ihtoa, itohtia, etc.

[R. Joe Campbell]

Dear Mario,
   [Please excuse my double copy to you -- I discovered this morning that I 
had failed to send a copy to Nahuat-l last night.]

   When I first heard my linguistics professor introduce the
notion of morphemes, using the hamburger as a metaphor, it
caught my imagination -- a hamburger has two parts: bun and
ground beef.  And morphemes have two aspects:  sound and meaning.
Obviously, since the bun is split and sound is not split to
embrace the meaning, the metaphor doesn't work out very well.
   Maybe if we thought of a penny being analogous to the
morpheme unit, having two aspects:  head and tail.  But since
the metaphor doesn't carry us anywhere, it's not worth much.

   All metaphors (and their dangers) aside, morphological
analysis, the identification of word parts and their
variants, while it may not qualify as a real science, has to
go by some science-like rules.  Some morphemes have variant
forms, but we ascribe their variations to something other
than their essence.

   An example:

    na:ntli           mother
    na:yo:tl          motherhood

    We think that the morpheme is <na:n>; we assume that the
morpheme occurs in both words, but that its form is altered
in the second by a process that *tends* to cause /n/ to
delete before /y/ and /w/ -- *tends* because "na:yo:tl"
occurs in free variation with "na:nyo:tl" (i.e., both forms
occur, just as "eight years" is pronounced variably as
[eityirz] and [eichyirz]).

   The simplest rule that guides us when trying to decide
whether two strings of sound ("word parts") are tokens of the
same morpheme is whether the answer to each of the following
questions is YES:

  1) are they related in meaning?

  2) are they similar in sound? (and our judgement on
"similar" has to be careful -- sort of like the referee
in a basketball game -- "similar" and "not similar (enough)"
get an equal shake in this game)

   Consider the words "prince" and "princeling".  Since they
share the "prince" part in form, we ask ourselves what the
meaning of the "-ling" is.  Obviously, "-ling" is some sort
of diminutive suffix, given our knowledge that a "princeling"
is a little prince.
   Every time we "discover" (assuming that our activity
involves the search for some kind of *truth* and not
*invention*) a morpheme, it is reasonable to look for other
occurrences of it, so we pick up and examine the word "boiling".
It has the same sound chunk "-ling" that we found in
"princeling" and the remaining part is "boi" or "boy", where
the difference in spelling is irrelevant (i.e., both
sequences of letters represent the same sounds).
   Do we claim that *this* "-ling" piece is the same morpheme
as the one we found in "princeling"?  Of course not, since
"boiling" has no diminutive meaning in it, any more than it
refers to a small male human.  The example failed the test of
meaning -- when we find identical sequences of sounds, we're
not done; we have to satisfy *both* conditions.

   Mario, I feel a strong sympathy for your desire to reduce
the inventory of morphemes by relating "ihtoa:" and
"ihto:tia:".  After all, relating things that are not
obviously related is one of the main goals of science.
However, since meaning/semantics is a delicate area, I think
your cetl (as you mentioned) is much more tila:huac if we
don't stretch meaning too far -- and I am too cautious to
walk on it.  |8-)

   One further point: aside from the selfish little o/o:
difference, if  "ihto:tia:" is a causative on "ihtoa:", this
may be a problem in the general causative verb morphology of
Nahuatl -- "ihtoa:" is not really a morpheme (i.e., it is not
basic); it is derived by causative derivation from "ihtahui".

   Other examples:

  Intransitive        Causative

  ihzolihui           ihzoloa:
  nelihui             neloa:
  pachihui            pachoa:
  polihui             poloa:

  ihtlacahui          ihtlacoa:
  nechicahui          nechicoa:
  pixahui             pixoa:


Iztayohmeh,

Joe



Quoting micc2 <micc2 at cox.net>:

> Is there a relationship between "ihtoa:"- to speak, and "ihto:tia" -
> to dance? i realize that the long O in ihto:tia is a problem, but it
> appears to me that
> there might be, could be, (I want it to be so bad!) a relationship
> between the two.
> 
> When one looks at mihtoa "se dice" and mihto:tia "se baila" it looks
> even more connected...except for that selfish little long o in the
> middle of ihto:tia....
> 
> I would like to posit that "ihto:tia" - to dance means to cause to be
> said  mo + ihto:tia  "se hace decir" (through body movement) and thus
> may have represented the spiritual or religious dancing of the past
> (which would have included state sponsored rituals and perhaps even
> then use of hallucinogenics).
> 
> I further theorize that the second verb for dance "macehua" (and
> forgive me if I do not know if it has any long vowels) signified the
> everyday dances of the commoners.
> 
> Some  examples would be a ballet at the Met , or a choreography at a
> fourth of July banquet at the White house, or a Papal mass that
> included dancing (which of course we would consider very odd now a
> days)
> 
> Examples of the "macehua"  dancing would be cumbia, quebradita,
> merengue, the aiky brakey heart, and of course the electric slide.
> 
> I know, the vowel length makes it look like I am skating on thin
> cetl. Sort of like caro and carro in Spanish  ¿que no?
> 
> mario
> 
> --
> I live for reasoned, enlightened spirituality.
> 
> "Tlacecelilli", tranquilidad, paz
> www.mexicayotl.org
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> Nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
> http://www.famsi.org/mailman/listinfo/nahuatl
>
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