tlacoyoctli, tlacotoctli

Thu Mar 1 17:26:58 UTC 2012

Estimado John:

Neither coyoca nor coyonia: will take you to tlacoyoctli, as far as I can
see. That’s why I suggested the unattested transitive verb coyoqui, as I
can’t come up with a better explanation. I’m aware that this is a last-ditch
attempt to solve the problem you posted, but it seems to work within the
norms of (early colonial central Mexican) Nahuatl, either by way of the
“resultant state” or the “patientive state” hypotheses.

Un abrazo,

David

De: IDIEZ [mailto:idiez at me.com] 
Enviado el: miércoles, 29 de febrero de 2012 22:40
Para: David Wright
CC: nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
Asunto: Re: [Nahuat-l] tlacoyoctli, tlacotoctli

Nopilhuampoh David,

            Perhaps instead of coyoqui, the alternate form would have been
coyoca, given that the reduplicative of coyoni is cocoyoca. But it still
doesn’t resolve the problem of how you get from coyonia’s preterite root,
coyonih, to tlacoyontli/tlacoyoctli.

John

On Feb 29, 2012, at 8:51 PM, David Wright wrote:

Muy apreciado John:

It’s good to be critical and look hard at these things. There is, in fact, a
simpler explanation for both tlacoyoctli and tlatectli, deriving the nouns
from the preterite stems of the verbs. This is what Campbell and Karttunen
(1989a: 240) call “patientive state nouns”, as opposed to what they call
“resultant state nouns”,which are based on the passive stem (which they
prefer to call “nonactive”), as described in my last post. The results of
both processes have similar or identical meanings, so it’s difficult to
choose between the two forms.

The “resultant state” explanations would go like this:

Tlacoyoctli: tla + (coyoqui -i) + tli

tlatectli: tla + (tequi - i) + tli

(Although I’m still not sure about this unattested verb coyoqui, where the
expected form would be coyo:ni.)

If you (with friar William of Ockham) prefer the simpler explanations of
these words, these analyses would also work.

Andrews (2003: 364, 365) prefers to think of a “nonactive suffix o:”, which
would simplify the “(lo: - o:) part of my previous analysis to just “o:.” I
prefer to write out the long form, based on the assumtion that o: is derived
from lo:, just to make things a bit more explicit.

The more complicated analysis (“patientive state nouns”) given by Campbell
and Karttunen seem to be inspired by Carochi’s explanation of what he calls
“los verbales en tli, y li” (2001: 182-187 [lbook 3,chapter 3]). (Both Joe
and Fran are listeros; perhaps they can shed some light on this.) Carochi
includes tlatectli in his examples, then explains:

“Formanse de la voz passiua del presente de indicatiuo desta manera que si
el passiuo es regular, idest, si acaba in lo, se muda la o, vltima en li,
verbi gracia. chi:hua hazer, forma el passiuo chihualo, buelta la o, en li,
y antepuesto el tla, haze tlachi:hualli, cosa hecha, obra, criatura. Pero si
el verbo no formare regularmente el passiuo, no acabarà en lo, aunque si, en
o, de ordinario, y en tal caso la o, se mudarà en tli; como tequi cortar,
tiene el passiuo, teco, boluiendo su o, en tli, con el tla, haze el verbal
tlatectli, cosa cortada. [
]”

Carochi says tlatectli is formed on the passive stem, which makes the
analysis I gave in my last post my favorite hypothesis, although the
alternative mentioned above can’t be ruled out, as far as I can see at this
point. Campbell and Karttunen give both derivations for tlatectli:
“resultant state” (based on the passive) and “patientive state” (based on
the preterite) (1989a: 239, 240).

As for evidence of the intervening steps between tequi and tlatectli, there
are attestations of teco: in the Carochi quote given above, in Sahagún (see
Wimmer, undated) and at the core of tlateco:ni, “cutting instrument”
(Karttunen, 1985: 295; Molina, 1571b: 134v; Wimmer, undated). Molina’s
(1571b: 24r) listing of coyoctic, “agujero, o cosa agujerada” is also
relevant to the discussion, as has been pointed out in this thread.

I hope this makes things a bit more clear. These sorts of changes are what
makes Nahuatl morphological analysis a challenge; without a clear
understanding of the underlying morphophonological processes it can be
really hard to see what’s going on.

Saludos cordiales,

David

********************************

Sources not cited in my last post:

ANDREWS, J. Richard

2003a Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, revised edition, Norman, University
of Oklahoma Press.

2003b Workbook for introduction to Classical Nahuatl, revised edition,
Norman, University of Oklahoma Press.

WIMMER, Alexis

undated Dictionnaire de la langue nahuatl classique
(http://sites.estvideo.net/malinal/; access: 29 February 2012).

De: IDIEZ [mailto:idiez at me.com] 
Enviado el: miércoles, 29 de febrero de 2012 15:35
Para: David Wright
CC: nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
Asunto: Re: [Nahuat-l] tlacoyoctli, tlacotoctli

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

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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