Dictionary entries

[John F. Schwaller]

From:   "John Sullivan, Ph.D." <idiez at me.com>
Date:   Wed, November 26, 2008


Compañeros,
        A fun thing happened today. Delfina was sitting next to the window
today working on our dictionary (there's no indoor heating or
insulation in Zacatecas, so it's a good idea to sit in the sun when
it's cold), and she asked if the following words were already in the
dictionary:
1. hui:hui:ca, nic. "to go ahead and take something", as in s.o. who
can't find exactly what they want at the market, so they go ahead and
buy something else.
2. ca:ca:hua, nic. "to return the unused portion of something you
bought", as in s.o. who buys three bags of cement, only uses two, and
takes the last one back for a refund.
        I recognized that we were dealing with reduplication with a long
vowel, but my experience with Andrews only offered "intensity, with
the implication of smooth continuity in repeated performance of an
action, event, process, etc. The emphasis is on interconnectedness or
uniformity, involving a single entity, occasion, or place in related
or continuous repetitions or else several entities in similar
performances (2003: 229)." I had previously seen a good example of
what Andrews is describing in Modern Huastecan Nahuatl: toca, nic. "to
follow s.o." > to:toca, nic. "to pursue s.o. (to follow s.o.
intensely)", but these new examples were not quite in line. Then the
student with whom I was working said, "Oh, what about
"nicma:maquilih", "I went ahead and hit him"; or "xima:ma:lti", " go
ahead and take a bath" [Here the "m(o)-" is fused to the verb stem].
And then all kinds of examples started popping up. At that point I
realized that this would probably add another two or three thousand
verb entries to our dictionary. We had been documenting reduplication
with short vowel and glottal stop, and the few reduplications with
long vowel which carry the idea of intensity, but this new structure
seems to be much more prevalent.
        Anyway, that's how you say "to go ahead and do something" in Modern
Huastecan Nahuatl. Its opposite, "not do s.t. after all, or to intend
to do s.t. but not follow through" is formed using "-zquia", known in
Older Nahuatl as the conditional tense. So, for example you would have:

1. "xihui:huito:ni", "go ahead and jump" (from "huito:ni", "to jump"
2. "tihuito:nizquiah", "we didn't jump after all"

3. "nitla:tlacuahqui", "I went ahead and ate" (from "tlacua:", "to
eat" [with a fused tla-]"
4. "intlacua:zquiah", "You (pl.) didn't eat after all".

John

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