Ambiguity

[Galen Brokaw]

Joe,
I have to admit that I may not be understanding all of your explanation, 
but let me ask a few follow-up questions.
Although I've read Andrews explanation of this, I did not understand how 
he arrived at his conclusions. In fact, I think I started thinking about 
this issue in these terms after reading Andrews' description of 
causatives. I guess my question has to do with how to determine the 
nature of the morphology in this case. Or is that even possible? Maybe 
Andrews has an argument to support his assertions, but I don't remember 
him presenting it; and it was not immediately obvious from his description.
With regard to the Andrews description, many of his examples could be 
interpreted differently. For example, with cualantia, he says that this 
is built on "cualano" rather than "cualantli." But it is unclear to me 
why this is necessarily the case. In pragamatic terms, I'm not sure it 
makes any difference. But I'm interested in whether or not there is some 
systemic reason for interpreting it this way.
His example of "tlanextia" is also ambiguous. Molina gives "tlanextli" 
as light. This term raises its own questions for me with regard to why 
there is an object pronoun. But in any case, if we have a noun 
"tlanextli," I'm not sure why we have to posit the causative form 
"tlanextia" as being built on "nexohua."
It seems to me that in the section dealing with this causative form (at 
least the section that I just reconsulted), all of Andrews' examples 
with the exception of one can be interpreted as being built on a noun 
rather than the non-active form. The exception would seem to be 
"choctia" and maybe there are other examples of similar words. This may 
be what led him to this explanation, because as far as I know "choctli" 
is not attested as a nominalized form of "to cry." But if the vast 
majority of these causatives can be interpreted as nominalized forms 
which are then verbalized using the "-ti-a" ending, then it seems to me 
that you could just as well say that words like "choctia" are the result 
of making a formal generalization that produces causative forms like 
"choctia" built on unattested nominalizations, in this case "choctli."
Andrews does say that this type of generalization occurs with the 
non-active form itself, but he doesn't assume the same for noun forms in 
this context.
With regard to the examples you list below, I assume that the three dots 
indicate examples of unattested noun forms which would be problematic. 
And I think I understand that part of the problem has to do with the 
causative forms in these cases do not have an 'l' as in the case of 
axhitia and cochitia. However, in the case of "caqui," we have 
attestations of both "caquitia" and "caquiltia." So even if there is 
something else going on with "caquitia," couldn't we posit an unattested 
noun "caquilli" used to construct the causative "caquiltia"? I don't 
think there are attestations of "chochiltia," so either something else 
is going on with "cochitia" as with "caquitia," or this form has a 
tendency to drop the 'l' in some causatives. Maybe that is a stretch?
In reference to the examples you list, I'm not sure, but maybe this is 
where my confusing paragraph about object pronouns is relevant (or maybe 
not). I'm not sure why these cases are unambiguous unless it is because 
they have specific object prefixes where patientive nouns would have 
non-specific ones? Or maybe in the first case, which does have a 
non-specific object, because there is a reduplication? I guess what I 
was trying to say is that when a patientive noun becomes verbalized 
again, it seems to me that there is no reason why the non-specific 
object pronoun of the patientive form would need to remain non-specific. 
In other words, the object would be once again free to be specific. So 
in example #2,  "quincualtia," you have an underlying "qui" that is 
covered up by the indirect object pronoun "quin." The patientive noun 
would have been "tlacualli", but in the causative form, the "tla" turns 
into "qui" because it is referring now to something specific. And if 
this works, then the nonspecific indirect object pronoun would be free 
to appear between the specific object pronoun and the verb as in example 
#3, "quitecualtia." What I am suggesting is that maybe the non-specific 
object pronoun of the patientive noun does not have to be fossilized in 
the causative form. Maybe the pronoun position is reactivated to 
function the same way it did in the original active form.
I'm not sure I understand the issue with "netetetlaquehualtia." Molina 
does actually list the patientive form "tlaquehualli" without the 
non-specific object pronoun "tla." Although wouldn't one also expect 
"tetlaquehualli"? But in any case, even if my argument about the 
reactivation of the object pronoun position in the causative form is not 
right, we still have a nonspecific object pronoun in this form. 
Actually, I'm not sure why they would need the causative form in this 
case anyway. If they wanted to say "I hire out people to people, why 
wouldn't they just say "nitetetlaquehua"? If the form 
"nitetetlaquehualtia" is merely a causative not derived from a 
patientive, wouldn't the causative have to be operating on the reflexive 
form of this verb? I'm not sure how you would work in the reflexive 
pronoun, but wouldn't the causative form have to mean something like "I 
cause people to hire themselves out to people"? So given that there is 
no reflexive object pronoun in this word, wouldn't we have to interpret 
this as a "ti-a" causative built on a patientive noun "tetlaquehualli"? 
Then it would just be, "I provide someone with the hiring out of 
people." This would avoid the problem of having to incorporate the 
reflexive within the causative.

Galen


Campbell, R. Joe wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Nahuatl mailing list
> Nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
> http://www.famsi.org/mailman/listinfo/nahuatl
>
>
>   
_______________________________________________
Nahuatl mailing list
Nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
http://www.famsi.org/mailman/listinfo/nahuatl