordering) just as Carochi did in his Arte?  If I 
recall correctly, this would be an instance of 
what Sapir called the "anthropological mill." 
Galen hits the mark when he asks " but don't you 
often feel that in some cases it just isn't 
always quite adequate?" And Galen is absolutely 
correct when he says that a Nahuatl "linguistic 
science would have looked very different from 
ours." Does a metalanguage require a phonographic 
form? Couldn't we imagine a community of speakers 
using their everyday language to speak about 
language? Or, is it necessary that a given 
society possess a "scientific" metalanguage, as 
was the case of Latin in Europe, to develop an 
awareness of its speaking forms? Now, Galen 
speaks of grammaticality as bound by a written 
grammar.  I wonder, however, if it doesn't make 
sense to speak of a language possessing a grammar 
regardless of it systematic reduction to a 
written grammar.  We could then speak of 
different degrees of refinement and complexity of 
speech in which a certain grammaticality and 
elegance might be considered exemplary.  This was 
clearly the objective of Olmos, Sahagun, Juan 
Bautista, and Carochi, to just mention the most 
prominent. Now, it might be the case that in 
Nahuatl it is common for what we call adjectives 
to modify verbs, but as far as I know this has 
not been extensively documented. In studying 
Chimalpahin we should consider that he was 
knowledgeable of the grammars, vocabularios, and 
other tools that the Franciscans had devised in 
the course of the sixteenth century.  I don't see 
why his style is not building on the Nahuatl 
literature that the missionaires had written.  I 
am reading Chimlaphain not only as someone who 
used the Latin alphabet, hence wrote letters, but 
as someone who was producing a written 
Nahuatl--not a mere transcription or reproduction 
of speech--that is, someone who was writing as a 
Nahuatl letrado.  In this regard to speak of him 
as "oral" would miss the objective of producing a 
written language with its own rules, styles, and 
forms, which I believe is what Chimalpahin was 
self-consciously aiming at.

Jose

>Hola,
>
>if |cecenteotlatoca| is derived from /tla'toa/ 
>it would rather translate as "had talked in 
>reference to their respective gods" (or?)
>"god talk" would be /teotlatolli/ with 
>root-final /l/ = *|cecenteotlatolca| "each by 
>god talk", I guess.
>
>Regarding short incorporated nominal roots:
>compare the following forms:
>/o'tlatoka/ = "follow a path"  < /o' -tli/
>/âtlakwi/ = "fetch water"  <  /â -tl/
>
>To me this looks like the indefinite object 
>prefix /tla-/ is inserted, rather than /tla/ 
>derived from /-tl(i)/. We also find a 
>reduplicated form /âtlatlakwi/ (cf. Seler's 
>glossary) "fetch lots of water" ("fetch 
>repeatedly"?) which seems to support this. *If* 
>this is the same /tla/, I'm not sure.
>
>I think Galen touched upon an important issue: 
>by what processes of analysis do we establish 
>our categories (say, "word classes")? Lacking 
>alternatives, we do use "traditional" terms 
>rooted in Latin grammar writing and established 
>through a long genealogy of Nahuatl scholars. 
>While doing so, we should be aware that these 
>terms *may be* crutches rather than devices of 
>analysis. As useful as our terminology is, it 
>might blur our sight for unexpected phenomena. I 
>wonder in what terms we would talk about Nahuatl 
>if it were among the Papuan languages 
>"discovered" 30-40 years ago...
>
>Mâ niwîya
>Henry Kammler
>Univ. of Frankfurt