Nahuatl word classes

[Magnus Pharao Hansen]

Dear John

Offering some thoughts about your proposed Nahuatl word classes:

1. *tlatocaxtiliztli *- where does the x come from? It would seem out of
place in the dialects I know (assuming that the root is tlatocayotia "to
name something"). Perhaps *tlatocayotiliztlahtolli*?
2. *tlachihualiztli *- as far as I know this word already has the meaning
of "an action" wouldn't it be useful to terminologically distinguish
between the verb and what it denotes? Perhaps *tlachihualiztlahtolli?*
3. *pil*- using pil as a prefix in my experience almost always refer to the
meaning "prince/child" whereas the meaning "small/appendage" seems to be
more frequently associated with the use as a suffix i.e. tlahtolpiltzin and
tlahcuilolpiltzin. In some varieties a diminutive could be made with
reduplication *tla:tlahcuiloltzin* and* tla:tlahtoltzin*.

You don't seem to have a category for property words such as "chichiltic"
"hueyi", "yolic", "cualli" since these are neither really nouns nor verbs,
but have qualities of the syntactic behavior of both.

Just some suggestions.

best,
Magnus

Magnus Pharao Hansen
PhD. student
Department of Anthropology

Brown University
128 Hope St.
Providence, RI 02906

*magnus_pharao_hansen at brown.edu*
US: 001 401 651 8413
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