moyoma (vs. moyoni) reconsidered

[Jonathan Amith]

Dear Gordon,

I don't know the context of moioma but probably reflexive of yoma. This
refers to a sort of scooping, tangential motion of a dragon/damselfly on
the water, a woman's body as she grinds corn on a metate, and a man's body
as he makes love as God ordained. In fact there is a Nahuatl riddle to this
effect, nochi to:nahli cho tlayoyontok.... (cho is an intensifier).

Molina has "amblar la mujer" for yoma, nino-

Best, Jonathan

On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 4:10 AM, Gordon Whittaker
<gwhitta4 at googlemail.com>wrote:

> Dear Nahuatl(@lists.famsi.org)aca,
>
> Not long after clicking on Send to submit my last post on yomo:ni vs.
> moyo:ni I realized that I should have gotten a little more sleep before
> writing it. While rereading the post I noticed that I had completely
> overlooked the obvious fact that Sahagún's <moioma> and <moiôioma> are not
> odd cognates of moyo:ni (and yomo:ni) but rather simple reflexives with
> prefixed mo-. Oops! So my comment "What is interesting here is the fact
> that the second syllable of <moioma>, /yo/, gets reduplicated, not the
> first. " is not interesting at all, because the verb stem is actually
> <iom>, not <moiom> (in the Florentine's orthography).
>
> I stand by the other remarks and comparisons made, concerning the
> relationship between Molina's <moyoni> and <yomoni>. The metathesis of
> moyo:ni to yomo:ni, if that is what has happened, may have been facilitated
> by the existence of the verb mo-yoma (for which I have not yet found
> attestations with long o), given its semantics.
>
> Best wishes,
> Gordon
>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2012 16:42:59 +0100
>> From: Gordon Whittaker <gwhitta4 at googlemail.com>
>> To: t_amaya at megared.net.mx
>> Cc: nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
>> Subject: [Nahuat-l] yomo:ni vs. moyo:ni -- a metathetical
>>        relationship?
>> Message-ID:
>>        <CAKNL27cMcVmEyVc=-fUvtrQW82-4kV=
>> mth4OL7AJyjYh+KiukA at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>>
>> 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
>>
>
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