tlaimetl

[Clayton, Mary L.]

Hello All,

     Joe and I have been working on a cluster of words which, so far, 
we have not been able to analyze completely into known pieces. The 
semantic field is 'stinginess', 'avarice'.  We would like to put out a 
couple of questions and also see if others know of related forms that 
we don't have.  I’ll put the information that we have and our questions 
below, along with my thoughts on the subject.

Mary

     The most basic form we have appears to be tlai(h)me-tl. Various 
forms of the words occur with and without the i, which thus looks like 
a "supportive i" to provide a syllable-initial vowel for a following 
glottal stop, but we have no examples with glottal stops following this 
i, or where it should be, and there are no forms in our data where the 
i is initial. In fact, there is no initial ime- or ihme- in Joe's 
entire data set from the three Molina dictionaries and the Florentine 
Codex or my data from Ayer ms 1478 (Vocabulario trilingüe).
     Does anyone know of any other variably occurring i's, (except for 
those in -itl words such as maitl)?
     For this i to occur in initial position, not only would tla(i)metl 
need to be a deverbal noun -- not impossible, given the occurrence of 
root patientives and non-active forms in -hua -- but the tla would have 
to be an object on a non-basic verb form that would have to have 
undergone yet another stage of verbing (or transitivizing) from a form 
with initial i.  This does NOT look possible.
     Of the ten forms of the word that we have, only one has only one 
tla-. All of the others begin with tla(h)tla. There is one example of 
this glottal stop, suggesting that the initial tla(h)- is 
reduplicative.This noun forms a verb with -ti, which appears to be a 
normal intransitive verb. In all cases where Molina lists the verb 
forms with prefixes, he has only ni after the comma, not nitla. This is 
somewhat weak evidence for an intransitive verb, since Molina is known 
to make mistakes with prefixes. But independent of that, there is no 
reason to think that the verb is transitive and that the first tla is 
an object. (And recall the one example of tlah, suggesting 
reduplication.)

     Lacking further information, I'm going to code these with a basic 
morpheme tlaimetl (the -tl comes off, of course).

     It's not every day that we just "invent" a morpheme. Does anyone 
have any thoughts, suggestions or comments? Any other analyses?

     Below, I list all of the types that we have, and below those, all 
of the tokens with glosses, sources and suggested morphology.

			Molina		Sahagun	Ayer ms. 1478
	With i		12		0		0
	Without i	  9		6		2
	Total		21		6		2
[my apologies if the columns don't line up. They did when I started]

Word Types
  tlatlaimetl.
  tlahtlametl.
  tlatlametl.
  tlatlamepan.
  tlatlameyotl.
  tlaimeti , ni.
  tlatlaimeti , ni.
  tlatlameti , ni.
  tlatlameti.
  tlatlaimetiliztli.

Word Tokens
  tlatlaimetl.      dupl-tlaimetl
   escasso {55m}
   escasso {71m1}
   guardador escasso {71m1}
   mezquino {71m1}
   miserable escasso {71m1}
   auariento o escasso {71m2}

  tlahtlametl.      dupl-tlaimetl
   ___  << 7  2>>
   avaricious person  <<10  3>>

  tlatlametl.      dupl-tlaimetl
   auariento {55m}
   auariento {71m1}
   avaricious  <<10  1>>
   avaricious person  <<10  3>>

  (from Ayer MS 1478)
  tlatlametl.  dupl-tlaimetl
     tlatlame/tl. {4r1.19} Abonado en hazienda. preditus. assiduus.
     tlatla/metl. (tzotzoca). {25v1.09} Auariento en cabo. auaRus, a, um.

  tlatlamepan.      dupl-tlaimetl-pan
   place of avarice  << 4 11>>

  tlatlameyotl.      dupl-tlaimetl-yoa:-l2-tl
   auaricia, o escaseza {71m1}
   escasseza o auaricia {71m2}

  tlaimeti , ni.      tlaimetl-v01a ,  p11
   guardar hazienda {71m1}

  tlatlaimeti , ni.      dupl-tlaimetl-v01a , pll
   guardar hazienda {55m}
   ser auariento {71m2}

  tlatlameti , ni.     dupl-tlaimetl-v01a ,  p11
   auaricia tener {55m}
   guardar hazienda {55m}
   guardar hazienda {71m1}
   auaricia tener {71m1}
   ser auariento {71m2}

  tlatlameti.     dupl-tlaimetl-v01a
   he is avaricious  <<10  3>>

  tlatlaimetiliztli.      dupl-tlaimetl-v01a-liz-tl
   auaricia {55m}
   auaricia, o escaseza {71m1}
   escasseza o auaricia {71m2}



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