yomo:ni vs. moyo:ni -- a metathetical relationship?

Tue Mar 20 15:42:59 UTC 2012

Tomastzine,

Many thanks for your valuable comments! A couple of days before receiving
your mail I had been communicating with Jonathan Amith on <yomoni> and he
remarked that it "sounds sounds something like moyo:ni, which is used for
the agitated movement of disturbed insects" in Guerrero Nahuatl. That got
me thinking about the possibility that <yomoni> might just be a local or
regional metathetical variant of the well-attested moyo:ni.

So I checked Molina and this is what I came up with:

Moyoni.    bullir las hormigas gusanos o cosa semejante.
[...]
Yomoni.    bullir los gusanos, o piojos, pulgas, hormigas, o cosas
semejantes, o dar mucha comezon los granos o la serna, o tener gran
encendimiento de la carne los mozos o mozas luxuriosas.
Yoyomiquiliztli.    comezon.
Yoyomoca. ni.    tener comezon.
Yoyomoctli.    los riñones.

I think the striking similarity between the first two entries strongly
suggests not only a semantic but also a morphological/genetic relationship
between the two verbs.

So then I checked the Florentine Codex, and this is what I found in Bk. 10,
Ch. 27, Par. 12 (p. 131 in Dibble and Anderson):

*Testis                          Joiomoctli: *
[...]
it moves lasciviously           moioma,
both move lasciviously          moiôioma,
it stirs                        iomonj,
it swoons with lasciviousness   iôionmjquj,
[...]

Sahagún's juxtaposition of these verbs again suggests a close semantic, if
not morphological, relationship. I suspect that <ixyoyomoni> might refer to
making faces by rolling the eyes and twitching the face. The <ô> of Sahagún
is likely to be o + glottal stop. What is interesting here is the fact that
the second syllable of <moioma>, /yo/, gets reduplicated, not the first. So
in both these verbs, <moiôioma> and <iôionmjquj>, we have a reduplicated
/yo'/ (with glottal stop). The verbs with initial /yo/ are likely to be
local or regional variants hailing from Mexico and/or Tetzcoco and
environs. Cf. also the dynastic name Yoyontli.

Tomás, your information on similar verbs in Chachahuantla and Cuetzalan,
especially on ixmomoyoni (for i:xmo:moyo:ni, with the first o vowel long?)
and ixmohmoyoni, is, I think, confirmation of this hypothesis. It would be
interesting to know if the same compounds turn up elsewhere. Thanks so much
for your very useful comments. Cenca' nimitztlazo'ca:mati! Übrigens, Dein
Deutsch ist bewundernswert. Ich wünschte mir, meins wäre so gut!

I am also very grateful to Jonathan Amith, John Sullivan and to the
contributors to the totlahtol list for their thought-provoking comments and
data.

Best wishes,
Gordon

On Mon, Mar 19, 2012 at 10:38 AM, Tomas Amando Amaya Aquino <
t_amaya at megared.net.mx <jdanahuatl at gmail.com>> wrote:

Hallo Gordon,

Bist Du in Deutschland?
Also eine kleine Erklärung in deutscher und spanischer Sprache.

In den Nahua-Varianten von Chachahuantla (Huauhchinango) und Cuetzalan ist
yomoni nicht bekannt.
Man hat aber das Wort moyoni und auch ixmoyoni, ixmomoyoni und ixmohmoyoni.
Moyoni: beschreibt die Bewegung von Ameisen und Bienen, nachdem der
Ameisenhaufen bzw. der Bienenschwarm mit einem Stab berührt worden ist. Sie
(Ameisen und Bienen) gehen bzw. fliegen in "allen" Richtungen. In Spanisch
sagt man "alborotar" dafür. Das Wort hat aber auch andere Bedeutungen.
Moyoni also bezieht sich auf  (vor allem) Tiere, die aus einem Punkt in
verschiedenen richtungen auseinandergehen.

Ixmoyoni: Gebärden machen. Aber diese Gebärden sollten die Augen als
Ausgangspunkt haben (dieselbe Idee der o.g. Bewegung)
Ixmomoyoni: Gebärden wiederholt machen
Ixmohmoyoni: Man macht eine Gebärde und dann keine, dann aber eine, dann
keine, dann aber noch eine, usw.

En las variantes nahuas de Chachahuantla (Area de Huauchinango) y Cuetzalan
no se conoce la palabra yomoni. Se tiene sin embargo la palabra moyoni, y
también ixmoyoni, ixmomoyoni, ixmohmoyoni.
Moyoni: describe el movimiento de las hormigas y abejas después de que el
hormiguero o enjambre a sido tocado por ej. con un palo. Los animalitos
caminan o vuelan en "todas" direcciones. En español decimos "alborotar",
pero la palabra tiene también otros significados. Moyoni se refiere, por
tanto, a -sobre todo- animales que desde un punto central se dispersan,
desperdigan en diferentes direcciones.

Ixmoyoni: hacer gestos. Pero estos gestos deberán tener como punto de
origen los ojos (la misma idea del movimiento mencionado arriba).
Ixmomoyoni: hacer gestos de manera repetida.
Ixmohmoyoni: hacer un gesto, luego ninguno, luego uno, luego ninguno, pero
luego un gesto más y etc.

Nimitzyoltlapalohua

Tomas Amaya

2012/3/7 Gordon Whittaker
<gwhitta at gwdg.de<https://mailbox.gwdg.de/squirrelmail/src/compose.php?send_to=gwhitta@gwdg.de>
>
Dear Nahua(tl at lists.famsi.org<https://mailbox.gwdg.de/squirrelmail/src/compose.php?send_to=tl@lists.famsi.org>
)tlaca,

I've been trying to find information on a verb and its derivatives that
relates to a glyph in the Nahuatl writing system of the mid-16th century.

The verb is <yomoni> (a spelling for yomo:ni/yo'mo:ni/yo:mo:ni),
approximately 'twitch, itch', among other things.

Related to this is <ixyoyomoni> 'grimace, make faces', composed of i:x-
'face' and what is presumably yo'yomo:ni or yo'yo:mo:ni.

I would be very grateful if someone could let me know if there is any
dialect (or textual) evidence for the shape of the syllables <yo> and
<yoyo> in these two related verbs. In particular, is there any direct
evidence for a short or long vowel, or vowel plus glottal stop/fricative
('/h), in the first syllable of <yomoni>? Has anyone come across the
compound <ixyoyomoni> in a modern dialect? Given the meaning of the
compound, the first syllable of <yoyomoni> is presumably yo'/yoh.

Term 2: Another elusive form is the Florentine Codex's <atzcalli> (a kind
of shell). I presume a compound of a:- 'water', and a verbal element with
subsequent syncope of *tzical-. Has anyone seen or heard evidence for the
length of the initial vowel? Thanks again for any tips.

Best wishes,
Gordon

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Prof. Dr. Gordon Whittaker
Direktor
Seminar fuer Romanische Philologie
Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen
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Germany
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