REPLY: Scatter shot questions

[Michael McCafferty]

Gordon,

And I should have added that the w in /te:kw-/ is a raised w.


wiipaci,

Michael




Quoting "John F. Schwaller" <schwallr at potsdam.edu>:

>
>> From: Gordon Whittaker <gwhitta4 at gmail.com>
>> Date: 28 June 2013 22:57:06 CEST
>> To: "nahuatl at lists.famsi.org" <nahuatl at lists.famsi.org>
>> Subject: Re: scatter-shot questions: Moctezuma and co., malinalli, and
> Chimalma(n)
>>
>
>> Dear Ben,
>>
>> Thanks for your questions (and David, Michael and John, for your
> comments). Here
> are a few reflections of my own, for what they're worth:
>>
>> 1)  What's the correct spelling of the name behind the horrendously garbled
> "Montezuma" / "Moctezuma" variants?
>>
>> As has already been suggested by my colleagues, the name is construed
> from a verb
> with embedded noun. The verb is indeed mo-zo:ma (o: here is equivalent to the
> vowel o with a macron over it for length) "to frown with severity,
> displeasure, or
> anger; be (or grow) angry". The embedded noun is most frequently written
> either
> te:cuh- (my favorite) or te:uc- (more common these days) "lord", spelling
> conventions which, unfortunately, often cause beginners to mispronounce the
> sequence as te-ku and te-uk, respectively! The combination of verb with
> embedded
> noun yields a so-called sentence name "He is (or Was) Severe Like a Lord",
> which
> is less a character statement with regard to two Aztec emperors and a
> migration-period lord than to the sun, which was aptly so named at its midday
> zenith. One can still debate on the question as to whether the name is
> formed on
> the present (in which case it would be Mote:cuhzo:ma and the like) or
> preterite
> tense (Mote:cuhzo:ma' with a final glottal stop written either ' or h, when
> written at all).
>>
>> 2) The plural of malinalli?
>>
>> It's the same, whether singular or plural in meaning. Inanimate nouns
> are left in
> the singular in 16th-century Nahuatl. These days, however, they are often
> pluralized on the analogy of Spanish.
>>
>> 3) The meaning of Chimalma vs. Chimalman?
>>
>> These usually refer to one of two legendary persons, the mother of Nacxitl
> Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl or a female migration-period leader of the Mexitin,
> so one
> form probably underlies both spellings. In alphabetic texts,
> syllable-final n can
> be left off where required and added where not, similar (and related) to the
> pattern in Nahuatl glyphic writing. Thus, the name can be analyzed in a
> number of
> ways, depending on the phonetic shape of the original. If Chimalman, then
> it can
> be one of three sentence names (of the "(He) Dances With Wolves" type):
>>     Chi:mal-ma "She Captures Shields" (or Chi:mal-ma' "She Has Captured
> Shields"),
>>     Chi:mal-man "She Has Laid Out Shields" (if from mana), or
>>     Chi:mal-man "She Has Spread Out Like a Shield" (if from mani).
>>
>> Alternatively, if a noun compound, the name can be construed as
>>     Chi:mal-ma "Shield Hand".
>> The nominal suffix can be left off on names: cf. Acamapich(tli) and
> Axayaca(tl).
> So a form Chimalmaitl is unnecessary.
>>
>> When writing these forms outside of a Nahuatl text (e.g. in an English
> novel) you
> can drop the macrons (here the colons) and the glo'l stops, as many Nahua
> have
> done and still do.
>>
>> I hope this helps.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Gordon
>>
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>> Gordon Whittaker
>> Professor of Anthropology and Indigenous American Studies
>> Dept. of Romance Philology / Institute of Ethnology
>> University of Goettingen
>> Germany
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>
>
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