Help with a Nahuatl word (Alan R. King)

[Alan King]

Hi Joe,

For what it's worth I can offer you the following
"negative evidence" from Pipil which, as far as it
goes, supports what I take to be your position that in
theory a form such as motlaxcaloa "shouldn't" occur.

In Pipil the corresponding verb tashkalua is found.
Lyle Campbell glosses it as "tortear, hacer
tortillas". (However in most Pipil dialects the
generic word for "tortilla" is tamal.)

LC labels tashkalua as t.v. (?) (the question mark is
his). I'm not sure what that is supposed to mean, or
even whether it is perhaps a mistake on LC's part - he
is generally highly reliable. In any case, all other
information I have would indicate that it is not
transitive, i.e. there is no *niktashkalua as far as I
know but only nitashkalua.

I have the following example from the IRIN corpus
(interview-format spontaneous conversations recorded
and transcribed during the past three years) which
clearly illustrates the use of the intransitive verb
tashkalua (...tashkalua wan KImana...):

wan kwak imejmey ne kwajkwawit tikpitzakuat wan iwan
tikuntuiat tit pal ne siwat tashkalua wan kimana tay
ne tutakwal
"and when we break up branches of trees and with
[them] we make [a] fire for the woman to make
tortillas and cook what[ever is] our food"

I have not a single example of *mutashkalua. This is
also what my own "framework for thinking about" Pipil
grammar predicts, according to which only formally
transitive verbs may have reflexive forms.

Alan




      

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