nouns and verbs in Nahuatl

[Galen Brokaw]

> Regarding #2, I'd like to get around to discussing your "(just as 
> 'real' nouns do)" sometime. Are there real nouns in Nahuatl? I'm 
> reminded of Father Baraga's statement in his _The Theoretical and 
> Practical Grammar of the Otchipwe Language":
>
> "In closing let it be allowed that the Indian language is perfect in 
> its own way, and has many beauties not to be found in our modern 
> languages; for instance, the verb in the Indian idiom, is the supreme 
> chief of the language; it draws into its magical circle all the other 
> parts of speech, and makes them act, move, suffer, and even exist in 
> the manner, and in such situations as is pleasing to it. In truth a 
> learned philologist likened the verb of the Indian language to Atlas 
> that carries the world on its shoulders. If a language can be compared 
> to a world, this comparison appears to us very just; for the verb can 
> carry it entirely in its bosom."
>
> Blair Rudes, the late Iroquoianist, once told me that there was a 
> Iroquoian language (Tuscarora, I believe, but I can't remember) that 
> had only around 7 bona fide nouns; everything else that we would 
> consider nouns were actually verbs.
>
> Nahuatl seems to have this same characteristic. I think Andrews talks 
> about this somewhere, but I don't know where. But when we say, for 
> example,
> 'cuauhtli' (cua:uhtli) 'eagle', what we are dealing with here is a verb 
> phrase meaning 'it is an/the eagle'.
>   
Hi Michael,

Sorry for the delayed response. I just wanted to comment briefly on this 
issue of verbs versus nouns in Nahuatl. I don't know where Andrews says 
this, but his grammar makes a very clear distinction between nouns and 
verbs. A number of times I've heard repeated this idea that in Nahuatl 
nouns are actually verbs or something to that effect. I don't know about 
Tuscarora, but I think that in the case of Nahuatl, this is a 
misconception based on a failure to distinguish between formal grammar 
and pragmatics. Although it is true that the expression "cuauhtli" can 
mean "it is an eagle" or "there is an eagle," this doesn't mean that it 
is a verb. Nouns in English can do exactly the same thing. If someone 
yells "bomb!," everyone interprets that as meaning "there is a bomb" or 
"it is a bomb." But this doesn't mean that "bomb" is a verb. It is 
important here to draw a distinction between formal categories of 
grammar and pragmatics. From a formal perspective, "cuauhtli" is a real 
noun, because it behaves like other nouns and not like verbs in Nahuatl. 
>>From a pragmatic perspective, it can convey the the idea that is 
formally articulated as "it is an eagle" or "there is an eagle," but it 
does not do so through its form. The fact that the pragmatic use of an 
isolated word can convey a broader meaning that can be formally 
articulated using a complete sentence says nothing about the formal 
category of that word, which is determined strictly on the basis of its 
formal properties.

Galen


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