Nahuatl word classes

[Michael McCafferty]

notoca is (ni)notoca



Quoting Magnus Pharao Hansen <magnuspharao at gmail.com>:

> I believe both Launey and Dakin write about the possibility of an
> underlying -*yi*- in those two words. I don't know the form "*notocah*" "my
> name" from any dialects - I only know "*notocayoh*" "my name" (formed with
> the -*yo*- inalienable possesion suffix) and the verb *notoca *"I call
> myself" (with the *ni*- suffix elided because it is redundant) - in
> Hueyapan and classical at least. In Zongolica the unpossessed word for
> "name" is *tocaitl *(which probably has an underlying -y- glide between a
> and i), but the possessed form is *notocayoh*.
>
> best,
> M
>
> On 2 January 2013 19:00, John Sullivan <idiez at me.com> wrote:
>
>> Piyali Magnus huan notequixpoyohuan,
>>         I have always wondered why in Eastern Huastecan Nahuatl the
>> following alternate forms exist:
>> 1. arm/hand
>> a). nomah, "my arm". nomahpil, "my finger.
>> b). ima:cuayo:, "its branch"
>>
>> 2. name
>> a). noto:cah, "my name"
>> b). to:ca:xtia:, nic., "to name s.t. or s.o."
>> c). noto:ca:yo:, "my godfather, godson of a male"
>>
>> I've always assumed that the final aspiration on the possessive forms
>> (nomah, noto:cah) is an alternate form of the devoiced "yi" that you
>> mention. I discarded the possibility of it being "-uh" because I've never
>> seen this possessor suffix used with either word in other variants. And in
>> Huastecan Nahuatl, h vs uh before a consonant (mahcahua vs cauhqui) and in
>> a word final position (cuaciyah vs noamauh) are very hard to tell apart.
>> John
>>
>> On Jan 1, 2013, at 9:49 PM, Magnus Pharao Hansen <magnuspharao at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Dear John and listeros
>> >
>> > Thanks for the explanations.
>> >
>> > some responses:
>> >
>> > 2. Ok, so the -x is the remnant of the /yi/ ending (this means that in La
>> > Huasteca the phonological forms are underlyingly /tokayitl/ and
>> /ma:yitl/).
>> > This would not be recognized by speakers of central dialects.
>> > 4. I am not giving an account of how these words are formed, they are
>> > clearly fromed from verbs and nouns. But they function like property
>> words
>> > that form stative predicates.
>> > 5. kwalli works as a verb in that its primary syntactic function is to
>> form
>> > predicates "kwalli inon" 'tehwah tikwalli" etc. And it is not very nouny
>> > ()although obviously it originated as a noun because it neither accepts
>> > plural or possessive morphology, and hardly ever occurs as the argument
>> of
>> > a verb as nouns prototypically do.
>> >
>> > best,
>> > M
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>>
>>
>
>
> --
> 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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