Ambiguity

[Campbell, R. Joe]

Galen,

   I'll try to make some relevant comments and mark them with ****.  I
printed your e-mail and discussed it with Mary.

Quoting Galen Brokaw <brokaw at buffalo.edu>:

> Joe,
> I've always wondered about the basis for positing two separate
> morphologies for the "-ltia" causatives in the first place.

**** By the way, I've have two private messages someone in Europe
discussing the same thing.

> Is it possible that there is really only one "-ltia" formation? In
> other words, is it possible that even the form that has been
> identified as using the causative suffix "-ltia" is actually the
> construction involving the patientive noun form with the verbalizer
> "-ti-" and the causative "-a"?

**** I tend to label the causative as -ltia or -tia and ignore what
Andrews says about it.  He *does* say that the -tia causative is
derived from a non-active verb.  So, according to him, when you delete
the 'o' or the whole '-hua', and add the -tia, you get an 'l' in some
forms (chihualtia) and just -tia in the ones that have a -hua
non-active (ahxitia).
   So both the causative and the "provide-with-noun" homophonous forms
are added to a non-active form, the causative with unbroken -tia and
the other with -ti-a.
But the non-active forms for these two formations don't seem to be the
same -- the first one is a non-active that is still a verb and the
second has been nominalized, ready to re-verb.


> I assume that one of the reasons for positing the two different forms
> is that in many cases the ostensibly patientive noun is not attested
> in other contexts. But even if many of these ostensibly patientive
> nouns are not attested outside of the verbal causative form, couldn't
> the formation of an otherwise unattested patientive noun be motivated
> by the "noun + ti-a" structure, in which the 'noun' is often an
> attested patientive form?

**** This logic appeals to me and it would be interesting to explore it
with concrete examples:

   "provide with" noun             so-called causative

   quixtli / exit                  quixtia

   coch... / sleep                 cochitia

   caqu... / audible thing         caquitia

   mauhtli / fright                mauhtia

   cualantli / anger               cualantli


  ((I am not very hopeful about this possibility.))

> Another possible problem with this suggestion might be that
> patientive nouns built from transitive verbs, if I understand
> correctly, do not take specific object prefixes. So one might argue
> that you would not expect patientive nouns to have the specific
> object prefixes that occur in the causative form. However, it seems
> to me that in the context of a verbalized patientive noun, there
> would be no reason not to reincorporate specific object prefixes. The
> restriction against specific object prefixes for patientive nouns is
> strictly pragmatic. The pragmatics of the patientive and
> resultant-state forms do not allow for a specific object, because it
> wouldn't make sense. But in the verbalized causative form, the
> pragmatics are different. In this case, it can make perfect sense to
> have either specific or non-specific object prefixes.

**** I have difficulty in handling this.  Could you give me a concrete
example?

> A third possible problem might have to do with semantics. However, I
> would think that there ought to be a way conceptually to make the
> semantics of this form work with any patientive noun form.
> Of course, I'm sure that there may be problems that I am not seeing
> here. Are there maybe instances of "-ltia" causatives whose form
> somehow precludes a homology with the "patientive noun+ti-a"
> structure? If not, then couldn't we explain them all using one
> morphology instead of two?

**** From the beginning, I wondered about cases where there was no
ambiguity in one direction or the other.  Here is my list so far:


*+ambig.no ***
  cuacualtia , quintla-.  she feeds them. <p43-p51-dupl-cua:-caus01
    +ambig.no>. b.11 f.6 p.54|
  cualtia , quin-.  they feed it to them; they make them eat it. <p43-
    cua:-caus01 +ambig.no>. b.9 f.5 p.63|
  cualtia , quite-.  he feeds it to him; he gives it to someone to eat;
    they feed it to one; they cause someone to eat it. <p33-p52-cua:-
    caus01 +ambig.no>. b.11 f.6 p.54|
  cualtiaya , quin-.  they fed it to them. <p43-cua:-caus01-ya3
    +ambig.no>. b.9 f.5 p.63|
  cualtih , oquimon-.  they fed it to them. <o:-p43-o:n-cua:-caus02-prt1
    +ambig.no>. b.9 f.5 p.63|
  tlaquehualtia =nitete [scribal error: ??is this an error on molina's
    part?: 55m].  alquilar mis criados a otro. <p11-p52-p52-tla:ctli-
    e:hua-caus01 +ambig.no>. 55m-00|
  tlaquehualtia =nitete=onitetetlaquehualtih [scribal error: ??this may
    be an error on molina's part -- it looks like an ambiguous caus01/l1-
    ti-a case.  but for that to be true, "tete" would have to be
    "tetla", because the patientive noun would be "tlatlaquehualli".:
    71m2].  alquilar mis esclauos, o criados a otro. <p11-p52-p52-
    tla:ctli-e:hua-caus01 +ambig.no +prob>. 71m2-23|
morpheme count 12

   So far, I haven't found any that can only be analyzed as "-ti-a" --
these look unambiguously causative "-tia".

Joe




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