campotic, campohtic

[M Launey]

Hi

John Sullivan’s suggestion (matching –po’ together with the possessive noun suffixes –hua’, -e’ and –yo’) is appealing. However, there are significant differences. What follows are Classical Nahuatl data, because I have only a scarce knowledge of modern dialects except Milpa Alta. (The references “CF X, xxx” are excerpts from the Florentine Codex in Dibble and Anderson’s edition; “Car. xxx” are from Carochi’s grammar in Lockhart’s edition).

First, possessive nouns in –hua’, -e’ and –yo’ (e.g. cihua:-hua’ ‘married (man)’, cal-e’ (‘who has a house’, a:-yo’ ‘full of water, juicy’ are not possessed, and if they are, they take the suffix –ca:- first (no-cal-e’-ca:-uh ‘my landlord’). But you never find *cihua:-po’, unpossessed, it needs a possessive: e.g. (CF II, 63) ti-no-cihua:-po’ ‘you are a woman just as I am’. Therefore, you never find the plural -qu-ê' with -po'.


Second, there are a few examples of po’ not suffixed to a noun stem, which strongly suggest that it is a noun stem itself, meaning something like 'equal to' (and that forms like no-cihua:-po’ are compound nouns), see (Car. 312) Ti-no-po’ ‘you are my equal’, and with a verbal derivation o:-ni-mitz-no-po’-ti’ ‘I have made you equal to me’ or ni-tla-po’-tia ‘to match, pair, fit things with other things’.

Third, about derivations on possessive nouns without –ca:-, which John Sullivan interestingly points out. In Classical Nahuatl already, auxiliary verbs like –ti-uh, -ti-ca’, -t-oc, -ti-nemi appear directly, e. g. (CF VI, 38) itaqu-e’-ti-ya:-z ‘He will go (provided) with his snack (itaca-tl), (XII, 12) citla:l-lo’-t-oc ‘it is covered with stars’, (VI,72) ti-to:ca:-yo’-ti-ye-z ‘you will remain famous’ etc. It would be interesting to check if Huastecan forms are limited to the same contexts or more broadly used.

These forms, by the way, are in my opinion the only (if not totally convincing, because there are other hypotheses) hint in favor of proto-Nahuatl verbs like *ea, *huaa or *yoa, which are very unlikely but it is another issue).

Best

Michel Launey



> Message du 21/04/14 16:24
> De : "John Sullivan" 
> A : "list nahuatl discussion" 
> Copie à : 
> Objet : [Nahuat-l] campotic, campohtic
> 
> Notequixpoyohuan, There is a set of synonymous words, campotic and campohtic, in Modern Huastecan Nahuatl, that mean, “a person with big cheeks”. The first part, from “ca:ntli”, “cheek” [Molina 12v] is not a problem, but Iʻm not sure about the first element of the second part “-po-tic” / “poh-tic”. Here are some possibilities: 1. It could be a shortened version of “potz”, for there is a “campopotztic” in Molina [12r], meaning “a person with big cheeks”. But in Modern Huastecan Nahuatl “campotztic” means “a person with cheeks stuffed with food”. And anyway, I donʻt think itʻs very likely that “tz” would be deleted or elided before “t” or changed into “h”. 2. Could it be the “poh” that Andrews (p. 124, new edition) discusses as a “Naturally Possessed Nounstem… denoting kinship and certain other human relations”? And could this “poh” be the missing d’Artagnan of the three preterite agentives, “-eh”, “-huah” and “-yoh”? And in the same way that these agentives come from the older verbs, “ea", hua(a)” and “yoa”, couldnʻt “poh” be the preterite agentive form of “poa”, and couldnʻt there be a patientive noun root “po-“? Both of these could combine with “tic”. At least in Modern Huastecan Nahuatl, these agentives donʻt always use “-ca” for the combing form (conehuah, “pregnant woman”. conehuahtiya, “to become pregnant”). The only real problem here would be getting from the normal meaning of “-poh” as “kinship and other relations” to something more like “-yoh”, “covered with, full of”. John _______________________________________________ Nahuatl mailing list Nahuatl at lists.famsi.org http://www.famsi.org/mailman/listinfo/nahuatl
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