oncahuia, excahuia.

[John Sullivan, Ph.D.]

Piyali Listeros,
	In Modern Huastecan Nahuatl "oncahuia" means "for two people to  
approach or gang up on s.o." and "excahuia" means "for three people to  
approach of gang up on s.o." Assuming this is the "-huia" suffix that  
forms transitive verbs from a noun root, meaning "to use, apply or  
produce the embedded noun with respect to s.o. or s.t., it looks like  
"onca-" and "exca-" are being treated as nouns. We know that "onca-"  
has "ome", "two", and "exca-" has "eyi", "three". So what is the "- 
ca"? We also have "nechcahuia", "to approach s.o. or s.t.", and this  
comes from "nechca", "close, near". Andrews would say that this is the  
relational "-ca", used for "nechca" and "huehca", meaning "interval of  
space".
	It would seem that the "-ca" of "oncahuia" and "excahuia" would  
either be this relational morpheme of "interval", or perhaps it could  
be the "-ca" that allows us to add things to preterite agentives. So  
does this mean that Nahuatl numbers have a verbal origin?
John
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