tlacoyoctli, tlacotoctli

Wed Feb 29 21:34:48 UTC 2012

David,
	I've never been really happy with the way people explain things having to do with the passive and impersonal constructions in Nahuatl. I think it's the only part of Andrews that I haven't even tried to get through. I've seen the explanation you cite for tequi>teco>tlatectli before. And perhaps it really does make sense, but it just seems to me that there are too many shady things going on. First, the "i" of the verb drops off, then the passive "-lo" is added, but wait.... then the "l" drops out. And when we finally get the passive teco, "it is cut," the specific object has also disappeared. Then we continue down the road toward the noun. Next the final "o" of teco drops off and the object "tla-" miraculously reappears at the same time that the absolutive suffix "-tli" is added. And in between the source verb tequi and the resulting tlatectli, there's no hard evidence that any of these intervening processes ever really took place. Since I'm not a linguist I fear I may be like the lay person standing in front a piece of Modern art and saying they can't see anything. I understand that Nahuatl adds and drops affixes to create and refine meaning, many times passing repeatedly through noun, verb and relational forms. But most of the time, the processes are pretty transparent. This stuff, though, is really hard for me to understand.
John

On Feb 29, 2012, at 1:23 PM, David Wright wrote:

> Muy estimado John:
> 
> I was just looking at your first post in this thread, and had come up with
> what for me is the most likely hypothesis, its major problem being the n > c
> change, which I tentatively explained as an unattested variant of the root
> verb (coyoqui instead of coyoni), because that way the analysis works within
> the established rules. I don't know enough about diachronic changes in
> Nahuatl to evaluate if coyoqui could be an older form related to coyoni (or
> coyo:ni). If you have any more information on (or examples of) the n > c
> shift I would be interested.
> 
> The analysis of tlacoyoctli, based on the hypothetical transitive verb
> coyoqui, would work like this:
> 
> tla + (coyoqui -i) + (lo: - l) - o: + tli
> 
> The passive suffix lo: disappears like this in other cases, for example
> tlatectli, "something cut" (from tequi, "cortar", by way of passive
> tlateco:, "something is cut"):
> 
> tla + (tequi - i) + (lo: - l) - o: + tli
> 
> (see Campbell/Karttunen, 1989a: 238, 239; Carochi, 2001: 182-185 [book 3,
> chapter 3]; Karttunen, 1983: 216, 232, 295; Molina, 1571b: 105r, 134v.)
> 
> CAMPBELL, R. Joe; KARTTUNEN, Frances
> 1989a Foundation course in Nahuatl grammar, volume 1: text and exercises,
> ed. xerográfica, Missoula, The University of Montana.
> 1989b  Foundation course in Nahuatl grammar, volume 2: vocabulary and key,
> ed. xerográfica, Missoula, The University of Montana.
> 
> CAROCHI, Horacio
> 2001 Grammar of the Mexican language with an explanation of its adverbs
> (1645), James Lockhart, traductor y editor, Stanford/Los Ángeles, Stanford
> University Press/UCLA Latin American Center Publications.
> 
> KARTTUNEN, Frances
> 1983 An analytical dictionary of Nahuatl, Austin, University of Texas Press.
> 
> MOLINA, Alonso de
> 1571a Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana, México, Casa de Antonio
> de Espinosa.
> 1571b Vocabulario en lengua mexicana y castellana, México, Casa de Antonio
> de Espinosa.
> 
> Saludos desde Guanajuato,
> 
> David
> 
> *******************************************************
> 
> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: nahuatl-bounces at lists.famsi.org [mailto:nahuatl-bounces at lists.famsi.org]
> En nombre de IDIEZ
> Enviado el: miércoles, 29 de febrero de 2012 12:42
> Para: nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
> Asunto: [Nahuat-l] tlacoyoctli, tlacotoctli
> 
> Piyali notequixpoyohuan,
> 	You know, this problem might be more extensive than I thought. With
> a verb like coyoni>coyonia, the preterite roots, coyon/coyonih, are very
> easy to distinguish. But what about all those verbs like cotoni/cotona,
> "for s.t. to snap or bust" / "to bust or snap s.t.", whose preterite roots,
> coton/coton, are indistinguishable. So how can we know if  tlacotontli or
> tlacotoctli, "s.t. snapped or busted," is based on the transitive cotona, or
> the intransitive cotoni. The fact that the "n" of the root verb can go to
> "c" suggests that the transformation from transitive verb to noun might take
> place using the instransitive form as the base. That "c" appears in the
> reduplicated form cotoni>cocotoca, etc. 
> 	This possibility, that the transformation of a transitive verb to
> something else might be based on the intransitive form, has a parallel. We
> used to say, for example, that when cahua becomes the applicative cahuilia,
> the final "a" of cahua changes to "i". Now we know, or at least I think,
> that the applicative transformation of a transitive verb is base on the
> intransitive form, even if that form is not attested. The good thing about
> working simultaneously with different variants (across space and time) is
> that forms that are only implicitly present in some variants are explicitly
> present in others. Or sometimes you just have to look for them in combined
> forms. Cahui, for example, is used in Modern Huastecan Nahuatl in the
> following form:
> 1. Attested transitive verb: mahcahua, to release or throw s.t.
> 2. Unattested intransitive form: mahcahui, to be released or thrown
> (unattested in the sense that it does not appear in a stand-alone form)
> 3. -mahcauhyan (with a possessor) is the slit between things that are tied
> or stacked together, like bamboo that is tied together to make a wall or
> fence. Literally, the fence's place of release, from maitl>mah-,
> cahui>cauh-, -yan (time of place of an action).
> 	But I would think that just the fact that cahui is the base for the
> formation of cahuilia, is evidence enough of its existence.
> John
> 
> John Sullivan, Ph.D.
> Professor of Nahua Language and Culture
> Zacatecas Institute for Teaching and Research in Ethnology
> Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas
> +52 (492) 925-3425 (office)
> +52 1 (492) 103-0195 (mobile)
> idiez at me.com
> www.macehualli.org
> 
> _______________________________________________
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John Sullivan, Ph.D.
Professor of Nahua Language and Culture
Zacatecas Institute for Teaching and Research in Ethnology
Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas
+52 (492) 925-3425 (office)
+52 1 (492) 103-0195 (mobile)
idiez at me.com
www.macehualli.org

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