Help with a Nahuatl word (Alan R. King)

[Campbell, R. Joe]

Hey Alan,

   Thanks for the info on Pipil.  I'm interested in your negative 
evidence, partly because it bears on my perception of the apparent 
logic of object prefixes and whether the "verbing" affixes "remember" 
their transitivity.
And my selfish self particularly likes it because it not only *bears* 
on my perception, but it *agrees* with it.  My better self would have 
also been pleased if your evidence disagreed with the perception, since 
it is actually after the "Truth".

All the best,

Joe

Quoting Alan King <alanrking at yahoo.com>:

> 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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