*Cuitlaahua and *Cuitlaahuac: morpheme boundaries

[Gordon Whittaker]

Hi Michael!

My mistake -- I should have made clear in the posting that the double <a>
in *Cuitlaahua and *Cuitlaahuac was not meant to represent a long vowel,
which you rightly indicate would not usually be distinguished from the
short vowel in early texts (or even in many modern ones).

My <aa> was meant to indicate separate vowels on either side of a morpheme
boundary (cuitla- + ahua-). That's why I regret that Wolf's
Spanish-Nahuatl compilation of previous dictionaries opts for representing
long vowels as doubled symbols. In Wolf's system long <a> at the end of
one morpheme followed by long <a> at the beginning of another would become
<aaaa>! To which I can only say, in the spirit of Monty Python's Holy
Grail, Aaaargh!

Thanks for your interesting suggestions concerning the names.

Best,
Gordon


> Aya, Gordon,
>
> Always good to hear from you.
>
> The thing is, I don't believe we see (or I believe we don't see :-)
> long vowels marked by the Spaniards in this way. If the second part of
> Cuitlahua/c is a noun beginning with long /a;/, it would still be
> written with just one "a" grapheme.
>
> Al menos, esto es lo que pienso.
>
> nipwaahkaalo,
>
> Michael

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gordon Whittaker
Professor
Linguistische Anthropologie und Altamerikanistik
Seminar fuer Romanische Philologie
Universitaet Goettingen
Humboldtallee 19
37073 Goettingen
Germany
tel./fax (priv.): ++49-5594-89333
tel. (office): ++49-551-394188
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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