tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25359265280615469902024-03-24T00:11:39.238-07:00Nawatl ScholarMagnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-5790750397207102942023-06-06T02:21:00.009-07:002023-06-07T10:36:19.096-07:00The etymology of 'heart' in Nahuatl and Southern Uto-Aztecan<p>Much of the study of "Aztec philosophy" builds on the notion that Nahuatl words have meanings that go beyond mere reference, and which if we analyze them, can tell us about deep underlying philosophical systems of Nahuatl speakers. This blog post is not about the validity of this way of thinking in general - but about one specific word and how its etymology may or may not be able to tell us something about how ancient Nahua and other Uto-Aztecans conceived of one specific, and highly important, aspect of the world. </p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKklzWsWibNBPDFTpXVaKymvYIWZJmVhFhGUyePlx7XFiNS61nOuckTPzEJa-LHjSimQJnf_D04TfSXm_3qmF3N6tsj2gNsAGhXs7r6-_Vqfh74krm5wmD2SMuPSz_KHEBOibq2NqT9hH-SUlmzBcMmm3PFEFKIM2QzjfZK2IRh1_3qAVxuCTs1Uo1/s686/640px-Aztec11_Bloodletting.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="686" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKklzWsWibNBPDFTpXVaKymvYIWZJmVhFhGUyePlx7XFiNS61nOuckTPzEJa-LHjSimQJnf_D04TfSXm_3qmF3N6tsj2gNsAGhXs7r6-_Vqfh74krm5wmD2SMuPSz_KHEBOibq2NqT9hH-SUlmzBcMmm3PFEFKIM2QzjfZK2IRh1_3qAVxuCTs1Uo1/w299-h320/640px-Aztec11_Bloodletting.jpg" width="299" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Heart removal depicted in the Codex Tudela.</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p>In his 1956 <i>Filosofía Náhuatl</i>, Miguel León-Portilla supports several key arguments by reference to such deeper meanings, which he finds not only in the way the words are used in the Nahuatl texts that he analyzes, but also in his ideas about word origins. One of those words is the word <i>yōllōtl '</i>heart' and its related verb <i>yōli '</i>to live' (and the noun derived from this verb <i>yōliliztli '</i>life').</p><p> León-Portilla wrote:</p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">" YOLLOTL: <i>corazón</i>. Como derivado de <i>ollin</i>:
"movimiento", significa literalmente en su forma abstracta <i>yollo-otl</i> "su movilidad, o la razón de su movimiento" (se entiende del
viviente). Consideraban, por tanto, los nahuas al corazón como el aspecto
dinámico, vital del ser humano. De aquí que la persona sea "rostro,
corazón". Posiblemente por esto mismo en la concepción místico-militarista
de los aztecas se ofrecía al Sol el corazón, el órgano dinámico por excelencia,
que produce y conserva el movimiento y la vida." (León-Portilla 1956:396)<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Here, Miguél León-Portilla claims that word for 'heart' is derived from another Nahuatl word, <i>ōlin </i>'movement' so that the heart is "the mover" (he adds an l erroneously, the root is <i>ōl</i>- and when it takes the -<i>in </i>absolutive suffix it does not add another l, and the form with the -<i>tli </i>absolutive suffix <i>ōlli </i>means not movement but 'rubber'). And he builds a good deal of his understanding of the root <i>yōl</i>- on the idea that its origin expresses dynamic movement, the palpitation of the heart and the locomotion of the creatures that it animates. It seems reasonable and not at all odd that the notion of life and living should be associated with the ability to move about - but there are several problems with the claim that the root <i>yōl</i>- 'life' is "derived" from the root <i>ōl</i>- 'movement'.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Etymology and its Evil Twin</h4><p class="MsoNormal">A major problem is that there is no known process in the grammar of Nahuatl that would allow such a derivation. There is no general proces that allows one to take a root beginning in a vowel and us it to produce another related root by simply adding a y- to the beginning. In linguistics, the concept of derivation is usually used for describing such grammatical process by which a word can be coined by applying different grammatical processes. But a broader understanding of words "deriving" from other words, refers to etymology, that is the process through which words change their form and meaning over time, so that words can be related to each other because they share an origin in the same historical root. Positing that the root <i>ōl</i>- could have been the etymological origin for the root yōl- is a different claim, and does not require us to explain the change by reference to a grammatical rule. But etymology has its own rules, and its own standards of argumentation - León-Portilla does not make any argument, he merely claims the relation. </p><p class="MsoNormal">The most fundamental principle of etymological argumentation, is that the mere fact of two words having similar forms is not a valid argument for their being etymologically related. Languages all work with a relatively small number of phonological building blocks, and by sheer mathematical necessity words will end up looking alike without being related. </p><p class="MsoNormal">The second fundamental principle is that even though we can imagine a meaningful semantic association between the meanings of two words that look alike, this is also not in it self a sufficient argument for positing an etymological relation. The human mind is a machine made for creating relations, it is what it is best at, it is what makes both language and thinking possible. But it also means that we cannot trust our ability to find associations that are objectively meaningful, precisely because we are so enormously good at making them up ourselves. </p><p class="MsoNormal">The eternal enemy of the etymologist is the <i>folk etymology, </i>the evil twin of the true etymology<i>;</i> and the eternal fear of the etymologist is to fall into the embarrassing trap of producing or reproducing folk etymologies ourselves. A folk etymology, is of course a popular explanation of a word's origin that makes sense because it says that two words that sound alike are related through some relatively reasonable semantic association. We could make one right now, just as an example: We could say that the english word 'female' arose because women are like males except they are <i>feeble</i>, and that therefore ancient English-speakers began distinguishing between 'males' and 'feeble males', which over time was contracted to become <i>females</i>. This is of course patently wrong, but it is easier to understand and more socially meaningful in our gender-difference obsessed world than the real explanation, which is that female is a loanword into English from the Old French <i>femelle</i>, which is derived from Latin <i><span style="font-family: times;">f<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">ē</span>mina </span></i>'woman' (whereas male is loaned from Old French <i>masle</i>, derived from Latin <i>masculus 'manly'). </i>The strength of folk etymologies is that they tend to play into preexisting ideas about the world (such as gender stereotypes in this example), so people are inclined to want to believe them, and if they are offered through some sort of authority, they will be even more so inclined. This makes folk etymologies obnoxious to the etymologist, and very hard to eradicate, assuring that etymologists will never run out of work. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Valid Etymological argumentation</h4><p class="MsoNormal">To make a valid etymological argument, showing that words are similar in form and have meanings that can be associated is not enough. Instead the etymologist has different ways of making an argument that actually produces likely etymologies. I say 'likely' here rather than 'true', because it is important to realize that etymology is not a "hard science" but rather more of an art form, which like history writing produces stories about the past that are always just one interpretation of the set of historical facts at hand, and which is limited by the always imperfect and partial nature of these facts. A good etymology begins as a hypothesis, which must be formulated in such a way that it can either be supported or falsified by the facts at hand. For languages with a long writing tradition, we may have many facts at hand; we may be able to see the change of meaning or form from one word to another documented in real time in the historical record (e.g. we can see the development from <i>wȳfman </i>'wife-man' to 'woman' in the Old English record), or we may even see when a word is coined and have an explanation of why it was coined by the person coining it (For example the word '<i>utopia</i>' coined by Thomas More in 1515). This would make for a very strong, almost unassailable (almost, because sometimes several people claim to have coined a word, that is documented before either of them having used it), support for an etymological hypothesis . This, however, is almost never the case - and when dealing with languages that have a shallow history of written documentation, it tends to get considerably more difficult to support hypotheses. And consequently more attractive to posit etymologies based on synchronic analysis (i.e. interpreting words as compounds of roots we already know). </p><p class="MsoNormal">The best method for making etymologies in languages without long histories of writing, is by using the comparative method to reconstruct the developments of words from an earlier stage into their current forms. This method only works however, when we have cognate forms in several related languages. We can say for example, even without the written record, that the English word 'deer' is not derived from the word "dear", because we know that in related languages there is a cognate word that means 'animal', for example Swedish djur and Danish dyr. And we know that in English the earlier form w<span style="font-family: times;">as <span class="selflink" style="background-color: #f9f9f9; color: #202122;"><i>dēor</i></span>, and we know that following regular sound changes these could all come from an original form *deur.</span> This supports a hypothesis that in English the original word was restricted to mean 'game animal' and then subsequently the most common or prototypical game animal - the deer. If we ignore the textual evidence it would be possible that the opposing hypothesis could be true, that because they are so cute and valuable, they were 'dear' to the old Anglo-Saxons - but to contradict the evidence from cognate forms in other languages, we would need an even stronger piece of evidence to assert this. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Good etymology in this way, poses multiple hypotheses for a word's origin, and collects evidence for and against all of them, until it finds the strongest one. </p><p class="MsoNormal">A good etymology, in this way can be supported by being linked to cognate forms in other related languages through systematic sound changes, and principles of change that we have established independently. Interestingly, precisely because languages change, many times the best etymology is a counterintuitive one, that requires specialized knowledge about language change to see. This is especially the case when dealing with languages that have many homonyms and near homonyms because they have undergone a change that reduced the number of sounds in the language. Nahuatl is such a language - where many contrasts that previously existed in the ancestor language were neutralized. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;">The <i>ōl</i>-<i>yōl </i>folk etymology</h4><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZDxBGJWJPXM2iAstU07N_sc_UZYXdzI55Tt1M-KkuiWlzDzbeJ2OFFVFdBef5ScGYbfULamFPuaYROGDLxGzIJfLbAHrgbQ_IeD3MxO0bjoavLA-V1mkiV88So75BZnoahY2P-h63rZjF8fmKsbVK93rgB-NnAH5DSLkwlJUKe8isRwghxqmnIwTA/s800/Animated_Heart.gif" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="800" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZDxBGJWJPXM2iAstU07N_sc_UZYXdzI55Tt1M-KkuiWlzDzbeJ2OFFVFdBef5ScGYbfULamFPuaYROGDLxGzIJfLbAHrgbQ_IeD3MxO0bjoavLA-V1mkiV88So75BZnoahY2P-h63rZjF8fmKsbVK93rgB-NnAH5DSLkwlJUKe8isRwghxqmnIwTA/w200-h200/Animated_Heart.gif" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Se y</i><span style="font-style: italic; text-align: left;">ō</span><i>ll</i><span style="font-style: italic; text-align: left;">ōtl </span><span style="text-align: left;"><i>ōlintika</i><br />"a heart is moving"</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal">Having now pontificated a bit about etymology, the point I am trying to make is that the <i>ōl-yōl</i> proposal is most likely a folk etymology, and one of a particularly pernicious sort that has been repeated so many times that it becomes self-perpetuating. </p><p class="MsoNormal">In his magnum opus on Nahua views of the body, Lopez Austin follows León-Portilla's idea that the <i>yōl-</i> words are derived from <i>ōl</i>- words, and expands it into an elaborate "etymological" family tree that adds most of the words in Nahuatl that include the syllables <i>ol </i>or <i>yol </i>- including words such as <i>ō</i><i>l</i><i>ō</i><i>tl </i>'corncob', <i>ololli </i>'ball, sphere', <i>ololoa </i>'roll something, wrap something, gather something'. But where León-Portilla sees movement as the conceptual "root" from which the other concepts are derived, López Austin sees the concept of something round, ball-shaped as the original meaning. So that to López Austin the heart is not the "mover" but the "ball" of the body. This allows him to add round maize kernels and the round corn cob center to the set of words he considers to be related. López Austin also does not provide actual etymological arguments, other than the way the words fit together with his view of how the Nahua concepts about the body are related. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Here is a diagram contrasting how the two proposals of León-Portilla and López Austin each link together the chain of semantic associations of this folk etymological edifice: <br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhxYpjPuri16U9O40azHL6XLuCMdd5jhQmBOB1Rh7S-jQbF0-4_oWOCc7Mk1TvsUpzndwJfgjh7v2-WjXHgqzby4894YIkNBjv5kYRYxRNDr1lHeKhupO3YdP0FgU6B9lw0vpkiejDCoTOcNGxGbxJuuu64QbKcOjJj4KP2x3cVdUShXJkA-A5BanE/s337/ol%20yol%203.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="243" data-original-width="337" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhxYpjPuri16U9O40azHL6XLuCMdd5jhQmBOB1Rh7S-jQbF0-4_oWOCc7Mk1TvsUpzndwJfgjh7v2-WjXHgqzby4894YIkNBjv5kYRYxRNDr1lHeKhupO3YdP0FgU6B9lw0vpkiejDCoTOcNGxGbxJuuu64QbKcOjJj4KP2x3cVdUShXJkA-A5BanE/s16000/ol%20yol%203.JPG" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In an influential 1982 article on Tlazolteotl, Thelma Sullivan perhaps followed Lopez Austin (though she cites neither him nor León-Portilla), (1982:29) and made the same claim and derived <i>yōllōtl </i>and <i>tlaōlli </i>'maize kernels' from the root <i>ōl</i>-. She also made no argument for how this "derivation" came about or what evidence we have for it having occurred. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Later again Maffie (2014:188-196) cites Sullivan and Lopez Austin as authorities for the etymological relation between <i>ōl</i>- and <i>yōl</i>- and likewise makes it a key element in his understanding of how ancient Nahua people conceives of the world and of life as characterized by movement and change following a curved movement, which he sees as central and unique to Aztec metaphysical conceptualizations. Interestingly Maffie sort of fuses the López Austin and León-Portilla proposals so that instead of either roundedness or movement at the root, he says that a particular kind of circular or curved or spiral movement that he calls "olin-movement". Maffie also tells us that this corresponds with a proposal by Eduard Seler in 1904 who argued that the root <i>ol</i>- meant rolling movement, also combining the notion of round and movement at the same time. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It is easy to see why these hypothesis of word relatedness are attractive for seeking deeper meanings of Nahua thought, progressing from a basic shape or processes to physical objects to metaphorical abstractions that include culturally salient concepts and motivate philosophically interesting syllogisms. But nowhere is there an attempt to see whether these words have cognates in other Uto-Aztecan languages that could either support or falsify these etymological hypotheses. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">So now the task of evaluating the hypothesis that these words are related falls to me. </div><br /><h4 style="text-align: left;"></h4><h3 style="text-align: left;">Words for Heart and Breath in Uto-Aztecan languages</h3><span style="font-weight: normal;">I<span style="font-family: times;">n this section, I go through the cognate sets for the different Southern Uto-Aztecan subgroups one group at a time, reconstructing in this way the intermediate forms. Then in the end, I see how they fit together. </span></span><div><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: times;">One important thing to note before hand is that apparently the words for 'heart' and 'breath' are closely related in Uto-Aztecan, so that in many branches we see the same root meaning both or heart in one language and breath in the other. This suggests to me that it really refers more to what Lopez Austin calls an animating principle or force, and that this could be alternately seen as being more closely related to the breath or to the heart. </span></span><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><h4 style="text-align: left;">Corachol-Nahua: </h4><div>In a <a href="http://nahuatlstudies.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-relation-between-nahuatl-cora-and.html" target="_blank">previous post in 2017</a>, I wrote about the relation between words for 'to live' 'heart', 'life' and 'life force' in Corachol and Nahuatl. This was one of my very first engagements with the comparing Corachol and Nahua. I reconstructed the original form for the words for 'hart' and 'life' as *<i>yauri</i>, but I have revised this reconstruction a bit. First of all the u was a mistake, it would have to be an o, since Corachol u comes from *o. Secondly, I have realized that even though it looks like the Cora and Nahua forms would not have had the initial i- syllable found in Huichol <i>iyaari</i>, but really it could well have been there, but fused to the following glide (in Nahua, the sequence <i>iya </i>often becomes <i>ia</i>, which can then become <i>ya</i>). So it would be possible to reconstruct the shared corachol-Nahuan root as *<i>iyaori</i>, giving Wixárika <i>iyaari</i>, Náayeri <i>rúuri </i>and Nahua <i>yōl</i>-. Recently it dawned on me that in addition to Nahua <i>yōl</i>- in fact the root for 'breath' <i>ihiyō </i>could be derived regularly from the same root, simly by assuming that when used in the sense 'breath' it had the accent on the first syllable *<i>íyao(ri)</i> (then reduplicated to *<i>ihíyao(ri)</i>), and when used in the sense of 'heart' it had the accent on the second syllable *<i>iyáori </i>which in fact works really well with the suggestion that the initial i fused to y when not stressed and was kept when stressed. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>proto-Corachol-Nahuan</b>: *<i>iyáori </i>'heart'</div><div>Wixárika: <i>iyaari </i>'heart, spirit, soul' (here it levels the *ao diphthong to aa)</div><div>Wixárika -<i>yuuri </i>'be alive' (here it levels the *ao diphthong to oo) f</div><div>Náayeri: <i>ruuri </i>(in Corachol *y becomes cora /r/ before back vowels)</div><div>Nahuatl: <i>yo:li</i> 'life' (from *<i>yoori</i>)</div><div>Nahuatl: <i>yollo</i>- 'heart' (from *<i>yoori-yo</i>)</div><div><br /></div><div><b>proto-Corachol-Nahuan</b>: *<i>íyao </i>(or perhaps *íyaɨ) 'breath'</div><div>Nahuatl: <i>ihiyo</i>- 'breath' </div><div>Wixárika: <i>iiyáte </i>'lungs, breath'</div><div>Náayeri:<i> í'iyeh </i>'breathe havily'</div><div><br /></div></span><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;"><span style="font-family: times;">Cahitan: </span></span></h4><div><p class="MsoNormal">In the Cahitan languages, Yoeme/Yaqui and Yoreme/Mayo, the
word for 'heart' and 'life force' or 'spirit' can be reconstructed as *<i>hiyapsi
</i>- a somewhat weird form with the ps cluster, that is highly uncommon in
Uto-Aztecan and in Cahita. Clusters like that usually only occur when a vowel
is lost by syncope, so probably we should really reconstruct as *<i>hiyapVsi</i>. The
same root, but with a final a means 'to be alive'. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Finally, there is an interesting possibility that the s-sound really reflects a previous *r, because we have examples of r devoicing to
s - precisely when occuring before another consonant. For example in Corachol
'plum' Náayeri <i>kwaspwá</i>, Wixárika <i>kwarɨpa</i>, where the original *r becomes s in
Náayeri after the loss of the unstressed vowel ɨ. If we admit this possibility,
we could also reconstruct *<i>hiyapVri </i>for proto-Cahitan (and as we will see when comparing further, we might even have reason to think the p itself comes from an original w). As for the quality of the lost vowel we can assume it was an o, since Corachol-Nahuan shows an o in that position, and either a *p or a *w would have disappeared in this position in proto-corachol-Nahua.</p></div><div><div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b>pre-Cahitan:</b><i> *hiyaposi/*hiyapori, <span style="color: #202122;"><span style="text-wrap: nowrap;">*hiyawori/*hiyawosi</span></span></i></span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;"><span style="font-family: times;">Yoeme: <i>hiapsi</i></span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;"><span style="font-family: times;">Yoreme: <i>hiyepsi</i></span></span></div></div><div><br /></div></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #202122; font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; text-wrap: nowrap;"><b>Ópatan</b>:</span></span></h4><div><div><div><div>We have two forms for Ópatan languages, <i>hida </i>in Teguima and <i>hibés </i>in Eudeve. In Ópatan d comes from previous y and Eudeve b comes from previous kw - so apart from the initial hi- these forms do not look cognate. It is interesting that the Teguima form accords with the first two syllables of the Coracholan and Cahitan forms begining in *hiya. So perhaps a truncated version of the same form as in Cahita? The Eudeve form could suggest coming from a root *<i>hikwɨ </i>- which accords both with the Hopi and Tepiman forms I give further below, but could also potentially be a loan form something like Yoreme <i>hiyepsi</i>.</div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b><br /></b></span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;"><span style="font-family: times;"><b>Pre-Ópatan</b>: *<i>hiya - (</i>a truncated form of <i>hiyawo(ri)</i>?)</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;"><span style="font-family: times;">Ópata/Teguima: <i>hida </i>'heart'<i> </i>(Ópatan /d/ comes from previous<i> *y, </i>so p</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;">erhaps related to Raramuri: </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;">hiya </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;">'be in a hurry, pay attention to something')</span></div></div></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">Eudeve: </span><i style="font-family: times;">hibés </i><span style="font-family: times;">(Perhaps a Cahitan loan or cognate to the Tepiman/Hopi forms with <i>hikws</i>?)</span></div></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #202122; font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; text-wrap: nowrap;">Tepiman: </span></span></h4><div><div><p class="MsoNormal">The Tepiman forms are very interesting because they look
like a compound of two roots (and because they display the cool sound changes
in this branch of SUA). In Tepiman b comes from previous *kw, d comes from
previous *y, and g comes from previous *w (and initial h is lost, and word
final vowels are lost). So the form *<i>ii'bɨdaga</i>
reconstructed by Burt Bascom, suggest a pre-Tepiman form *<i>hi'kwɨyawV</i>. This is intriguingly close to the <i>hiya</i> forms, but with the weird <i>kwɨ</i>-syllable
in the middle. As it happens several other UA languages have the form *<i>hikwV</i> or *<i>hikVw</i> in the word for 'breath', and this does seem to be the basic meaning of that root also in Tepiman as evidenced by the forms <i style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;">ʔiibhu </i>and <i>ibɨ-kɨi</i>. </p><p class="MsoNormal">One might propose that the original
form for all of the words for 'heart' was *<i>hikwɨ-yawa-(ri) </i>where the first element is the root for 'breath', but that the non-tepiman languages
dropped the <i>kwɨ</i>- syllable. This kind of syllable-dropping usually happens in two steps 1. Syncope of the weak
vowel > *<i>hikw-yawa-ri</i> and 2. Deletion of the first consonant in the
resulting cluster > <i>*hi-yawa-ri</i>. If this is the case then all of the SUA
branches share a single ancestral form, and a basic split between Tepiman and
non-Tepiman sub-groups, and the Corachol-Nahuan languages nested as a subgroup
under the non-Tepiman SUA languages. <o:p></o:p></p></div><div><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;"><b>Proto-Tepiman: </b></span></span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: times;"><span style="text-wrap: nowrap;"><i>*ii'bɨdaga</i><b> </b>'heart' </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">T</span><span style="font-family: times;">ohono O'odham: </span><i style="font-family: times;">iib<span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;">ɨdag 'heart'</span></i></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;">North Tepehuán: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;"><i>ʔiibdag 'heart'</i></span></span></div><div><div><div>Tepiman loses initial h, and drops final vowels, Tepiman /b/ comes from PSUA *kw, /d/ comes from PSUA *y, /g/ comes from PSUA *w - so the sequence /dag/ comes from *<i>yawV, </i>and the sequence <i>ib </i>from *<i>hikw</i>. </div></div></div></div><div><br /></div><div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><b>Tepiman</b>:<i> </i></span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;"><i>*iibɨ</i> 'breathe' <<b> pre-Tepiman </b><i>*hikw</i></span><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;"><i>ɨ '</i>breathe'</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;">Tohono O'odham</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;"> ʔiibhu '</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;">breathe'</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;">Nporth Tepehuán: </span><i><span style="color: #202122; font-family: times;"><span style="text-wrap: nowrap;">ib</span></span><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;">ɨ</span></span></i><span style="color: #202122; font-family: times;"><span style="text-wrap: nowrap;"><i>ḱɨi</i> 'breathe'</span></span></div></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: times;"><span style="text-wrap: nowrap;"><br /></span></span></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">Other UA:</h4><div>Below are some of the cognates found outside of SUA in the languages of California and in Hopi. The root does not seem to appear in Numic languages. Interestingly Warihío seems to share the root *hika with the Californian languages in the meaning 'heart/spirit'. Hopi has a root that is quite close to what looked like the pre-Tepiman root for 'breath' *<i>hikwV </i>with a suffix -si. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Californian</b> *<i>hika</i><br /></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">Serrano: <i>hik </i>'breathe' be alive'</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">Warihío<i>: hi</i></span><i style="color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;">ʔká, </i><span style="font-family: times;"><i>i</i></span><i style="color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;">ʔká</i><i style="color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;"> '</i><span style="color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;">heart, spirit'</span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;">Tübatülabal: <i>ihk</i>(-</span><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;"><i>ɨt) '</i>breathe'</span></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;"><b>Californian: </b><i>*hikawis</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">Kitanemuk: </span><i style="font-family: times;">hikaw </i><span style="font-family: times;">'breathe'</span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: times;"><span style="text-wrap: nowrap;">Luiseño: <i>hakwís </i>'breathe, be alive'</span></span></div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: times;"><span style="text-wrap: nowrap;">Cahuilla: <i>hikus </i>'breathe be alive'</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><b>Proto-Hopi:</b><i> *hikwsi (</i>from <i>*hikawis?)</i></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">Hopi: <i>hikwsi </i>'breath'</span></div><div><br /></div><div>Stubbs (2011) reconstructs this set as #301 *<i>hikwis, </i>and also reconstructs<i> #1166 *ikwiyawa</i> for proto-Tepiman, and #13 *<i>yoLi </i>for Cahitan, Corachol and Nahuan.<i> </i>Hill (2020) has a set of words meaning 'breathe' or 'heart' under Hi-03 - but doesn't include the Nahua and Corachol words. I believe I am the first to propose a connection between these sets, and to demonstrate how they fit together. Also both Stubbs and Hill propose Cahitan *<i>hiyapsi </i>as a relative only of the words meaning breath iyaari/ihiyotl, and they do not explain the -psi ending. </div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;"><span style="font-family: times;">Intermediary Reconstructions</span></span></h4><div><div><div><div>This gives us the following intermediate forms: </div><div><br /><b>Corachol+Nahuan</b> shares the form: *<i>yoori</i></div><div><b>Wixárika+Nahua</b> shares the form *<i>iyaori</i></div></div></div></div><div><div><b>Corachol+ Cahitan </b>(and perhaps Ópatan and Raramuri): shares the protoform *<i>hiyawori </i>'heart'</div></div><div><div><span style="color: #202122; font-family: times;"><span style="text-wrap: nowrap;"><b>Pre-Tepiman </b></span></span><span style="font-family: times;">*<i>hikw</i></span><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;"><i>ɨ-yaw </i>suggests that the form *</span></span><i>hiyawori </i>in <span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;">non-Tepiman SUA has evolved from that same form through syncope, </span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;">giving us a shared form for all of SUA:</span></div></div><div><b>PSUA</b>: Shares the proto-form <span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;"><b>*</b></span></span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: times; text-wrap: nowrap;"><i>hikw</i></span><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;"><i>ɨ</i></span></span><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;">-<i>yawo </i>'heart'</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; text-wrap: nowrap;">The first element of that form appears to be a general PUA form </span></span>*<i>hikVwVs '</i>breath'.</div><div><br /></div><div>Below, I show the development I propose in diagram form:</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmQQytVWmipcOeUnZJ1-YygsQ6Q7grxe3uSEwFYmB56qkN6fzZF0gtlkeFjbjoUvoa7F1Z47gAUHWukYRdO5gwe33IL6xCN_mSasraitu6106VLYbrXuz_5QUOfzeC0mqqcVMn2ysJhEwmC0apWBJZ3E8ufHCtZZuH9ZXSQpVbygXS3D0tzJSdm1jP/s551/heart%20word%20tree%202.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="301" data-original-width="551" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmQQytVWmipcOeUnZJ1-YygsQ6Q7grxe3uSEwFYmB56qkN6fzZF0gtlkeFjbjoUvoa7F1Z47gAUHWukYRdO5gwe33IL6xCN_mSasraitu6106VLYbrXuz_5QUOfzeC0mqqcVMn2ysJhEwmC0apWBJZ3E8ufHCtZZuH9ZXSQpVbygXS3D0tzJSdm1jP/s16000/heart%20word%20tree%202.JPG" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal">This comparative evidence alone strongly suggests that the Nahua word for 'heart' is not derived in any way from a root <i>ol</i>- either in the meaning 'movement' or 'ball'. The word is inherited from earlier stages of Uto-Aztecan and developed following a path of systematic sound changes. <br /><br />The fact that we can also reconstruct the Nahua words for maize/corn cob <i>tla</i><i>ō</i><i>lli</i>/<i>ō</i><i>l</i><i>ō</i><i>tl </i>to the SUA verb *<i>hora </i>'de-grain corn' and the word for movement <i>ōlini</i> and probably also rubber <i>ōlli</i> to a Corachol nahuan root *<i>oro </i>'to move', strongly suggests that these are independent roots, going back at least to the split of Southern Uto-Aztecan, which would be several millennia before there was anything such as Nahuatl. </p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Conclusion: </h4><p class="MsoNormal">The main point of this long etymological exercise is to caution the student of Nahuatl against supporting their arguments about cultural conceptualization with folk etymologies. Being very proficient at Nahuatl and understanding its grammar is not a guarantee against falling into this trap, León-Portilla, López Austin and Sullivan, were all very accomplished nahuatlahtoque. Being good at Nahuatl grammar and knowing all the ways in which words can be constructed, may mislead us to think that all Nahuatl words are constructed through the grammatical principles of for word construction that we know. But this assumes that Nahuas somehow started with the grammar and then began cosntrucitng words with the rules. When of course the reality must have been the reverse - the ancient Uto-Aztecans had a set of lexical roots and a set of grammatical rules that they passed down through the generations, changing the phonological and grammatical rules. Preexisting words where then changed to fit to the new phonological grammatical rules (for example adding suffixes). Nahuas have always had a word meaning 'heart' (or 'breath' or 'life-force'), they never had a need to construct such a word from the word for 'ball' or 'movement'. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Etymology is a specialized field of knowledge, and building one's big theories of Nahua culture on etymologies without using this knowledge, amounts to constructing fancy castles on sand.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Bibliography:</h4><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">León-Portilla, M., 1956. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">La filosofía náhuatl</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">. Instituto Indigenista Interamericano.</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;">López, Austin, Alfredo, 1980.<i> Cuerpo humano e ideología. Las concepciones de los antiguos nahuas</i>. Vol 2. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas.</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;">Hill, Kenneth. 2020. </span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;">Wick Miller's Uto-Aztecan Cognate Sets. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;">UC Berkeley: </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;">Publications of the Survey of California and Other Indian </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;">Languages </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times;"><a href="https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9px6p8h8">https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9px6p8h8</a></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Maffie, James. 2014. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Aztec philosophy: Understanding a world in motion</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">. University Press of Colorado.</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: times;">Stubbs, Brian D. <i>Uto-Aztecan: A comparative vocabulary</i>. Flower Mound, TX: Shumway Family History Services, 2011.</span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Sullivan, Thelma. 1982. "Tlazolteotl-Ixcuina: The Great Spinner and." In </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The Art and Iconography of Late Post-Classic Central Mexico: A Conference at Dumbarton Oaks, October 22nd and 23rd, 1977</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">, p. 7. Dumbarton Oaks.</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p></p></div></div></div>Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-34482011598579310292023-04-29T12:08:00.007-07:002023-04-29T16:00:13.852-07:00Words Usually Spoken Upon Taking a Nahua Child from their Parents<p dir="ltr" style="background-color: white; line-height: 2.4; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 12pt; padding: 0pt 0pt 8pt; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Magnus Pharao Hansen & Paja Faudree</i></span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="background-color: transparent; color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Yesterday at the Northeastern Nahuatl Scholars conference at Brown University in Providence, me and Paja Faudree, associate professor of anthropology at Brown University, and my former doctoral adviser, gave a talk in which we presented an analysis of a section of the Vocabulario Manual by Pedro de Arenas first published in 1610. We compared the various versions and editions of this book, many of which are located at he John Carter Brown library. This blog post is a small summary of this paper, which we may eventually develop into larger paper.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmk6v9ljs5y3_1-hn2m-dIYG3NOVZ1ZN1EREnkPkbHBbpsJ6E5SB1HhECkuzcUI8n9HmKEWRwvBurIgTsljfbwipg31m6vO29CArChfhQHCjRGC6bKZp8Me26dPCm6lTHM8phRVRKNV7nM5haqgm5D0sw06VTRpUyfUxuLmUFtBRt2di0t6VYDenFN/s4000/20230427_104606%20(1).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="2250" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmk6v9ljs5y3_1-hn2m-dIYG3NOVZ1ZN1EREnkPkbHBbpsJ6E5SB1HhECkuzcUI8n9HmKEWRwvBurIgTsljfbwipg31m6vO29CArChfhQHCjRGC6bKZp8Me26dPCm6lTHM8phRVRKNV7nM5haqgm5D0sw06VTRpUyfUxuLmUFtBRt2di0t6VYDenFN/w225-h400/20230427_104606%20(1).jpg" width="225" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When we study the relations between
Nahuas and Spaniards in the colonial period we tend to rely on combinations of
information contained in administrative and ecclesiastical records, and they do
not necessarily represent the breadth of contexts in which interactions between
Nahuas and non-nahuas took place. Particularly if we are interested in knowing
more about the minutiae of everyday life, since precisely because of
their mundane banality they are something colonial administrators or
church officials were unlikely to take any special interest in and therefore
unlikely to leave any written record of. However, there is one colonial source
which provides a stunning glimpse into these everyday interactions between
Spaniards and Nahuas which has received surprisingly little attention in
scholarship and this is Pedro de Arenas’ “<i>Vocabulario Manual</i>” first
published in 1611. The <i>Vocabulario Manual</i> is a Nahuatl phrasebook
written for Spaniards in order to help them communicate with Nahuatl speakers,
as they interacted in various common tasks and contexts.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p><h3 style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pedro de Arenas' "Vocabulario Manual"</span></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The mere fact of the existence of the <i>Vocablario Manual </i>tells
us something about the relations between Nahuas and Spaniards who spoke no
Nahuatl, namely firstly that interactions between them were common and frequent
enough that a phrasebook was considered useful, and secondly that it was not
the case that it was not simply assumed that it was the responsibility of
Nahuas to accommodate to Spanish speakers. The fact that this work was
reprinted no less than 9 times over three centuries, tells us that the
usefulness of a phrasebook for Spaniards speakers to communicate with Nahuas
was not limited to the early years of the colony, or the periods during which
Nahuatl was an official language in New Spain - indeed the last three
editions were even printed after Mexican independence. This study is by no
means the first, as previous work by Ascención Hernández de León-Portilla and
Andrés Lira have analyzed it previously, but due to its unique status as the
only example of the genre of a mundane “phrasebook”, it deserves much more
study, and to figure prominently in analyses of social life and
spanish-indigenous interactions during the colony. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nothing is known about Pedro de
Arenas’ biography, In the work he describes himself as a “<i>romancista</i>”
that is a person with no formal education in Latin, and Ascención Hernández de
León-Portilla suggests that he was likely a Spaniard who came to New Spain and
dedicated himself mostly to trade and commerce (1982: XIX-XXVI). For the manual
he supplied the phrases in Spanish and an unnamed <i>nahuatlato </i>translated
them into Nahuatl.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
There are extant editions published in 1611, 1668, 1683, 1690, 1710, 1728,
1793, 1831, and the last one in 1887. In 1862, during the French intervention,
a French edition was published. There are reports of editions from 1613, 1615
and 1666, but no copies of these were located by Ascención Hernández de
León-Portilla, when she searched for them. There are copies of the other
editions at many research libraries and archives in México, the US and Europe.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Vocabulario Manual is organized
into sections describing different types of interactions between the books user
and Nahuatl speakers. Among these interactions are such everyday communicative
events as exchanging greetings, bartering, selling or buying goods, asking for
directions, giving orders and directions to servants, praising workers,
scolding or complaining about workers and servants, going to church, asking
where things or people are, or telling others where to put them. The picture it
gives us is of close everyday relations between the book’s intended audience of
users and the Nahuatl speakers they will be speaking to. In these
imagined interactions, Nahuatl speakers are most commonly cast as workers:
servants or laborers who will be given tasks, or persons with whom to trade or
barter – as in the sections on how to “<i>poner defecto en alguna cosa</i>”
and “<i>como alabar alguna cosa.</i>” Nahuatl speakers are also imagined as
people from whom to ask for directions on the road or upon arriving in a new
town. Other communicative events are of a more intimate interpersonal nature,
as when Nahuatl speakers are imagined as those in need of being cured of a
malady or consoled, or are people that the manual’s user must ask for help,
apologize to, praise or commend for their virtues, or encourage to keep doing
good work. But there are also situations where the manual’s user is put in the
role of accusing someone (while speaking to a group of Nahuatl speakers), or of
scolding someone, or complaining of bad work or ill treatment. Sometimes, too,
the roles are reversed, and the book’s user must defend themselves against
accusations of some improper act, or must apologize for transgressions they
have committed. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></p>
<h3 style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Words Usually Spoken Upon Taking a Nahua Child from their Parents</span></h3>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One of the sections that
is painfully revealing of the dynamics of colonial world, is the one in which
the speaker is instructed in how to ask a Nahuatl-speaking family for their
child to rear. The implied reason for asking for a Nahua child is to teach it a
trade, which was apparently done on a contract of one to two years at a time.
Likely the position of such a child would be as mozo, a boy servant of the type
mentioned as the addressee in many of the other sections of the <i>Vocabulario</i>. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-3LDBybHBO-feFwAvapdmyhYtiiy4FwrG4R_6Y69ipkrQ78k6DCcnWIifqcsOlMwbNuiMRRC-vxjTt0IQVfBpjjzuQJWEr6mhe4CDpTua2R_IW6aaF2nO9LpD2TD2BhQ10kcqDuwlbGr-K4UBwA2mBXBEi7E5OiNHAiAJaE60vRWj33HCH0dN3XAT/s4000/20230427_104820.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2250" data-original-width="4000" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-3LDBybHBO-feFwAvapdmyhYtiiy4FwrG4R_6Y69ipkrQ78k6DCcnWIifqcsOlMwbNuiMRRC-vxjTt0IQVfBpjjzuQJWEr6mhe4CDpTua2R_IW6aaF2nO9LpD2TD2BhQ10kcqDuwlbGr-K4UBwA2mBXBEi7E5OiNHAiAJaE60vRWj33HCH0dN3XAT/w640-h360/20230427_104820.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">While the parents’
answers are not included and we hear only the spanish-speaker's voice (speaking Nahuatl), the
answers are strongly implied by the book’s author since the statements that it
teaches anticipate in some detail the response from the child’s parents. The
author clearly expects the parents to be quite reluctant to hand over the
child, and they need a good deal of convincing, and negotiation of the period
of the contract. The period should be long enough that the child will learn
well, the child will send back money, I will love the child as if it were my
own. The closing statement of the person presumably carrying away the child is
to tell the parents not to be sad, the statement implicitly painting the
picture of a mother or father who does not really want to part with the child, but
who has been convinced that they must. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoNormalTable" style="border-collapse: collapse; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184;">
<tbody><tr style="mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0;">
<td colspan="2" style="border: 1pt solid black; padding: 5pt;" valign="top">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Palabras que se suelen ordinariamente decir
pidiendo algún muchacho a sus padres para enseñarle oficio<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 1;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid black; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 233.4pt;" valign="top" width="304">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Cuix
tinechmacaznequi in mopiltzin?</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid black; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid black; border-top: none; mso-border-left-alt: solid black 1.0pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 216.9pt;" valign="top" width="167">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Do you want to give me
your child?</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 2;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid black; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 233.4pt;" valign="top" width="304">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nehuatl
nicmachtiz netlayecoltiliztli in yehuatl (é) inin</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid black; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid black; border-top: none; mso-border-left-alt: solid black 1.0pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 216.9pt;" valign="top" width="167">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I will teach him a
means of making a living, this one or that</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 3;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid black; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 233.4pt;" valign="top" width="304">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Quexquich
cahuitl nonahuac ticcahuaz?</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid black; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid black; border-top: none; mso-border-left-alt: solid black 1.0pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 216.9pt;" valign="top" width="167">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For how much time will
you leave him with me?</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 4;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid black; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 233.4pt;" valign="top" width="304">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Amo
miec. Amo huel quimomachtiz zan iciuhca.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid black; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid black; border-top: none; mso-border-left-alt: solid black 1.0pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 216.9pt;" valign="top" width="167">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">That is not much. He
can not learn just quickly. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 5;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid black; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 233.4pt;" valign="top" width="304">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Nehuatl
nichuicaz an ma notlan ye oc quezqui ilhuitl</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid black; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid black; border-top: none; mso-border-left-alt: solid black 1.0pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 216.9pt;" valign="top" width="167">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I will take him with
me, and he will be with me yet some days. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 6;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid black; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 233.4pt;" valign="top" width="304">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Auh
in zatepan tla ticnequiz ticchihuazque amatl (ó) escritura in quexquich
cahuitl tehuatl ticnequiz</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid black; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid black; border-top: none; mso-border-left-alt: solid black 1.0pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 216.9pt;" valign="top" width="167">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And then later, if you
wish, we will make papers for whatever time you want. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 7;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid black; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 233.4pt;" valign="top" width="304">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Auh
nehuatl nicmacaz ic izqui in cecen metztica in cecen xiuhtica</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid black; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid black; border-top: none; mso-border-left-alt: solid black 1.0pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 216.9pt;" valign="top" width="167">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And I will give him
this much every month, every year</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 8;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid black; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 233.4pt;" valign="top" width="304">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Auh
nictlazohtlaz cenca cualli iuhqui ma ahzo huel nopiltzin</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid black; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid black; border-top: none; mso-border-left-alt: solid black 1.0pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 216.9pt;" valign="top" width="167">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And I will love him as
well as if he might be my own child. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 9;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid black; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 233.4pt;" valign="top" width="304">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Huel
oc xiquilnamiqui[1611]/ximoyolnonotza[1668] in tla moyollocacopa</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid black; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid black; border-top: none; mso-border-left-alt: solid black 1.0pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 216.9pt;" valign="top" width="167">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Remember it/[Speak to
your heart about] it still, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">if your heart is set</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 10;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid black; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 233.4pt;" valign="top" width="304">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Ca
intla yehuatl cualli tlacatl yez ihuan in quimoyollotiz in cualli yectli</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid black; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid black; border-top: none; mso-border-left-alt: solid black 1.0pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 216.9pt;" valign="top" width="167">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And if he will be a
good man and put his heart into the good and the right</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 11;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid black; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 233.4pt;" valign="top" width="304">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Iciuhca
momachtiz, zan ahmo huecauh, zan ce xihuitl, zan ce xihuitl ihuan tlahco, zan
ome xihuitl </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid black; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid black; border-top: none; mso-border-left-alt: solid black 1.0pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 216.9pt;" valign="top" width="167">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Quickly he will learn,
not long, just one year, just a year and a half, just two years. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="mso-yfti-irow: 12; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid black; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 233.4pt;" valign="top" width="304">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Macatlé
mitztequipacho</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid black; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid black; border-top: none; mso-border-left-alt: solid black 1.0pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid black 1.0pt; padding: 5pt; width: 216.9pt;" valign="top" width="167">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">May nothing sadden you</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">While the Vocabulario Manual tells us much about how Spanish-speakers had to learn to use Nahuatl to interact with indigenous populations in Mexico throughout the 17th to 19th centuries, this little snippet of a phrasebook points to a much larger and highly sinister aspect of the colonial process. An integral part of the way in which colonization progresses entailed removing Nahua and other indigenous children from their families to raise them outside of their own community and culture. The children who were taken in this way were probably often used as mozos, that is servant boys, and while it may be true that the person using the handbook intended to raise the child with love as if it were his own, in a kind of fostering arrangement (also not unknown in indigenous communities), it feels more like a strategic statement for convincing the parents. What they wanted was more likely the child's labour. The practice also reminds us of the Residential Schools common in Canada and the US, where children were sent specifically in order to "acculturate" them to colonizer society and sever their connections to their own communities. In Mexico the practice of educational albergues, school homes, for young indigenous children whose families live too far from schools for the children to be able to travel back and forth everyday. In many cases for children in albergues, in the colonial period, and today, receiving education, means leaving ones community, to live among strangers who do not speak one's own language. </p><p></p>Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-85413853367883207812022-03-03T01:10:00.001-08:002022-03-03T01:58:37.011-08:00Warlord/Owl - a Uto-Aztecan pun?<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgHcdUAYFnq7lfY5SFc6I3W_XdF8_iYu0iFl9J2wra8NE7TC1gHJsF6GITH2_NkZXsKGlmivFa0bxReWJBYZi0vGWdEZqyqZn4uBD-LYpNK5k8R5gq753VgV2BG0_RSyyOIZYztzurJsRAtedP4oetsSrOJlJac9XWyAxlV3YTsVt8kF248q60gJKc4=s271" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="271" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgHcdUAYFnq7lfY5SFc6I3W_XdF8_iYu0iFl9J2wra8NE7TC1gHJsF6GITH2_NkZXsKGlmivFa0bxReWJBYZi0vGWdEZqyqZn4uBD-LYpNK5k8R5gq753VgV2BG0_RSyyOIZYztzurJsRAtedP4oetsSrOJlJac9XWyAxlV3YTsVt8kF248q60gJKc4" width="271" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"The owls are not what they seem"</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">On this blog I often write about topics that are somewhat speculative, such as patterns I've noticed and which seem to be suggestive of something interesting but which may fall short of establishing it as a fact. <br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">A year ago, <a href="http://nahuatlstudies.blogspot.com/2021/02/ears-of-nopal-reading-name-of.html">in this blogpost</a>, I wrote about evidence suggestive of an Uto-Aztecan, but non-Nahuan (or pre-Nahuan rather), language being spoken at Teotihuacan. The juxtaposition of ears and nopal pads in a Teotihuacan mural, which could be read as a hint of a name - perhaps related to the Huichol goddess Nakawe. This blog post takes a similar path: I've noticed some patterns in two Uto-Aztecan languages, that are particularly suggestive when juxtaposed with an element of Teotihuacan iconography. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The pattern I will describe is just this, suggestive, but it is hard to say exactly what it might mean, or how it would have come about. I noticed it as part of my work comparing the various Southern Uto-Aztecan languages (SUA) to build a database of shared lexicon between them. I include the Hopi language of Arizona in this comparison, not because Hopi is a Southern Uto-Aztecan languages (it belongs to the northern group) because of the cultural similarities between Hopi and the Southern languages (Hopi is the only one of the Northern languages in which maize agriculture is a culturally central activity) and because it seems likely that Hopis may historically have been in contact with Southern Uto-Aztecans from Mexico who traded luxury goods (such as parrots and cacao) to the US Southwest. <br /></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhRCg5fRbAB1OiusZGuNVdW3R49rQflqGDoKd4QV9xH0nTuX8LypUrzQCzmp4GCwhuSj1rQKNJPqVzPa1hY_4e-DMJfmCd1s9uzabbch5VJzOTbwzCua8ErCtIANhzApH2SmkmW8QBUq87u_MeNq8imNoPMNfYhzoa1Uyfg7rj35iPRwA-lwLC66uoT=s600" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhRCg5fRbAB1OiusZGuNVdW3R49rQflqGDoKd4QV9xH0nTuX8LypUrzQCzmp4GCwhuSj1rQKNJPqVzPa1hY_4e-DMJfmCd1s9uzabbch5VJzOTbwzCua8ErCtIANhzApH2SmkmW8QBUq87u_MeNq8imNoPMNfYhzoa1Uyfg7rj35iPRwA-lwLC66uoT=s600" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></a></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The way I work is reading through dictionaries and noting all the words that look like they might be cognate to words in some other SUA language. This requires paying attention to patterns of sound and meaning, between languages and across dictionaries. Sometimes patterns are simple, like this one, with simple and perfect correspondences between sound and meaning in two or more languages:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /> <span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span> "give"<span> <span> </span>"nose<span> "human</span></span></span><br /><b>Nahuatl <span> </span> </b><i>ma:ka</i><span><i> <span> </span>yaka<span> tla:ka-tl</span></i></span><br /><b>Hopi <span> </span></b><i>maqa <span> </span>yaqa<span> taqa</span></i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Sometimes (often) they are more complex, involving changes in meaning and sound changes that do not conform to the expected patterns or simple correspondences, obscured by subsequent divergent changes or combinations with other morphemes. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The correspondence I will show here is odd, in that the pattern does not involve words that are cognate between languages, but distinct words that *sound* similar in each language - seemingly creating a "pun" in both languages- but without using the same or related words. Here is the basic pattern this blog post is about:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><b>Hopi<span style="white-space: pre;"> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> <span> </span><span> </span> </span></span>Nahuatl </b> <i>mongwu /mungʷɨ/ </i>- "owl“<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><i>tecolotl /tekolotl/ </i>“owl” <i>mongwi /mungwi/ </i>- "leader“<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><i>tecuhtli /tekʷtli/ </i> “lord/leader”</span></p><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">As is clearly seen in this way of organizing it visually, the two words in Hopi are near homonyms, distinguished only by the final vowel <i>ɨ/i</i> - but in fact in the short form, which is used when there is a suffix or when the root is compounded, is just <i>mong </i>both for 'owl' and 'leader'. The two Nahuatl words are clearly entirely unrelated to the Hop words, but again we see that the words for 'owl' and for 'leader/lord' have a somewhat similar form /tek/ followed by a rounded segment /o/ or /<i>ʷ/ </i>(not a separate segment in Nahuatl, but often historically derived from a rounded vowel following a *k<i>) </i>and then the suffixes <i>-lo:-tl</i> and -<i>tli </i>respectively. In Hopi the similarities between the two words are so close that one might easily make a pun about owls and leaders, in Nahuatl they are more different, though potentially they could have been derived from forms that were more punnable.<br /><br />Below I analyze each of the word sets and their related words in other SUA languages. I use the term "pre-Nahua" to describe the Southern Uto-Aztecan dialectgroup that turned into proto-Nahuatl - I believe that this pre-Nahua language was a sister dialect to proto-Corachol and had derived from a common proto-Corachol-Nahua stage, but in the following I do not distinguish between pre-Nahua and proto-Corachol-Nahua since this would require a more detailed chronology, so pre-Nahua is just whatever is between proto-Southern Uto-Aztecan and proto-Nahuatl. </span></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Owl/Chief in Hopi and owl/death in other languages</span></h4><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhrdra-LO65tpeMOY-0x9yQtEgro-padWhtjhYpZdC4VUCWs-GsZMPRKlpELvPyEHzoIIrLnrmfLyzuc_VVBYAJ9krnGh4ujyX5lUFX9eeltHwjlabXkkuFn0B6oPdk09k6LAy2kDtOyKEv5RcwgEDvJHWSyUHjqW4Od_c03RI8Or-vnZpNAljjvqF8=s1500" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1200" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhrdra-LO65tpeMOY-0x9yQtEgro-padWhtjhYpZdC4VUCWs-GsZMPRKlpELvPyEHzoIIrLnrmfLyzuc_VVBYAJ9krnGh4ujyX5lUFX9eeltHwjlabXkkuFn0B6oPdk09k6LAy2kDtOyKEv5RcwgEDvJHWSyUHjqW4Od_c03RI8Or-vnZpNAljjvqF8=w183-h229" width="183" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Great Horned owl<br />(<i>Bubo virginianus</i>)</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia;">The two Hopi words are: </span><p></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>mongwu /mung<span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">ʷ</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">ɨ</span>/</i> - "great horned owl" (Hopi dictionary, 1998:248 )</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>mongwi /mung<i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">ʷ</span></i>i/</i> - "leader, head, chief" (Hopi Dictionary 1998:247)</span></li></ul><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Ken Hill assigns the two to two distinct Uto-Aztecan etymologies *mu "head" </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">(Hill 2020:276) </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">and *muu 'owl' (Hill 2020:275) (For example Mayo <i>mu'uu</i> "owl", Eudeve <i>muhút </i>'owl'). It seems likely that the word *<i>muu </i>for owl is a sound mimicking name for the owl, and that the word for head is unrelated. This would suggest that the similarity between the two Hopi words is simply coincidental.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In many indigenous American cultures the owl is a creature of bad omen, related to the realm of the dead. Nevertheless, it is probably also coincidental that the word for 'to die' in Uto-Aztecan languages also sounds somewhat similar. In Hopi it is </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">mooki /muuki/</i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> "to die", in Nahuatl <i>miki</i>, in Huichol </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;">/<i>m</i></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"><i>ɨkí</i>/ and in Mayo /<i>muuke</i>/</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">. Nevertheless it must have added to the owl's eeriness that its voice sounding </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">muuu </i><span style="font-family: georgia;">in the night could almost be heard as if trying to sing "die, die". The owl as a being of the night, of course is seen as one who can travel between the human world and the underworld - a harbinger of death and bad news. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In Nahuatl one word for 'owl' (though quite rare) is <i>cuamomohtli</i>, and the <i>momohtli </i>part seems potentially related to the same root *muu (<i>cua</i>- is probably just tree, though it could also be 'head') - but it could also be related to the word for fear or scary which in many Nahua varieties is mowi (changed from a previous mawi), which shortens to <i>moh</i>- . The /u/ in Mayo and Hopi (written o in Hopi orthography) and the </span><i style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">ɨ </i><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">i</span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">n Huichol is expected to yield either i or e in Nahuan, but sometimes it corresponds to o when adjacent to a labial consonant (such as m, or p or w). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In Huichol the term for owl is </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">/<i>míik</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"><i>ɨri</i>/ which looks like a potential cognate, except that the first vowel /i/ does not fit - it should be </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">ɨ (or u). </span></p><p><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">When looking at this root, Hopi is alone among these languages in having similar, though apparently unrelated, words for 'leader' and 'owl'. </span></span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">'Owl' and 'lord' in Nahuatl</span></h4><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjOVZ13tdACXjUylDgXh8UyhvyQSKlXVNkbH_dHZVrdqHYvMeVxVhbMGqoITI0fE-DsNutNmZ0YCj5Z9pe55tr14OU8J7jbH4ZBKtGwVcqmY1M1Sc5RiGoQO5SjVTaUagIcZrmB4gkMsZxR5xii21-gjfQ9ZLkflOTh9dULx6eS3j6EfRiGpugPdGvY=s853" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="640" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjOVZ13tdACXjUylDgXh8UyhvyQSKlXVNkbH_dHZVrdqHYvMeVxVhbMGqoITI0fE-DsNutNmZ0YCj5Z9pe55tr14OU8J7jbH4ZBKtGwVcqmY1M1Sc5RiGoQO5SjVTaUagIcZrmB4gkMsZxR5xii21-gjfQ9ZLkflOTh9dULx6eS3j6EfRiGpugPdGvY=w201-h268" width="201" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Flammulated owl <br />(<i>Psiloscops flammeolus</i>)</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: georgia;">In Nahuatl the words in question are: </span><p></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>tecuhtli /te:k</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><i>ʷtli/</i> 'lord'</span></span></li><li><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"><i>tecolotl /tekolotl/</i> 'owl'</span></li></ul><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The words are less supercifially similar than the two Hopi words - but there are reasons to consider them more similar. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">One such reason, is that in many contemporary Nahua varieties the root for chief or lord is pronounced [te:koh] when appearng in the possessed form (forexample Pochutec <i>notekú </i>"mi padre", Hueyapan Nahuatl<i> i:te:goh</i> "it's owner"<i> tote:goh</i> "Our Lord") This is often considered to be a contraction of /</span><i style="font-family: georgia;">tek</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><i style="font-family: georgia;">ʷ-yoh/</i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> where the -</span><i style="font-family: georgia;">yoh </i><span style="font-family: georgia;">suffix is the marker of inalienable possession. This may well be the case, but it is also possible that the -<i>oh </i>ending conserves the vowel that developed into the labialized k. Eudeve <tecogua> /<i>tekowa</i>/ "owner" suggests that </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>te:k</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><i>ʷtli </i>could have developed by syncope of the a so <i>tekowat</i></span><i style="color: #202122;">ɨ</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><i> </i>became <i>tekowt</i></span><i style="color: #202122;">ɨ </i><span style="color: #202122;">which then became</span><i style="color: #202122;"> </i><i>te:k</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"><i>ʷtli </i>in the non-possessed form but<i> -te:koh </i>in the possessed form. This also fits the Cora form </span><i>teekw-a'aran</i> 'dueño/owner' where the -<i>a'aran</i> is the inalienably possessed suffix corresponding to Nahua -<i>yo:tl</i>. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">Following Whorf, Jane Hill (1985) suggests an origin as *</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">tahi-ku</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"> "fire kindler" but this does not seem like a go</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">od proposal, since *<i>tahi </i>"fire" became <i>tle-tl</i> "fire" in Nahuatl, and here we have /te:-/. Here we have to prefer the conservative proposal holding the roots with <i>taHkw</i>- apart from the roots with <i>teko</i>-. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">The word for 'owl' has a root that is found in many indigenous languages - it is a so-called wanderwort. In Uto-Aztecan languages the root is found in Hopi as </span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>tokori </i>/<i>tukuri</i>/ 'flammulated owl', in Cora as </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"> <i>tukurú'u </i>'tecolote'. Apparently Yaqui-Mayo and Eudeve changed the meaning to vulture, with Mayo</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"> <i>tecué /tekwé/ and </i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">Eudeve<i> teco /teko/</i> both meaning 'zopilote'. The root has been reconstructed as *<i>t</i></span><i style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">ɨku, </i><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">which fits the Nahuatl, and Eudeve forms. The forms with u in the first syllable can arise from</span><i style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"> *t</i><i style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">ɨku</i><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"> through regressive vowel assimilation. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">It is also found in non-Uto-Aztecan languages in California as <i>tukúli </i>in Miwok, <i>tukuna </i>in Chumash, <i>hutukulu </i>in Wappo and <i>hutulu </i>in Yokuts (Gursky 1967). In Mesoamerica it is also found in Otomí</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122;"> <i>t</i></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"><i>ɨkuru'u</i> (Acazulco otomí) and in K'iche Maya as <i>tukur</i>. </span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">We should reconstruct the following two roots for pre-Southern Uto-Aztecan then:<br /></span></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">*teko-(<i>wa-t</i></span><i style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">ɨ)</i><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"> "lord" which becomes pre-Nahua *teko(w)</span><i>t</i><i>ɨ</i></li><li><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">*</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>tuko-ri</i></span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"><i> </i>"owl" which becomes pre-Nahua *teko- </span></li></ul><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">So also here, we </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">see that the two roots are not etymologically related, but only look like each other because of chance. But important here is that the -wa and the -ri are suffixes that disappear in the possessed form so that the word for "my lord" and "my owl" in pre-Nahua would be complete homophones: no-teko.</span></p><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">There is one important question though: If the proto-form is *<i>tuku(ri)</i> then why does Nahuatl have<i> tekolo:tl</i> with the vowels <i>e</i> and <i>o</i>, and the apparent suffix -<i>lo:tl</i>? The -lo:tl suffix has a very interesting explanation, that combines very well with a proposed link between owls and leaders.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: white; color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The -<i>raaw</i></span><i style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">ɨ</i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i> </i>root: Predators, Hunters, Enemies and Leaders</span></h4><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Karen Dakin (2001) has suggested that many nouns describing animals in Nahuatl end in -<i>lo:tl, yo:tl</i> or <i>o:tl</i>, and that this ending comes from a suffix *</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">-<i>raw</i></span><i style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">ɨ</i><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i> </i>that originally meant "possessor of a trait" (so that *X</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">-<i>raw</i></span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"><i>ɨ </i>would have meant "X-possessor"</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">). It is well attested that the sequence /awi/ (and /iwa/) can become *aw/iw and then /o:/ when the first vowel is accented and the second therefore one unaccented and eventually dropped.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I agree with Dakin that several Nahuatl animal nouns ending in -<i>lo:tl</i> or -<i>yo:tl</i> seem to have had a suffix of the form she describes, but I disagree that about the meaning she proposes (and also I don't think it is found in all the words she claims). I cannot give the full argument here, but I am writing an article that lays out the argument to be published next year. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">But my conclusion is this: the </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">*</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">-<i>raaw</i></span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"><i>ɨ </i>suffix (with the lenis variant </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">*</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">-<i>yaaw</i></span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"><i>ɨ</i>) was used to describe particularly ferocious animals, predators. But also apparently to warriors, and war leaders. </span><span style="color: #202122;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I reconstruct this meaning based on the following set of words: </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />*<i>yaaw<span style="color: #202122;">ɨ</span> </i>'warrior, predator' (independent noun)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="color: #202122;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="color: #202122;">Cora & Huichol: <i>yaabi/yaawi </i>'coyote'</span></li><li>Yaqui: <i>yoowe </i>'jefe, líder'</li><li>Nahuatl: <i>yao:tl</i> 'enemy, warrior' (from proto-Nahuatl *<i>yaawi-wa-t</i><span style="line-height: 107%;"><i>ɨ, </i>where -wa is a historical possessive suffix</span>) </li><li>Hopi: <i>nayaawi </i>"fight' (<i>na</i>- is a historical reciprocal marker)</li></ul></span><span style="color: #202122;">*-<i>raa</i></span><span style="color: #202122;"><i>w</i></span><span style="color: #202122;"><i>ɨ </i>as suffix modifying a noun:</span></span><span style="color: #202122;"><ul style="font-family: georgia; text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>kwaɨ-raawe
</i>'eagle' (Huichol) from *<i>kwahu-</i></span><i>raa</i><i>w</i><i>ɨ </i>"eagle-raawɨ"</li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="line-height: 107%;">kwaɨ-ra'abe </span></i><span style="line-height: 107%;">'eagle' (Cora) </span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i><span style="line-height: 107%;">ɨ-ra'abe </span></i><span style="line-height: 107%;">'wolf' (Cora) from *<i>hu-</i></span></span><i>raa</i><i>w</i><i>ɨ "</i>badger?-<i>raawɨ</i>"</li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>ɨ-raawe </i>'wolf'
(Huichol.)</span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>ko-yo:-tl</i> 'coyote' (Nahuatl) from Proto-SUA *<i>kao-yaawi </i>"fox-<i>raa</i><i>w</i><i>ɨ" </i></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>kahu-lowi</i> 'coyote' (Tubar) </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>kau-yau-mari</i> 'coyote-youth' (a deity) (Huichol) </span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>o:se-lo:tl </i>'jaguar, puma' (Nahuatl) from pre-Nahua *<i>house-raawɨ</i> '"feline-</span><i>raa</i><i>w</i><i>ɨ" (</i>compare with<i> </i><i>huusee
</i>'bear' (Cora &
Huichol) <i>ousei
</i>'jaguar' (Yaqui).)</li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>tsopi-lo:tl
</i>'vulture' (Nahuatl) from pre-Nahua *</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>tsiwipi-raawɨ </i>"turkey-</span><i>raawɨ</i>"</li></ul></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; text-indent: 36pt;"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In this case we could explain /<i>tekolotl</i>/ as coming also from *<i>te</i></span><i style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">ko-raaw</i><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">ɨ</span><i style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"> </i><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"> "owl-<i>raaw</i></span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"><i>ɨ</i></span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">", designating apparently a particularly fierce or predatory type of owl - or maybe an owl that is a warrior. </span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Spearthrower Owl" = Warlord?</span></h4><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg2llCPatjBoipbDLQcgGCfl0Id-QoWuFKUiTsg5LVcWm5SmZz3tixPzIpOrgqicgS0W4EjusaLfJVlLghXhYlsGtzpGaipR8XyI0lQucIYbyFSMfmM-U5A6g-cfKk3xWwOMW8XaFdcS1agMVIeXxXrqRPDsSV3vuADZA0sCIJODznLITttmQP-k8pr=s600" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg2llCPatjBoipbDLQcgGCfl0Id-QoWuFKUiTsg5LVcWm5SmZz3tixPzIpOrgqicgS0W4EjusaLfJVlLghXhYlsGtzpGaipR8XyI0lQucIYbyFSMfmM-U5A6g-cfKk3xWwOMW8XaFdcS1agMVIeXxXrqRPDsSV3vuADZA0sCIJODznLITttmQP-k8pr=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia; font-size: x-small;">Spearthrower Owl (/<i>tekoraaw</i><span style="color: #202122; text-align: left;"><i>ɨ</i>/?)<br />on a mural fragment from the <br />Techinantitla compound at Teotihuacan</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I mentioned at the beginning of this blogpost that the pattern I had found was suggestive of something related to Teotihuacan. How so?<br /><br />The data suggests that there is no historical relation between the words for owl and leader in Uto-Aztecan languages: they are simply near-homonyms. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In another blogpost from last year, I described how the fact that I noticed that ear and nopal cactus are near homonyms in some Southern Uto-Aztecan languages allowed be to propose that an iconographic depiction of a woman with nopal earrings operated on that pun to allows us to read the personal name as having the element NAKA. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Homonyms and near-homonyms are the operational principle of writing systems that rely on the rebus-principle to make phonetic readings of logograms. And it seems the Teotihuacan writing system may have worked this way. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Probably the most well-known glyphic sign associated with Teotihuacan is the one depicting an owl armed with a shield and a spearthrower - often interpreted as the name Spearthrower Owl (Helmke & Nielsen 2020, Nielsen & Helmke 2008). </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">So if we have two near-homonyms, we can use the image of one word to write the other using the rebus-principle - in other words. For a speaker of pre-Nahua a depiction of an owl *<i>teko </i>could be used to write the word *<i>tekow </i>lord/master. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">By adding the depiction of weapons and armament, the identity of the owl as a <i>yaawi </i>"a warrior" is established, and suggests the reading <i>teko-raaw</i></span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"><i>ɨ </i>which can then mean either an<i> "owl warrior" </i>or a<i> "warrior lord".</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">If this is indeed the correct reading of the Teotihuacan depiction of the Spearthrower Owl, then it seems more likely that this is a title than a name - the title of a war leader specifically. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">Postscriptum:</span></h4><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">So what about the two Hopi words? Though clearly intriguing, their similarity appear to have been irrelevant. But the similarity served as inspiritation that allowed us to recognize the similarity between pre-Nahua *teko-(<i>wa-t</i></span><i style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;">ɨ)</i><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"> "lord" and *</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>teko-raaw</i></span><span style="color: #202122; font-family: georgia;"><i>ɨ </i>"warrior owl", and the potential for a phonetic reading of the logogram. Perhaps if early Hopis were aware of the Spearthrower Owl far to the south of their lands, and of his title glyph associating leadership with owlness they made the same connection. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Cited texts:</span></h4><div style="text-align: left;"><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;">Dakin, K., 2001. <i>Animals and vegetables, Uto-Aztecan noun derivation</i>. In Historical Linguistics 1999: Selected papers from the 14th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, 9 13 August 1999 (Vol. 215, p. 105). John Benjamins Publishing.</span></span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Gursky, K.H., 1967. A Widespread Word for" Owl". </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">International Journal of American Linguistics</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">33</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">(4), pp.328-329.</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;">Helmke, C. and Nielsen, J., 2021. Teotihuacan Writing:: Where are We Now?. <i>Visible Language</i>, <i>55</i>(2).</span></span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Hill, Jane H. 1985. "On the Etymology of Classical Nahuatl teek w-tli'Lord, Master'." </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">International journal of American linguistics</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> 51, no. 4: 451-453.<br /></span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Hill, K.C., 2020. Wick Miller's Uto-Aztecan Cognate Sets.</span></span></li><li><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Nielsen, J. and Helmke, C., 2008. Spearthrower owl hill: A toponym at Atetelco, Teotihuacan. <i>Latin American Antiquity</i>, <i>19</i>(4), pp.459-474.</span></span></li><li><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: georgia;">Stuart, David (1998). ""The Arrival of Strangers": Teotihuacan and Tollan in Classic Maya History" (Extract of October 1996 paper). PARI Online Publications: Newsletter # 25. Precolumbian Art Research Institute. </span></span></li></ul></div>Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-20853903766911794972021-03-29T08:18:00.008-07:002021-03-29T08:22:09.688-07:00Something fishy about michis and topotes<p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQUG1zhKojKXPpqJBOzTKpu-hIvwZsXjzBnRBhncUHcQDCjSeugoOJ1ayOHVtuBvQtPb1HYue6Dw3NJsyEpqOk8HM_0rRpdNaLrHOHrhpmw6DzUaEfYlCcXFcP5X8w5VMAdOF0Qxc2P9I/s1406/whiskers.PNG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1406" data-original-width="712" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQUG1zhKojKXPpqJBOzTKpu-hIvwZsXjzBnRBhncUHcQDCjSeugoOJ1ayOHVtuBvQtPb1HYue6Dw3NJsyEpqOk8HM_0rRpdNaLrHOHrhpmw6DzUaEfYlCcXFcP5X8w5VMAdOF0Qxc2P9I/s320/whiskers.PNG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A catfish, a moustache, <br />Courbet's <i>L'Origine du Monde</i>, <br />and a feline.<br />What do they have in common</span>?</td></tr></tbody></table><br />This blogpost explores the origin of the Nahua word(s) for "fish". It is well known that the general nahua word for "fish" is <i>michin</i>. The root <i>mich</i>- is for example found in the name of the state Michoacán, meaning "place of fish-owners", likely referring to the P'urhépecha fishing traditions in lakes Pátzcuaro and Cuitzeo. <p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;">*Tepo: A Southern Uto-Aztecan word for fish</h3><p>But michin is not the only word for "fish" in Nahuan. Certain Nahuan varieties have a different root in that meaning - namely those spoken in southern Veracruz state: In Mecayapan the general word for fish is <i>toopoh</i>, in Zaragoza it is <i>tupuh. </i>This form has generally been explained as a loanword from the language called Sierra Popoluca, Zoque de Soteapan or Soteapanec, a language of the Mixe-Zoque family spoken i a town few kilometers from Mecayapan. In Soteapan Zoque the word for fish is <i>tɨɨpɨ</i>. People from Mecayapan are known to have close relations with the Zoque-speakers of Soteapan, and Mecayapan Nahuatl does have some significant signs of contact influence from Zoque (for example it has an inclusive/exclusive distinction in the first person plural, found in Soteapan Zoque, but not in any other Nahuan variety). The Nahua word also looks like a borrowing, in Nahuan languages the majority of nouns take the absolutive suffix -tl or -tli, but <i>toopoh </i>is part of a small class of nouns that do not take the absolutie suffix (this class is larger in Eastern Nahua than in Western Nahua). Some scholars have also argued that all Nahua words with *p are likely borrowings since UA *p tends to become lost in Nahuan (though this is not correct when you look at the details). So it would make complete sense if Nahua speakers of Mecayapan had borrowed the word for fish from their Zoque speaking neighbors. </p><p>But I don't think they have. I think the borrowing went the other direction from Nahua to Soteapan Zoque. The reason is this: There are no clear cognates of the Soteapanec word in other Mixe-Zoque languages, but there are cognates in other Uto-Aztecan languages. </p><p>Within the Mixe-Zoque family, the oldest word for fish is the one that has been reconstructed as *<i>ʔaksa. </i>But this seems to have primarily kept in the Mixean languages, whereas the Zoquean languages seem to have several different words for fish. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mixe-Zoque: *<i>ʔaksa </i>- fish</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mixe: <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><i>ʔahkʃ </i>- fish</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Soteapanec Zoque (Popoluca): <i>tɨɨpɨ </i>- fish</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Zoque de Chiapas: <i>punu </i>- fish</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Zoque de Texistepec - <i>wo'n</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Zoque de Chimalapa - <i>koke</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Oluta Mixe - <i>ko'ke</i></div></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">As seen above, Soteapanec is alone with the root <i>tɨɨpɨ, </i>though perhaps the<i> pu </i>syllable in the Chiapas Zoque word<i> punu </i>could related to the -<i>pɨ </i>part, and the Texistepec word<i> wo'n </i>could be related to<i> punu. </i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">But in Uto-Aztecan languages we see the following forms, that appear cognate:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Tubar: <i>tepó </i>- catfish</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Southeastern Tepehuan: <i>batoop </i>- fish</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Mecayapan Nahua: <i>toopoh </i>- fish</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Zaragoza Nawa: <i>tupuh </i>- fish</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Colonial Nahuatl: <i>topohtli </i>- <i><a href="Poecilia" target="_blank">Poecilia </a></i>spp small fat freshwater fish</div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Tubar was spoken untill around 1900 in the Northwestern state of Chichuahua, very far from speakers of Mixe-Zoque languages. Southeastern Tepehuán is spoken in southern Durango, also very far away, in Tepehuán we can explain the form as derived from the prefix <i>ba</i>- "water" and a root toopo "fish" - since tepehuán languages often drop the final vowel in Uto-Aztecan forms with the shape CVCV. We also see a form in classical Nahuatl recorded by Sahagún in the Florentine codex (book 11 fol 66): the fish <i>topohtli </i>is described as a small fat freshwater fish. The name <i>topohtli </i>has entered Mexican Spanish as <i><a href="https://laroussecocina.mx/palabra/topote/" target="_blank">topote, </a></i>a fish that is appreciated for its culinary value, but now unfortunately endangered. Topohtli may refer to species of <i>Poecilia </i>and perhaps also <i>Dorosoma petenense</i>. Based on the presence of the root in Tepehuán and Tubar we would be justified in reconstructing it for Southern Uto-Aztecan. I would suggest reconstucting as *tepó, identical to the Tubar form, since Eastern Nahua frequently assimilates a vowel e in penultimate syllables to harmonize with the vowel in the subsequent syllable giving topo as the expected reflex of *tepo. <i>Topotli </i>in colonial central Nahuatl looks like it has been a loan from eastern Nahuatl, into classical Nahuatl. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Several Uto-Aztecan languages (perhaps including Nahua) will lengthen a vowel that is is in the penultimate syllable when the final syllable is stressed. The meaning may have been simply "fish", then applied specifically to catfish (often seen as a proto-typical or abundant fish) in Tubar, and to small abundant edible fishes in Eastern Nahua. So we should probably also reconstruct *<i>tepoh </i>as "fish" in proto-Nahua, and *<i>topoh </i>as fish in proto-Eastern Nahua. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUcF11UriVVy1AAVzkYmEkRpbemtHia64JQYTfW3TqzEYN5DN2r0cs478CCEV285hyphenhyphennM6hO_pSUA_j6y9_HwdS4x8RKlJU5XNK0g2TW8-x9AUaJkOBirqVFOO6jUCh2RFkVgSXXKY_ohU/s1902/topotli.PNG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="1902" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUcF11UriVVy1AAVzkYmEkRpbemtHia64JQYTfW3TqzEYN5DN2r0cs478CCEV285hyphenhyphennM6hO_pSUA_j6y9_HwdS4x8RKlJU5XNK0g2TW8-x9AUaJkOBirqVFOO6jUCh2RFkVgSXXKY_ohU/w640-h150/topotli.PNG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Florentine Codex Book 11 fol. 66</td></tr></tbody></table></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><h3 style="clear: both; text-align: left;">*musi - a Southern Uto-Aztecan word for ....what exactly?</h3><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">So what about michin? What is the origin of this word for fish? </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It has a solid Uto-Aztecan etymology, since in several Uto-Aztecan languages of North-western Mexico a related word means "catfish". In Huichol/Wixárika the word is <i>mɨxí </i>"catfish"<i>, musít </i>"catfish" in Eudeve ,<i> muusí </i>"catfish" in Tarahumara. So here we have a solid relation between the Nahua word and words meaning catfish. So maybe the original meaning of the Nahuatl word <i>michi </i>was catfish too and <i>tepo </i>was fish, and then the <i>tepo </i>was gradually lost and <i>michi </i>became the general root for fish. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">But there is also another set of words that look like cognates to me they mean "moustache": Cora: <i>mɨɨsí </i>"moustache", Huichol <i>mɨxíya</i> "have a moustache", Tubar <i>himusír "</i>beard". Corachol <i>ɨ </i>regularly reflects <i>PSUA *u. </i>The reason a catfish is called a "catfish" in English is of course exactly because it has "whiskers" or a moustache. The technical term for the <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=catfish%20mustache" target="_blank">Catfish's moustache </a>is "barbel", of course related to the romance word for beard. Stubbs (2011) finds related forms meaning "beard" and "moustache" in Northern Uto-Aztecan languages as well, and he analyzes the word as having come from a combination of two roots: *<i>mu</i>- "mouth" and *<i>suwi/*tsomi</i> "hair". It seems clear that if we accept that analysis, already in proto-Southern Uto-Aztecan these elements had fused into a single root meaning "facial hair". </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">But there is also a third set of terms, I consider likely to be related: Warihío: <i>muhtsí</i> "vagina"</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Tohono O'odham <i>muhs "</i>vagina", Tarahumara <i>muchí</i> "vagina". Now, I have to admit that this could very well be considered another root entirely, a case of near homonymy, but there is a specific reason I don't. In Nahuatl, as she is spoken in the everyday usage, it is not uncommon to hear the words <i>mistli </i>"cat" or <i>michin </i>"fish" as euphemisms or slang terms for vaginas and vulvas. I don't think this usage is an historical pattern necessarily, but it does suggest a latent semantic or conceptual link between furry, whiskered animals, fish, and female genitals (think also of "pussy").</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In these words, we see different forms of the sibilant *s some of them are affricated to *ts (and palatalized as Nahua ch). I believe that the UA sibilant had fortis and lenis variants, and that the fortis variant was realized as an affricate *ts. The fortis variant was found in syllables that carried the accent, but sometimes it remained in place after the accent had shifted. In this way *<i>musí </i>became corachol-nahua <i>mɨtsí, </i>when the pre-Nahua accent system reorganized itself the accent shifted to the first syllable, and the final syllable which was now weak dropped the final vowel and became <i>mich</i>. I believe that the blogger <a href="https://nahuatlahtolli.wordpress.com/2014/10/18/plurals-as-singulars/" target="_blank">Ayac is correct in their suggestion that the -in absolutive suffix is a reflex of an old collective plural suffix</a> (so fish were a substance encountered naturally in the plural). </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And finally, there is a fourth (smaller) set of potentially related terms, mean "feline": Nahuatl <i>mistli, </i>"cougar" and <i>misto:n</i> "small feline", and Hopi: <i>moosa "</i>cat", which some consider a potential borrowing (<a href="https://books.google.dk/books?id=oZUvt645mLMC&pg=PA22">Hill 1997</a>). Hopi /o/ frequently corresponds to PSUA *u and Nahua /i/. We can see that the Nahuatl root <i>mis</i>- likely have had a as the final vowel, because if it were an *i, it should have palatalized when the final vowel was dropped. So this could be considered evidence that the "cat" root should be reconstructed as *<i>músa</i>, and not <i>muusí</i>. But this does not definitively preclude a relations, since the stress shift and the difference in vowel could be a derivational process. But we should probably consider the relation of this set to the other terms, quite tentative. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And as a tiny post-scriptum, we might also add the Nahuatl word <i>kimichin </i>"mouse". I have always wondered why the word for mouse seemingly incorporates the word for "fish", but remembering that mice, like catfish and cats, have whiskers - it made more sense. Though, I still wonder what the ki- part is - maybe a cognate of the Uto-Aztecan word for "house" <i>kí </i>(which is otherwise not found in Nahuatl). </div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH9DwvczzyzkTK2GmWptpVT-u9weovYjNpRmCBtGA6sFTwVrELAdPsrl1CY6XVGLirpCI2JXIH66gl3-tZOnwKE58Oo0u28hq6pWKrGYi6d5iWaSyvZcR_NdpCuBOyFGkABBDo2Myejd8/s915/mouse.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="915" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH9DwvczzyzkTK2GmWptpVT-u9weovYjNpRmCBtGA6sFTwVrELAdPsrl1CY6XVGLirpCI2JXIH66gl3-tZOnwKE58Oo0u28hq6pWKrGYi6d5iWaSyvZcR_NdpCuBOyFGkABBDo2Myejd8/s320/mouse.PNG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A whiskered house rodent - <i>kimichin.</i></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><u>Cognates</u>: </div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">PSUA *<i>musí </i>- moustache / </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Tarahumara (Norogachi/Brambila): <i>muusí </i>- catfish </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Ópata/Eudeve: <i>musít </i>- catfish</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Huichol: <i>mɨxí </i>- catfish</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Nahuatl: <i>michin </i>- fish</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Cora: <i>mɨɨsí </i>- moustache</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Huichol: <i>mɨxíya </i>- "have a moustache"</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Tubar: <i>himusír </i>- beard</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Warihío: <i>muhtsí </i>- vagina</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Tohono O'odham: <i>muhs </i>- vagina</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Tarahumara (Norogachi/Brambila): <i>muchí </i>- vagina</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">PUA: <i>músa </i>"cougar"</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Nahuatl: <i>mistli </i>- feline</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Hopi: <i>moosa - </i>feline</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Nahuatl: <i>kimichin </i>- mouse</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5S0E7uwUgYQkkekmgbYZY2AsmiUkPeXgnuZmzzp2t9kkxxd_HtIhc1AlSBzeWKpZjECz5QNXFQ5zorksnpQml3q4-pxt_hWN8dzUYEIL_cehoEnUBkwXW1oBFKNuWrGiW2oAD3upLIQw/s928/musi.PNG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5S0E7uwUgYQkkekmgbYZY2AsmiUkPeXgnuZmzzp2t9kkxxd_HtIhc1AlSBzeWKpZjECz5QNXFQ5zorksnpQml3q4-pxt_hWN8dzUYEIL_cehoEnUBkwXW1oBFKNuWrGiW2oAD3upLIQw/s928/musi.PNG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5S0E7uwUgYQkkekmgbYZY2AsmiUkPeXgnuZmzzp2t9kkxxd_HtIhc1AlSBzeWKpZjECz5QNXFQ5zorksnpQml3q4-pxt_hWN8dzUYEIL_cehoEnUBkwXW1oBFKNuWrGiW2oAD3upLIQw/s928/musi.PNG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5S0E7uwUgYQkkekmgbYZY2AsmiUkPeXgnuZmzzp2t9kkxxd_HtIhc1AlSBzeWKpZjECz5QNXFQ5zorksnpQml3q4-pxt_hWN8dzUYEIL_cehoEnUBkwXW1oBFKNuWrGiW2oAD3upLIQw/s928/musi.PNG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5S0E7uwUgYQkkekmgbYZY2AsmiUkPeXgnuZmzzp2t9kkxxd_HtIhc1AlSBzeWKpZjECz5QNXFQ5zorksnpQml3q4-pxt_hWN8dzUYEIL_cehoEnUBkwXW1oBFKNuWrGiW2oAD3upLIQw/s928/musi.PNG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p></p>Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-56805951929867622632021-02-12T00:40:00.005-08:002021-02-12T05:16:12.865-08:00Ears of Nopal: Reading the name of a Teotihuacán Fertility Goddess<div style="background-color: white;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">In addition to my project on Nahuatl
landscape, I am also working on another project, with the aim of trying to
advance an important question in Mesoamerican studies: What was the main
language spoken in Teotihuacan? And, specifically, could it have been an early
form of Nahuatl? Nahuatl is of course one of the languages often mentioned as a
potential language of the people of Teotihuacan, but other possibilities
sometimes mentioned are Totonac, Mixe-Zoque or an early form of Otomí-Mazahua.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">To engage this question I work to
combine my knowledge of the deep history of Nahuatl with analysis of the
iconography and writing found at Teotihuacan. Here, I work closely with my
colleague Christophe Helmke who is an archaeologist and epigrapher with
expertise in Mesoamerican writing systems - especially of the Maya and
Teotihuacan. A guiding assumption of mine is that talking about Nahuatl at
Teotihuacan is really an anachronism. I believe that the distinctive features
of Nahuatl, such as the tl sound, the vowel system with only four vowel
qualities instead of five, and the complex verbal morphology developed
relatively late. This means that instead of trying to look for Nahuatl in
Teotihuacan, we should look for something older which is perhaps similar to
Nahuatl, but which is in some ways more similar to other Uto-Aztecan languages
such as Cora and Huichol. This requires us to reconstruct the different stages
of Nahuatl: from proto-Corachol-Nahuan (the language ancestral to both Nahuan
and Corachol languages), to early proto-Nahua (the stage before undergoing the
changes that are common to Nahuan languages today) to late proto-Nahuatl (the
stage when it had developed all the traits common to all Nahuan languages
today).</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">In this
blogpost, I apply this method to one image from Teotihuacan, in an attempt to
show why I think this approach is likely to be valuable and to advance our
understanding of the culture and language of Teotihuacan.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">As I was looking in Arthur G. Miller's
1973 "The Mural Painting of Teotihuacan" I came across the following
illustration (Miller's Figure 234). This is a rendering (the original is badly
damaged) of a detail from the mural at the Portico at Tetitla, depicting a
frontal face. Miller (1973:121) describes that "flowering opuntia cactus
pads hang from the ears." </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkELVL88kQCohEiJxTUU2iFp2pDk1_XjmiOe31lz37E6wjtOVTVb1qjpgjHWH_5UwQ71GUd0wWfvGP0IxkrTfeXrOfRUQ62pdgRBKiAY_E5zxtP6g5qQ1VFP6Dq9rDVXVnbmPlrP-wthY/s2048/nakawe.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkELVL88kQCohEiJxTUU2iFp2pDk1_XjmiOe31lz37E6wjtOVTVb1qjpgjHWH_5UwQ71GUd0wWfvGP0IxkrTfeXrOfRUQ62pdgRBKiAY_E5zxtP6g5qQ1VFP6Dq9rDVXVnbmPlrP-wthY/s320/nakawe.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Figure 234 from Miller 1973:121</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Looking at it,
it could not avoid striking me immediately that in Cora and Huichol the words
for "ear" and "nopal cactus" (the opuntia cactus which is
edible and very delicious) are almost identical. In Cora, <i>naká </i>means
"nopal" while <i>nasaíh </i>means "ear", and in
Huichol <i>naká </i>means "ear" while <i>nakári </i>means
"nopal. In Nahuatl of course, the word for "ear" is <i>nakastli</i>,<i> </i>which is clearly
related to the Cora and Huichol word, whereas the word for "nopal
cactus" is <i>nohpalitl </i>(the origin of the Mexican Spanish
word "nopal"). </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">This to me is
an enticing similarity. If the word for ears and nopal cactuses are similar,
could that one the reason for depicting ears or earrings as nopal pads? To
answer whether this is even possible we have to try to reconstruct the history
of the words in Corachol and Nahuatl, to make sure that the similarity can even
be old enough to be relevant to understand a mural painted in Teotihuacan
around 1500 years ago.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Ears and
nopales in Cora, Huichol and early Nahuatl</span></b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">In a </span><a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogger.com%2Fblog%2Fpost%2Fedit%2F2535926528061546990%2F5680595192986762263&data=04%7C01%7Ccgbh%40hum.ku.dk%7Cbf2929670c3448c25e7a08d8ceabfc81%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637486585362351384%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=txbrGIiajmS%2FOd6X3NTHEdaSsarz%2BFhepfgnFbXprEE%3D&reserved=0"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">previous blogpost</span></a><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">,</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> I
described some apparent semantic changes in words related to meaty or
umami-flavored foods in the development of Nahuatl and Corachol. Specifically,
I argued that the Nahuatl word for "meat", <i>nakatl</i>, might well be related to the corachol word for the nopal
cactus - both of which may fulfill the same function of protein and
umami-flavour in the foodways of a nomadic desert people. If the original
meaning of the word *<i>naka </i>in the ancestor language of Corachol and
Nahuatl was indeed "nopal cactus", then presumably the Nahuan
ancestors later began to employ the word to mean “meat”, and caused the word
that originally meant “meat” to shift to the meaning "beans" (another
protein-rich umami tasting food). </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Cora <i>naká </i>and
Huichol <i>nakári </i>differ only in the Huichol suffix -<i>ri</i>,
which may well be cognate to the Nahuatl absolutive suffix. Cora also
originally had an absolutive suffix, so the word may originally have been <i>nakát </i>in
Cora, but the word doesn't appear in the earliest vocabulary of Cora, </span><a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogger.com%2Fblog%2Fpost%2Fedit%2F2535926528061546990%2F5680595192986762263&data=04%7C01%7Ccgbh%40hum.ku.dk%7Cbf2929670c3448c25e7a08d8ceabfc81%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637486585362351384%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=txbrGIiajmS%2FOd6X3NTHEdaSsarz%2BFhepfgnFbXprEE%3D&reserved=0"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Joseph de Ortega's
vocabulary from 1732</span></a><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">, where some nouns still have their absolutive suffixes. I would suggest
reconstructing the proto-Corachol form as *<i>nakáti </i>"nopal".
The ancestral proto-Corachol-Nahuan word would also have been *<i>nakáti </i>before,
the early proto-Nahuas split off and changed its meaning to
"meat". </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">The Nahuatl
words for "nopal cactus" <i>nohpalitl </i>and its
fruit <i>no:chtli</i>, can be derived from a reconstructed root *<i>náwa</i>-.
Perhaps <i>náwa</i> is related to the
Corachol word <i>nawá </i>which refers to an alcoholic beverage based
on fermented corn - but the similarity could also be a coincidence.
In <i>nohpali</i>- the root *<i>náwà</i> is followed by another root -<i>pali</i>,
which can be reconstructed as *<i>pári</i>, likely the same found in words for
flat oblong things. In <i>no:chtle</i>, it is followed by the suffix -<i>tsi</i>,
probably a diminutive. So, this gives the following set of cognates for
the meaning nopal/meat. So in early proto-Nahuatl we would have <i>náwapári </i>"nopal",
which became <i>nohpalitl </i>in late proto-Nahuatl, and <i>náwatsi </i>"tuna/cactus
fig", ultimately becoming <i>no:chtli</i> in late
proto-nahuatl. </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><u><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Nopal</span></u></b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Cora Mariteco <b>naká </b> "nopal"</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Huichol <b>nakári </b> "nopal"</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Proto-Corachol *<b>nakáti</b></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Early
proto-Nahuatl <b>*náka-tɨ</b> "meat"</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">and:</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Early Proto-Nahuatl *<b>náwàpàrì</b> "nopal"</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-ansi-language: ES;">Early Proto-Nahuatl *<b>náwatsi </b> "tuna/cactus
fig"</span><span lang="ES" style="font-size: 13.5pt; mso-ansi-language: ES;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">The words for
"ear" show a curious effect in which the Cora and Huichol words are
quite different, but nonetheless easily derived from a form that is similar to
that of Nahuatl. This kind of effect is one of the things that have convinced
me that Corachol and Nahuatl are quite closely related within the Uto-Aztecan
family. What happens here is that, Cora has <i>nasaíh </i>(Ortega's
vocabulary gives <i>naxaihti,</i> with the absolutive suffix), but
Huichol has <i>naká </i>or <i>naaká</i>. So, Cora has /s/ and
Huichol has /k/ - but there is no known sound change in corachol that will give an /s/ from a /k/ or vice versa. So what has happened? Are these not cognates?
When we look at Nahuatl <i>nakas-tli </i>"ear"<i> </i>we see both the /s/ and the /k/, and
we begin to see what has happened. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">In Nahuatl and
in Corachol there is a process by which unstressed short vowels are deleted.
And stress tends to fall on every other syllable. So if you have a word with
three syllables with stress on the first and last syllable 'CVCV'CV, the vowel
in the middle syllable is likely to disappear. This creates a consonant
cluster, and indeed in Nahuatl most consonant clusters come from vowels that
have disappeared in this way, and for Nahuatl roots that end in a consonant it
is usually the last vowel that has disappeared. From this, we can surmise that <i>nakastli</i> is likely to have had a vowel
between the <i>s</i> and the absolutive
suffix, <i>nakas</i>V<i>ti</i>. This vowel could not have been /i/, because in Nahuatl when /i/
is lost the preceding consonant is palatalized, so that should give us *nakaxtli.
Indeed the most likely consonant in this position would be /a/, so let's
reconstruct *naakásà- as the root for early-proto-Nahuatl (first syllable long,
because otherwise it would probably have been lost too).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">In Cora and
Huichol when a vowel is lost and a consonant cluster arises, sometimes they
simply delete the first of the two consonants - so now the entire unstressed
syllable has disappeared. This is why Cora has dropped the /tɨ/ syllable in the
word for "nixtamal" proto-Corachol-Nahua *</span><i style="font-size: 13.5pt;">nasitɨma</i><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">, which
became proto-Cora *</span><i style="font-size: 13.5pt;">násimwá</i><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">, and why proto-Corachol-Nahua *</span><i style="font-size: 13.5pt;">siku-(teni)putsi </i><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">became
Cora </span><i style="font-size: 13.5pt;">siputsi, </i><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Huichol </span><i><span style="font-size: medium;">x</span></i></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>ɨtemútsi<span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span></i></span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">and Nahuatl </span><i style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">xik-tli </i><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">(Nahuatl just used </span><i style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">siku</i><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">, and didn't add the <i>teni</i></span><i style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">putsi </i><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">element,
though it appears in the word </span><i style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">te:mpotza </i><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">referring to pursing one's lips). If proto-Cora and Proto-Huichol differed in how the accent was placed on
a word (and we know they sometimes did), they would end up each losing a
different syllable.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">This suggests
the following development led to Cora <i>nasaíh </i>and Huichol <i>naká </i>and
Nahuatl <i>nakastli</i>: </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="gmail-msolistbullet" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span lang="es-419" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 13.5pt;">·</span><span lang="es-419" style="font-size: 7pt;"> </span><i><span lang="es-419" style="font-size: 13.5pt;">nakasa </span></i><span lang="es-419" style="font-size: 13.5pt;">>
proto-Cora *<i>nákàsá</i>(-<i>hiti</i>) > <i>náksáhí </i>> <i>násaíh</i></span><span lang="ES" style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="gmail-msolistbullet" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span lang="es-419" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 13.5pt;">·</span><span lang="es-419" style="font-size: 7pt;"> </span><i><span lang="es-419" style="font-size: 13.5pt;">nakasa </span></i><span lang="es-419" style="font-size: 13.5pt;">>
proto-Huichol *<i>naakásà </i>> *<i>nakás </i>> <i>naká</i></span><span lang="ES" style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="gmail-msolistbullet" style="margin-left: 36pt;"><span lang="es-419" style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 13.5pt;">·</span><span lang="es-419" style="font-size: 7pt;"> </span><i><span lang="es-419" style="font-size: 13.5pt;">nakasa </span></i><span lang="es-419" style="font-size: 13.5pt;">>
Early proto-Nahuatl *<i>naakásà-tɨ </i>> *<i>nakás-tɨ</i> > <i>nakastli</i></span><span lang="ES" style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">It is clear
that Nahuatl and Huichol must have shared the same accent pattern on this word,
leading to the loss of the final vowel of <i>naakásà</i>, whereas in Cora
the *kà was unstressed and became lost. (The reason I reconstruct the first
syllable as long in Huichol and Nahuatl is that long syllables cannot be lost
even when unstressed, in Huichol a variant pronunciation has a short vowel as
in Nahuatl, but this is likely to be a subsequent shortening after the accent
pattern had reconstituted itself after the process of syncopation).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Ear</span></b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-ansi-language: ES;">Cora Mariteco <i><b>nasaíh </b></i>"oreja"</span><span lang="ES" style="font-size: 13.5pt; mso-ansi-language: ES;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-ansi-language: ES;">Proto-Cora *<i><b>nákàsáhi</b></i></span><span lang="ES" style="font-size: 13.5pt; mso-ansi-language: ES;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-ansi-language: ES;">Huichol <i><b>naká, naaká</b></i> "oreja"</span><span lang="ES" style="font-size: 13.5pt; mso-ansi-language: ES;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-ansi-language: ES;">Proto-Corachol *<i><b>nakasa </b></i>"ear"</span><span lang="ES" style="font-size: 13.5pt; mso-ansi-language: ES;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">PreProto-Nahuatl *<i><b>nakása </b></i>"ear"</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal"><span lang="ES" style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-ansi-language: ES;">Proto-Corachol-Nahua *<i><b>nakasa </b></i>"ear"</span><span lang="ES" style="font-size: 13.5pt; mso-ansi-language: ES;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
</ul><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">What this exercise in reconstruction
shows us, is that the near-homophony, and the ensuing punnability, between the words for “ear” and “nopal” go
back to the common ancestral language of Corachol and Nahuatl. The cactus/ear
pun works even at this deep stage of the languages' development. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Could the nopal-ears of the depicted face be
a logogram, with the value <b>NAKA</b>?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">The name of the"Great
Goddess" of Teotihuacan?</span></b><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">The image of
the face with nopal-ears is part of the mural that has been interpreted as a
procession of priestly figures (see Helmke and Nielsen 2014: 91-94; see also
Miller 1973: Figs. 229-239). The mural has also been called the Mural of the
Great Goddess” because some scholars, notably Esther Pasztory (1973) have
identified it as depicting a deity that she considered the “great Goddess” of
Teotihuacan. Pasztory proposed that the Great Goddess was the main deity in
Teotihuacan, a goddess of fertility and rain, and she identifies this goddess
in many murals. More recently, the idea of a “Great Goddess” complex as
described by Pasztory has fallen out of favour among epigraphers working with
Teotihuacan iconography, since it seems to include things that are really best
understood as being different elements. Zoltán Paulinyi (2006), for instance, argues
that Pazstory and others who posit a Great Goddess in Teotihuacan are
conflating several different figures into one, and he prefers distinguishing
between several of these figures, and he calls the cactus-ear face for
"the Opuntia Deity". Paulinyi may be right of course that the
different depictions described by Pasztory as "the great Goddess" may
in fact be different, but here we are interested specifically in what he
calls the "Opuntia Deity".</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Cambria",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Am5yTYAlJOTwzzukgqAaJ59mj93OqH09nr1IwFhmbMgnq2qIc3EQDZ7U8z593eulQ8axVvhxXZopIxl84QvcjYgijebCOUYuH8SH-XavVGxCl_SJueZ8ULZJxnWNpafPbDWr_75nivk/s1024/1024px-Tetitla_Diosa_de_Jade.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Am5yTYAlJOTwzzukgqAaJ59mj93OqH09nr1IwFhmbMgnq2qIc3EQDZ7U8z593eulQ8axVvhxXZopIxl84QvcjYgijebCOUYuH8SH-XavVGxCl_SJueZ8ULZJxnWNpafPbDWr_75nivk/s320/1024px-Tetitla_Diosa_de_Jade.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Another figure in the Tetitla murals that </span><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Pasztory believed to represent "the Great Goddess".</span><br /><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Goddess_of_Teotihuacan#/media/File:Tetitla_Diosa_de_Jade.jpg" target="_blank">Adrián Hernández, wikicommons</a>).</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">If the painters of the mural
intended the opuntia pun to be a phonetic clue to allow us to "read"
the image as a word, then perhaps they are a clue to the identity or name of
the figure whose face is depicted? I think there is reason to think that this
is possible. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">The Huichol people of Jalisco and
Nayarit are well known for being among the most religiously conservative
Uto-Aztecan peoples. They still practice a polytheistic religion, with many
narratives and deities that echo those we know from the sources about the
Aztecs. One of the central deities of the Huichol is a founder goddess, a
goddess of the earth, rain and fertility, known sometimes as "Grandmother Growth" (Zingg 2004:112). <a href="https://www.wixarika.org/objects/takutsi-nakaw%C3%A9s-boat" target="_blank">She was the one who taught the first human Watákame how to survivethe flood and how to cultivate corn, and she also saved the animals in a boatmade from ficus bark (amate paper)</a>. Her name in Huichol is <b>Nakawé</b>. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">The name of Takutsi (grandmother) Nakawé is sometimes
translated as "hollow ear", and it is explained that she is so named
because she listens and was the only deity to realize that the diluvial flood
was coming. But one might also suggest an etymology of "big ear"
since the syllable <i>wé</i>, is potentially related to the Nahuatl
word <i>we:yi</i> "big". She is in many ways comparable to
the Nahuatl deity Tlalteuctli, the Earth Goddess, and like the Aztec aquatic
monster Cipactli from whose body the world was created, </span><a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.blogger.com%2Fblog%2Fpost%2Fedit%2F2535926528061546990%2F5680595192986762263&data=04%7C01%7Ccgbh%40hum.ku.dk%7Cbf2929670c3448c25e7a08d8ceabfc81%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C637486585362361341%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=%2B5NFV2ahLQzghpgR7zT2pB3i3wtbNjJASqNv1qrUZmo%3D&reserved=0" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Nakawé
gave parts of her body to humans for their sustenance</span></a><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">. Perhaps it
was her ears then, which became the nopal cactus whose sweet fruits and
nutritious pads sustain the people and wildlife of the vast Mexican
deserts? </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Already in 1974, Peter Furst who had
done extensive work with the Huichol, suggested that the Great Goddess proposed
by Pasztory might be related to the Huichol deity Nakawé. He saw the similarity
between the aquatic and chthonic and pro-social aspects of the Huichol goddess
and Pasztory's proposal that Teotihuacan society was united by a shared belief
in a benevolent goddess of fertility, rain, earth and growth. So, Furst was the
first to independently suggest the relation between the Huichol deity Nakawé
and the goddess of Teotihuacan (though not specifically the opuntia deity), the
reading of the puntia earring as a logogram for <b>NAKA</b> provides independent evidence for this identification (though
Furst may of course have been wrong in thinking the same identification applied
to all the depictions of the deity proposed by Pasztory).</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">If my reasoning and conclusions here
are sound and can be accepted, then the nopal cactus ears in the Tetitla murals
juxtaposes ears with nopal pads as earflares thereby employing the logogram <b>NAKA</b> as a phonetic reinforcement that
aids in identifying the name of the figure so depicted. This in turn strongly suggests
that:</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> In the period when the Tetitla murals were painted (perhaps
about AD 300-500?), there were speakers of a Uto-Aztecan language closely
related to Corachol and Nahuan at Teotihuacan </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">They used phonetic principles to write names of individuals and/or
entities in their iconography, integrating logograms for their phonetic values into
depictions of persons and places.</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo1; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">3.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">The phonetic signs cannot be read by simply using the phonetic
values of Nahuatl or Cora or Huichol, because the language recorded is older
than any of them. Therefore, comparative studies of the Coracholan and Nahuan
languages using historical reconstruction may yield keys to reading the
phonetic values of such signs. </span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">References Cited:</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
</p><ul type="disc">
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: #222222; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Furst, Peter T. (1974)
"Morning glory and mother goddess at Tepantitla, Teotihuacan:
iconography and analogy in pre-Columbian art." <i>Mesoamerican
Archaeology: New Approaches</i>, edited by Norman Hammond, pp. 187-215..
Austin: University of Texas Press..</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: #222222; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Helmke, C. and J.
Nielsen. “If mountains could speak: Ancient toponyms recorded at
Teotihuacan, Mexico” <i>Contributions in New World Archaeology</i>,
Vol. 7: 73-112: </span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: #222222; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Miller, A. G. (1973).
<i>The Mural Painting of Teotihuacan</i>.
Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: #222222; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Paulinyi, Z. (2006).
The" Great Goddess" of Teotihuacan: fiction or reality?. <i>Ancient
Mesoamerica</i>, 1-15.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: #222222; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Pasztory, E. (1971)
The mural paintings of Tepantitla, Teotihuacan. Ph.D. Dissertation. New
York: Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University.</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="color: #222222; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; tab-stops: list 36.0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Pasztory, E. (1974). <i>The iconography of the Teotihuacan
Tlaloc</i>. Studies in
Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology15. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.</span></li><li class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Zingg, Robert Mowry. 2004. Huichol Mythology. University of Arizona Press.</span></span></li>
</ul><ul type="disc">
</ul></div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj94e1tFpjlhygNu2Lz6tw__hct9ukT53BJcSBfxMv-W8XHszAV1rQ8zzSNaFzp0AmIYOh4zARnvPIsl2wqr3enTjOjtei3KE8aNYAEXXPYZr1BRlYNglkZ-xjm3UR25HFGhjuegP0Yr8k/s275/oreja+de+nopal.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></div><p></p>Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-48214802235656243812021-01-21T03:42:00.006-08:002021-01-21T07:47:42.103-08:00Nahuatl Scholar Interview: Frances Karttunen<p>This time, the Nahuatl scholar blog has the pleasure to publish another interview with an important Nahuatl scholar, namely professor Frances Karttunen, who has been a major figure in the field of Nahuatl studies since the 1970s when she published several works conjointly with historian James Lockhart. Her work is interdisciplinary and covers fields from lexicography, ethnohistory, historical sociolinguistics, stylistics and ethnopoetics, and grammar. I have had the pleasure to meet Dr. Karttunen several times at the Northeastern Group of Nahuatl Studies annual meeting which she has often attended, and once in the spring of 2016 I visited her on the island of Nantucket. I had hoped to do an interview with her at the annual meeting in 2020, but due to the pandemic the conference did not take place. Luckily professor Karttunen agreed to do the interview by email. <br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7vjuALDLXMy1dN7eUAToRa4TdRTB2FbKuG2333H63Ra-t9pVA0OCT7PJDL9o-fQas5rp-agvOuTto75AbzAkKLXHdowYJdDEaDa9OsVYipSyAdy0P3RLd8aVUiS1POmupUcYc3Q0RsQo/s640/Yale2016Group.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="332" data-original-width="640" height="333" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7vjuALDLXMy1dN7eUAToRa4TdRTB2FbKuG2333H63Ra-t9pVA0OCT7PJDL9o-fQas5rp-agvOuTto75AbzAkKLXHdowYJdDEaDa9OsVYipSyAdy0P3RLd8aVUiS1POmupUcYc3Q0RsQo/w640-h333/Yale2016Group.jpeg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Professor Frances Karttunen front and center in the group photo of the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Northeastern group of Nahuatl Scholars in Albany</span>. </td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><i><span> </span><span> </span>Could you tell our readers a little about your academic background?</i></p><p></p><p></p><p>On my maternal grandfather's side, I am a 12th-generation descendant of the small group of English couples who settled on Nantucket Island beginning in 1659. There was a great deal of intermarriage, so people like me who are known as "descended Nantucketers" have an unusually small number of ancestors. However, my grandfather married out (more about that below), and so did my mother. Our family continues to live on the island, however, as do many of my relatives.</p><p>I grew up on the island and had all my education through high school in the Nantucket Public Schools. There is a science organization on Nantucket, the Maria Mitchell Association, and when I was in high school, three women of this association (the current and former directors of the Maria Mitchell Observatory, and the librarian of the Maria Mitchell science library) mentored me. All three were graduates of Radcliffe College, the women's college of Harvard University, and they made an effort to have me admitted there. They were successful, and I earned my bachelor's degree from Radcliffe.</p><p>In the course of my undergraduate studies, I realized that my strength and my interest lie in languages—not primarily in the literature of various languages but in the structure and what it is we know about language without being taught. Although I took multiple language courses at Harvard, I did not take any undergraduate linguistics courses. In my senior year, however, I was given an excellent reading list from the linguistics department.</p><p>Upon graduation from Radcliffe I received an NDEA Title VI fellowship for graduate studies in linguistics and Finnish at Indiana University. </p><div>In my experience, linguists almost always come from bi- or
multilingual homes or have experienced displacement early in life that required
acquisition of a new language, or have dealt with language difficulties such as
stuttering. I had a close relationship with my grandmother who immigrated to
the USA from the Swedish-speaking coast of Finland and facilitated the
immigration of her four sisters. The sisters spent considerable time with us on
the island, so I was exposed to Swedish as a home language from the beginning.
My American-born uncle and aunt, three of my cousins, and I all spent time in
Finland, but I am the only one of us who broke out of the Swedish environment
there and began intensive study of Finnish. This formative experience broadened
my expectations of how languages might work and was the door for me into
non-Indo-European languages.</div>
<p class="MsoNormal">When I arrived at Indiana University as a beginning graduate
student in linguistics, Joe Campbell was a newly appointed assistant professor.
I took his course in the history of linguistics, but during my time in
Bloomington, he had not yet begun to teach Nahuatl. The IU computing center was
open 24/7 365 days a year, however. I was often there, and Joe was always there.
This and Nahuatl have defined our long collegiality rather than our initial
teacher-student relationship.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">After I completed my Ph.D. at Indiana University with a
dissertation on Finnish phonology, I went to Tampere, Finland for a semester as
a Fulbright teacher, and then I spent a year as a post-doctoral visitor at MIT.</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSfoMS6TFqPU1jM-qvyG_7CAaPbiBb5h9yU9e6AwrdgRdsaOYMkUJxuAJtbH37dEjkm2oYE9ZraM1quvOfSnNcm2Ebz7SYIyLLToiHFI6xWj4f2-VLoRAXPGG47DC2se5zV8LGmqDT4vA/s640/Tractor.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="640" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSfoMS6TFqPU1jM-qvyG_7CAaPbiBb5h9yU9e6AwrdgRdsaOYMkUJxuAJtbH37dEjkm2oYE9ZraM1quvOfSnNcm2Ebz7SYIyLLToiHFI6xWj4f2-VLoRAXPGG47DC2se5zV8LGmqDT4vA/w400-h268/Tractor.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">At work in Finland in 1963</span></td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal">My appointments at the University of Texas at Austin were
for the most part non-teaching appointments at the Linguistics Research Center
there, but I taught summer Nahuatl courses at the University of Texas Institute
of Latin American Studies. I have also taught courses in phonology, general
linguistics, Nahuatl, and language contact studies at the University of Texas
at San Antonio, the University of Helsinki, and Umeå University in Sweden.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><p><i><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>So when and how did you come to study Nahuatl in the first place?</i></p><p class="MsoNormal">During the year 1967-68 I had a National Science Foundation
fellowship to work in computational linguistics at the Rand Corporation in
Santa Monica, California. In Santa Monica I met James Lockhart. He posed to me,
as a linguist, the question of how one goes about learning a language where
there are few accessible language courses or effective teaching material. At
the time his interest was shifting from the social history of Peru and Quechua
to Mexico and Nahuatl. He was aware of the vast amount of existing notarial documentation
in Nahuatl, and he was anxious to access it.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Subsequently, he left UCLA and came to the University of
Texas, where we resumed our conversations about Nahuatl. I went to Finland for
a year and spent the following year at MIT. During this time, Jim sent me large
amounts of Nahuatl he had transcribed, and we began working on it together
long-distance. I previously had no knowledge of any indigenous language of
Latin America, and in fact, I had never taken a Spanish language course.</p><p>
</p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHpk5Nbd45geLK09Q2aib9nijjjOdFve9nAoCxyNHxaMcZyfhllBiSBLan65i9xGLfKaq3FfaipvMrUGAzRh34aPXbsVb5706SaRboTvDgCJZtEmUqojexK8DE0GqAaGIJ3VgByoThveE/s635/FranJoeYale2.jpeg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="635" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHpk5Nbd45geLK09Q2aib9nijjjOdFve9nAoCxyNHxaMcZyfhllBiSBLan65i9xGLfKaq3FfaipvMrUGAzRh34aPXbsVb5706SaRboTvDgCJZtEmUqojexK8DE0GqAaGIJ3VgByoThveE/w320-h242/FranJoeYale2.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Frances Karttunen and Joe Campbell <br />at one of the meetings of the <br />Northeastern Group of Nahuatl Scholars </span><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><div>By the time I was back at UT-Austin, Jim had returned to UCLA. Joe Campbell, however, had moved from Indiana University to the University of Texas at San Antonio, and I began commuting to San Antonio once a week to attend his Nahuatl classes. The exercises Joe created for those classes formed the basis of our <i>Foundation Course in Nahuatl Grammar</i>. I made a choice from the existing exercises, wrote the explanatory material, created a key to the exercises, and generated glossaries for the chapters. We used it to teach Nahuatl in two NEH Summer Institutes, and afterward I taught summer Nahuatl classes at UT-Austin from it. Thanks to John F. Schwaller, the <i>Foundation Course</i> has since been very widely distributed.<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span> </span><span> </span>Just clarifying: So
you met Joe Campbell already when you were working on your Finnish<span> </span><span> </span>phonology
dissertation, and he was working on Nahuatl, but you didn't take an interest in
Nahuatl <span> </span><span> </span>until you met Lockhart? If so, that is a fun coincidence. </i></p><p class="MsoNormal">So far as I know, Joe hadn’t begun working on Nahuatl during
the time I was at Indiana University. We both got there in the fall of 1964, me
as a first-year grad student not even starting my dissertation, and Joe as an
assistant professor. So I first knew him as a student in his course on the
history of linguistics. He provided a reading list beyond human possibility of
completion short of a lifetime, or so it seemed to me. I assume Joe had,
nonetheless, already read everything on it. From the beginning, we bonded
through our constant presence in the IU computing center and also through the
very active social scene among the IU linguists.</p><p class="MsoNormal">I only spent three years in Bloomington. Having completed my
course work and passed my general exams that admitted me to Ph.D. candidacy, I
left to go to the Rand Corp. with a National Science Foundation grant in
computational linguistics, From there I went to Austin, Texas, where I
completed my dissertation and returned to Bloomington only long enough for my
defense. Joe met Elvira and brought her to IU for a semester after I had
departed for Santa Monica, so I only met her much later in Hueyapan with Joe.</p><p class="MsoNormal">By the time Joe had moved to San Antonio, Texas, and was
working on Nahuatl and teaching it, I had already begun working with Jim on
Nahuatl, so yes, it was a lucky coincidence.</p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>That really is an
amazing coincidence with Joe, he told me that he first went to Tepoztlan with Ken Hale in 1962 and knew that he was interested in Nahuatl, from then on, then
in 1969 he was asked to teach Nahuatl at Indiana. So when you knew each
other neither of you knew that<span> </span>you would become nahuatologists!</i></p><p><i><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>In the 1970s you published some very influential work with James Lockhart including "N</i>ahuatl in the Middle Years<i>", which is never far from my working space, - it is basically the first<span><span> </span></span>monograph work to systematically look at the way Nahuatl was used in the colonial notarial documents. But you also studied more literary forms of Nahuatl, for example you wrote the article in </i>Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl<i> about " </i>La estructura de la poesía náhuatl vista por sus variantes<i>", which presents a typology of different kinds of colonial Nahuatl poetry. And you did a translation and analysis of the important Bancroft dialogues, “</i>The Art of Nahuatl Speech<i>”. Could you talk a bit about your collaboration with Lockhart?</i></p><p class="MsoNormal">The first book James Lockhart and I co-authored was <i>Nahuatl in the Middle Years: Language
Contact Phenomena in Texts of the Colonial Period</i>. Later we co-authored
another book, <i>The Art of Nahuatl Speech:
The Bancroft Dialogues</i>. We also published quite a number of articles together
and separately. I think that "La estructura de la poesía náhuatl vista por
sus variantes" in Volume 14 of <i>Estudios
de Cultura Náhuatl</i> may be the most significant of our co-authored articles.
Jim later reprised much of the content of these works in his book <i>The Nahuas After the Conquest</i>. Up
through <i>The Art of Nahuatl Speech</i>, it
is nearly impossible to point to any sentence in any of our publications as
written by one or the other of us or to say who first drafted it. After <i>The
Art of Nahuatl Speech</i>, we moved in different directions. He wrote <i>The Nahuas After the Conquest</i>, and I
wrote <i>Between Worlds: Interpreters,
Guides, and Survivors</i>.<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span> </span><span> <span> </span> </span>How did you and Lockhart collaborate when it came to
writing the analyses? </i></p><p class="MsoNormal">The analyses in <i>Nahuatl in the Middle Years</i>?
Jim mailed me a very large amount of transcription of notarial texts he
made in Mexico while I was in Finland and then at MIT. NMY is a collection of
some of those transcriptions plus the language-contact phenomena to be found in
them and a glossary of loan vocabulary. Jim and I carried on a dialogue about
all this by mail. Only at the end of the process, when NMY was nearly
ready to go to press, did I travel to Mexico City, where Jim had been working
for months, to go over the manuscript together in person before publication.
When you think about it, my work with Lorenzo Ferrero on his opera was
accomplished in much the same way except that we had the advantage of
electronic communication rather than copying machine and the postal service.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>How did you happen on
the different topics you ended up working on - from poetry and rhetorics to
painstaking analyses of orthography and grammar in notarial documents?
What do you<span> </span>consider the most important discoveries you did in that work?</i></p><p class="MsoNormal">In Mexico City, Jim introduced me to the vast holdings of
notarial documents in various repositories there. I tried my hand at
transcription and discovered that without prior training in paleography, I was
pretty good at it. But the University of Texas is not a repository of notarial
texts, so aside from what Jim transcribed in Mexico and mailed to me, I
couldn’t do that in Austin. However… </p><p class="MsoNormal">One of the two collections of Nahuatl poetry is the <i>Romances
de los señores de la nueva españa</i> in the Benson Latin American
Collection at the University of Texas at Austin. There in Austin, I transcribed
the <i>Romances,</i> noticing much along the way. The Benson also
holds a copy of the early photographic facsimile of the <i>Cantares
méxicanos,</i> so I transcribed that to compare with the <i>Romances.</i> At
some point it became known to us that John Bierhorst was also transcribing
the <i>Cantares</i>. I am not sure exactly when that came to our mutual
knowledge. When Jim and I were both in Mexico City again, we got access to the
original manuscript of the <i>Cantares</i> in the National
Library. I had with me my transcription from the Peñafiel photos with
specific issues we hoped to clarify by seeing the ms. Unfortunately, the ms has
deteriorated since the photos were made. The photographic facsimile now
preserves more information than the ms.</p><p class="MsoNormal">The <i>Romances</i> ms has marginalia and some
diagonal lines that would seem to indicate prosodic units in the lines, but Jim
and I could make no sense of them. The <i>Cantares</i> has drum-beat
notation, but that is ambiguous. It was through examining both transcriptions
and locating duplications of some of the songs that the structure we discuss in
our publication in <i>Estudios de cultura náhuatl </i>14 emerged,
namely that the songs are composed in verse pairs with shared coda and that the
preferred form of complete songs consists of four verse pairs. I personally
think this is the most important discovery that emerged from our transcription
work.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Really, I think your
work with Lockhart can be considered pioneering in the field of historical
<span> </span>sociolinguistics, did you have any model or inspiration for applying these<span> </span>sociolinguistic analyses on the colonial texts?</i></p><p class="MsoNormal">Not exactly, because the Finnish material I was (and remain)
interested in is similar to the material Joe has collected over the years,
namely transcriptions of oral material, not written material produced by
speakers.</p><p class="MsoNormal">
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Could you use the same
methods on the colonial documents as you used when studying<span> </span>immigrant Finnish?<o:p></o:p></i></p><p class="MsoNormal">Not really. Recording and transcribing the speech of elderly
Finnish immigrants to the USA and Canada is comparable to what Joe has done
over decades in his fieldwork with Nahuatl speakers in Mexico. (I have had the
privilege of accompanying Joe on his collecting trips occasionally.) My concern
for Joe's corpus of spoken Nahuatl is that much of it probably remains
untranscribed. Until the audio is transcribed, it would be difficult/impossible
to bring to it what I and others have been able to bring to the transcriptions
of spoken Nahuatl by Whorf, Barlow, and Horcasitas.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span> </span>Your </i>An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl<i> from 1987, has been an amazing tool, and I think every English speaking student of </i><i>Nahuatl </i><i>knows this work very well. How did you decide to make the </i>Analytical Dictionary<i>, and what were the different considerations and decisions you made about how you wanted the dictionary to be made and organized? How did you work on the dictionary?</i></p><p class="MsoNormal">After the publication of J. Richard Andrews's <i>Introduction to Classical Nahuatl</i>, it
was clear that a modern dictionary was needed to supplement Molina's and
Siméon's dictionaries. This new one would include as much information as
possible about contrastive vowel length and segmental glottal stop. Both
features are barely recognized by Molina and not at all by Siméon. Because of
my background in computational data processing, I had a clear idea of how I
could organize data from multiple sources and create such a dictionary. I was invited
to submit a proposal to the National Science Foundation to do so, and my
proposal was successful. At that time, I attended an International Congress of
Americanists meeting in Manchester, England. There I queried attending Nahuatl
scholars, including Una Canger, about what they would want to see in terms of
organization and format of such a dictionary. Una gave me my watchword for the
project, namely that it was less important how I presented the material in the
dictionary than that I make it clear to users of the dictionary exactly how it
works. I wrote an introduction that aims to do that with the clarity that Una
mandated, and I can only hope that every user of the dictionary takes time to
read the introduction.</p><p class="MsoNormal">I did a great deal of the data entry and organization of the
material from multiple sources at the Linguistics Research Center at The
University of Texas at Austin. I was assisted by an LRC staff programmer,
Robert Amsler, who was supported in part from my NSF grant. I transported all
my data files in print-out form to Finland one summer and worked on them there.
James Lockhart read through the organized raw data and my proposed dictionary entries
and made invaluable suggestions. In the case of verbs ending in long vowels we
could not resolve a disagreement about representation, and I gave preference to
my own choice over his objections.</p><p class="MsoNormal">You mentioned my publication with Lyle Campbell of Benjamin
Lee Whorf's study of the Nahuatl of Milpa Alta. Lyle and I had both been
working on it, each unaware of the other. An editor at <i>The International Journal of American Linguistics</i> made us aware of
our potential duplication of effort. Lyle expressed pleasure that it was I who
was also working on Whorf, and the result was our joint publication.</p><p><i><span> <span> </span><span> </span>Some </span>of your ethnohistorical work has also been a project of writing about Nahua women who <span> </span>became cultural and linguistic intermediaries at important historical moments, but who have previously been sort of marginalized from their own stories. You have published about Doña Luz<span> </span>Jimenez and on Milpa Alta, how did you come to do that work and what did you find? You have also written about Malintzin, the Nahuatl translator of Hernán Cortés, what was your inspiration here, and how do you see your work within the larger tradition of representations of Malintzin?</i></p><p class="MsoNormal">I enjoyed a friendship with Fernando Horcasitas, who brought
most of the stories told by doña Luz Jiménez into print. Later I became acquainted
with John Charlot, whose father, the muralist Jean Charlot, had a long and very
different relationship with Luz and her family from that of Horcasitas. I had
the opportunity to spend an academic year at the Jean Charlot Collection at the
University of Hawaii, Manoa. Through different perspectives on doña Luz, one
from the point of view of a linguist and the other of an artist, I came to
appreciate the complexity of relationships across languages and cultures. Joe
Campbell and I cultivated a relationship with the grandchildren of doña Luz and
learned unexpected things along the way. The career histories of many different
men and women are related in <i>Between
Worlds</i>. The life experiences of doña
Luz fed into the book, as did the life experiences of people in Finland of my great-grandmother's
generation. Doña Marina (Malintzin) fit
into this story of unusually gifted and ultimately marginalized indigenous
individuals. I have written about her twice, once in <i>Between Worlds</i> and again in the collection <i>Indian Women of Early Mexico</i>. <o:p></o:p></p><p><i><span> </span><span> <span> </span> </span>You are also the first to have translated the libretto of an Opera into Nahuatl - Lorenzo<span> <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Ferrero's </span><span> </span>Opera La Conquista which premiered in 2005; could you tell a little about that <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>project?</i></p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvLYaWmBi8uESuT1VvZzAgSpNvBmm8baUHDMnO7ca34JBBpu5GMGwH8hE4nEXpxA1xmb6i6-0bxqYnU3ytkkDWeuM-30vwb_CJIOR_ujWb4BclN1aFUDejaKMe3saZhMjOwcw6mId8CZM/s640/CurtainCall1JPG.jpeg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="323" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvLYaWmBi8uESuT1VvZzAgSpNvBmm8baUHDMnO7ca34JBBpu5GMGwH8hE4nEXpxA1xmb6i6-0bxqYnU3ytkkDWeuM-30vwb_CJIOR_ujWb4BclN1aFUDejaKMe3saZhMjOwcw6mId8CZM/w430-h323/CurtainCall1JPG.jpeg" width="430" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Bowing at curtain call for Lorenzo Ferrero's opera <br />"La Conquista" in Prague in 2005.</i> </span></td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Just when I had retired from the University of Texas and was
at work on my first post-retirement book, <i>The
Other Islanders</i>, I was contacted by composer Lorenzo Ferrero. He was
working on a concept that had won a competition for a new opera about the
conquest of Mexico for the National Theatre of Prague. This was to have the
Spaniards sing in 16th-century Spanish, the Aztecs to sing in Classical
Nahuatl, and doña Marina to interpret to the audience what was going on and how
she felt about it. Lorenzo had engaged a man in Italy who claimed to be a
speaker of Nahuatl, but he was not up to the task. Someone directed Lorenzo to me as a possible
language consultant. After working together for some time, he surprised me by
proposing that we share credit as co-librettists. I met Lorenzo in person for the first time in
Prague for the final rehearsals and took a bow with him at curtain call on the
opening night of the opera. It was one of the most unexpected experiences of my
life.<o:p></o:p></p><p><i><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>Is there a sort of thematic connection that ties together the different strands in your <span> </span><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>work, including your non-Nahuatl work on Finnish immigrants and Cape Verdean immigrant communities in New England?</i></p><p>When I was a graduate student at Indiana University, a professor from the University of Helsinki arrived to collect samples of how Finnish was spoken among aging immigrants to various parts of the USA and Canada. I went along on some of his travels and then visited more Finnish populations in Massachusetts after he returned to Helsinki. From the collected data, I extracted various characteristics of American Finnish. Lexical borrowing and phonological adjustment were obvious, but how borrowed material was incorporated into Finnish morphology was less so. Working through this data set provided me the background I later brought to the initial work James Lockhart and I did with Nahuatl in contact with Spanish.</p><p>Cape Verdeans were one of two Portuguese-heritage immigrant groups who settled on Nantucket in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Initially only seamen came to the island as crewmembers on Nantucket whaleships. Some of these men married local women and stayed. In the latter half of the 19th century, under pressure from overpopulation and political turmoil, whole families began to come to Nantucket from the Azores islands. In the first decade of the 20th century, Cape Verdean families came to work for the expanding commercial cranberry industry. The Azorean immigrants spoke an insular variety of Portuguese. The Cape Verdeans for the most part spoke Portuguese-based Kriolu. These are not mutually intelligible, and for this and other reasons the two groups were not mutually supportive. Each settled into a separate niche within the Nantucket community, and they have become multigenerational segments of island society. I have repeatedly given a lecture series at various venues about Nantucket's Portuguese heritage. These and many other groups are part of my book The Other Islanders: People Who Pulled Nantucket's Oars, a social history of Nantucket's working people.</p><p><i><span> </span><span> </span>Do you have any overarching insights about Nahuatl and working with Nahuatl that you would <span> </span>like to share?</i></p><p>When James Lockhart and I began to work together on Nahuatl, there were few individuals in the USA and not that many in Mexico who could conduct research from Nahuatl documents. It was acceptable for Anglophone historians of Mexican history to write entirely from Spanish and English language sources. That has completely changed. At UCLA James Lockhart trained a generation of historians to work from Nahuatl and other indigenous-language sources. He was by no means the only person contributing to the surge in Nahuatl studies. The list of Nahuatl scholars in multiple fields in the USA, Mexico, and Europe is too long to enumerate here. Contributing to this has been a revolution in technology. Nahuatl studies today exist in a completely different environment from the 1970s when James Lockhart and I carried out our long-distance collaboration via copy-machine and the postal service.</p><p>My experience with speakers of Nahuatl has been inspiring. In the face of apparently overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the individuals I have known over the years have had faith that by their own efforts they could make tomorrow better. They have been generous and more than willing to put up with the tedious inquiries of linguists about what must often seem inconsequential matters. They have genuinely liked talking in and about their language. Most gratifying of all is that I occasionally receive a thank-you note from someone in Mexico whom I do not know saying that the Analytical Dictionary and the Foundation Course have been helpful.</p><p>I owe an incalculable debt of gratitude for the generosity of many colleagues over the years, among them James Lockhart, Joe Campbell, Fernando Horcasitas, don Miguel León-Portilla and Ascensión H. de León-Portilla, Alberto Zepeda, Yolanda Lastra, Thelma Sullivan, Fred Nagel, John F. Schwaller, John Charlot, Lyle Campbell, Una Canger, Karen Dakin, Jane and Ken Hill, Ken Hale, and the list goes on.</p><p><i><span> </span><span> </span><span> </span>What about the future: Is there any particular work on Nahuatl that you are planning to do, or <span> </span>that you would like to see other scholars take up?</i></p><p class="MsoNormal">I have a personal project I would like to see taken up. While I was still in Austin and loosely
attached to Mexic-Arte Museum, I conceived a museum exhibition, "Luciana's
Worlds," that would gather works that represented Milpa Alta and México
City over the lifetime of doña Luz Jiménez. Her worlds, as represented in the
exhibition, would be the indigenous world before and during the Mexican
Revolution, the world of the radical artists who employed her as a model, and
the world of the linguists and anthropologists who employed her as a native
informant. Although doña Luz initially moved through these worlds successively,
she also returned to each repeatedly during her lifetime, People with whom she
interacted in each world were to a large extent unaware of the others. This is
a highly visual journey narrated throughout by doña Luz herself.</p><p class="MsoNormal">We staged a pilot exhibition at Mexic-Arte, "Luz and
the Good Teachers," but Mexic-Arte could not provide the environmental
controls, security, and insurance to borrow the original art for
"Luciana's Worlds." Lorenzo
Ferrero suggested a documentary film in which the art would be photographed <i>in situ</i>. A documentary film could reach
a much larger audience than a museum exhibition with a catalog. Lorenzo
proposed that he compose the music for such a film. This has not come about, and more recently
still, I have begun to conceive of "Luciana's Worlds" as a graphic novel,
mass-produced and inexpensive, for distribution in Mexico.</p><p class="MsoNormal">There are relatively few female role models for Mexican
girls. The Virgin of Guadalupe is an unattainable ideal. Doña Marina,
characterized as la Malinche, is reviled. The lives of sor Juana Inéz de la
Cruz and of Frida Kahlo were painful. Doña Luz was an indigenous woman from a
humble background who by force of character and intellect shaped her life as
she herself saw fit. She experienced dangers and obstacles, but on the whole,
she lived her life on her own terms, and as she herself once said, "There
I am all over the walls of the National Palace."</p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">I would like, at this point, to become a senior partner in
the creation of a documentary film or a graphic novel of "Luciana's
Worlds."<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p><i><span> </span><span> </span>That is a great idea, I hope that a Mexican filmmaker sees this idea. Maybe Yalitza Aparicio could play the role of Doña Luz. Maybe our readers will know of someone who could work with you on this. Thank you very much for participating in this interview, and for all of your contributions to the field of Nahuatl studies. </i></p><div><br /></div></div>Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-64165290934112645252020-12-09T23:32:00.007-08:002020-12-09T23:41:48.474-08:00Nahuatl Scholar Interview: R. Joe Campbell<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWVw7Tbbt5AL4KFcEeG9Pt1AzdgrftuDIpRREUGl_IJLQgD5NkFsSwTH9oGoi24R5fWN2fDZYXd3sQ07oqGrZXsqeV3Au1QZU3FzCUg-y2d2Q9q6Edp37J50ObxPYp4V1QNCQzK9CYepI/s1600/DSC_0018.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWVw7Tbbt5AL4KFcEeG9Pt1AzdgrftuDIpRREUGl_IJLQgD5NkFsSwTH9oGoi24R5fWN2fDZYXd3sQ07oqGrZXsqeV3Au1QZU3FzCUg-y2d2Q9q6Edp37J50ObxPYp4V1QNCQzK9CYepI/s320/DSC_0018.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Believe it or not, this was Joe's first selfie. <br />
It's Joe on the left. <br />(taken in Guadalajara July, 2018)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: times;">In
this blogpost, I give you an interview with one of the great Nahuatl scholars
alive today, R. Joe Campbell. I have had the good fortune to meet Joe a number
of times at Nahuatl meetings, and in 2018 when we met at the Uto-Aztecan
meetings in Guadalajara Joe and I hung out together for a couple of days after
the meetings. I asked if I could do an interview with him for my blog, and he
agreed. Then the interview sat there for awhile, so I asked Joe if he wanted to update it with some more details, which he did. And here it is, the first in a series of interviews with great Nahuatl scholars.</span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Joe
is one of the popularizers of the Nahuatl orthography system sometimes known as
"Andrews-Campbell-Karttunen" orthography, which was first developed
by J. Richard Andrews, subsequently employed in Joe's and Fran Karttunen’s
influential "Foundation Course in Nahuatl Grammar", and Frances
Karttunen's "Analytical Dictionary". (His first major work, “A Morphological
Dictionary of Classical Nahuatl” came out in 1985 and precedes his use of the
Andrews orthography.) He is also a pioneer in computerized Nahuatl study,
having begun working on Nahuatl computerized lexicography back when computers
were the size of a building and used punch cards.</span><span> </span><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">He is still working on two major works: an integrated
version of all of Alonso de Molina's three dictionaries, analyzed into
individual morphemes and with the possibility of running all kinds of searches
for combinations of different morphemes and a dictionary combining the
vocabulary of both Molina and the Florentine Codex.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.5pt;">Joe has worked with Nahuatl for more than
50 years, and in this interview he tells a little about his career in Nahuatl
studies and his different contributions to the field. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<span style="font-family: times;"><br />
MPH: <i>So Joe, would you mind telling a little bit about how you got into Nahuatl in the first place and when?</i><br />
<br />
RJC: <span style="line-height: 115%;">OK,
In 1962, I was a graduate student at the University of Illinois studying
Spanish linguistics. And I took a couple of courses with Ken Hale, who was a
young PhD, fresh out of Indiana University studying with Carl Voegelin, and in
the spring of 1962, he said "Joe, some of the anthropology students are
going to Mexico this summer and they're going to study Nahuatl. We're going to
Tepoztlán and they're going to do fieldwork." And he said "you could
go along, and would you be interested in going along and studying the Spanish
dialect of Tepoztlán and see what the effects of Nahuatl were on the
Spanish?" And I said "Oh, I'd really like to do that." And so,
my then-wife and I and two daughters came to Mexico, and they went to spend the
summer with her parents in Guadalajara and I went directly to Tepoztlán. </span><span style="line-height: 115%;">And Ken and I went up to San Juan
Tlacotenco at the top of the mountain, and while we were there we met a guy
that spoke Nahuatl fluently -- one of the youngest people in town that did --
met him, made friends with him. And then later on Ken took me to see a rather
elderly man who had fought during the revolution and sat me down to study with
him, and as we worked along I found that he was a very nice guy, but he was
very impatient. I didn't have a good ear at the time. I think it has gotten a
lot better now. But when he said, I asked him how to say "<i>camino</i>" and
he said "<i>ohtli</i>", and I said "<i>otli</i>", and he said "<i>no</i>!
<i>ohtli</i>!", and I said "sí, otli". And with his reaction, I saw that
he and I probably couldn't work together. We turned out to be very good friends
all summer, and I found a much <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4rcW2p6kXdJ0rdnPi6T0-b4y8aV42GQtVWfSOYmOYAEq2203Ii8YZ4LtueCmTekELfBi6D1ya4Q1znQgkWtWgMW0yEqXL9lkWO3h4zWU4-hkOqJYXxosoIV5oxbocjsqnlEOseNp0UpI/s2048/SCAN0019.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1746" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4rcW2p6kXdJ0rdnPi6T0-b4y8aV42GQtVWfSOYmOYAEq2203Ii8YZ4LtueCmTekELfBi6D1ya4Q1znQgkWtWgMW0yEqXL9lkWO3h4zWU4-hkOqJYXxosoIV5oxbocjsqnlEOseNp0UpI/s320/SCAN0019.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span>Joe working with a friend from Tepoztlán</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />younger person to work with, with considerably
more patience.</span></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<span style="font-family: times;"><br />
MPH: <i>So what did you do when you came back from Tepoztlán? How did you continue with you Nahuatl studies after your first visit?</i><br />
<br />
RJC:<span style="line-height: 115%;">I wrote a paper for Ken, and then with the things I
had to do, write the thesis at Illinois and search for a job at Indiana,
Nahuatl sort of got put on the backburner. I got my first job at Indiana
University and after I had been there well, like five years, one of the young professors
came down the hall and he was doing legwork for the chairman, looking for a
federal grant. Because the federal government was interested in doing unusual
languages, languages that were not likely to be spoken by ...quote ..."the
enemy". And he said, if we apply for a grant and say that we can offer
Nahuatl, would you be willing to teach it? And I said, "well I am really
not prepared to teach it on the basis of six weeks of experience", and
also with the intervening years. And so I said "I would be willing to do
it if I had an informant, if I had somebody to work with me in the class".
And they came back to me and said "We're more than willing to do that;
we'll pay for an informant and all the expenses and everything, but ... you
would need to go find somebody". And to make a long story short, I was
going to be in Mexico all the summer of 1970, and I went to Tepoztlan -- a
friend of mine in Tepoztlan, Karen Dakin -- and she paired me up with a friend
of hers, the anthropologist Judith Friedlander, and we went to Hueyapan and we
found a young lady who was very happy to go to the United States and work for a
year, that was Elvira [Hérnandez]. </span><br />
<br />
MPH: <i>So you really learned Nahuatl when you were teaching it with Doña Elvira Hernández from Hueyapan?</i><br />
</span><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh780nGYFTK0vVTVcUEEIe90DxS67eWg9JpnxVuSzReZtkVgPCtltMd_xlzEy0Cs-Y2dCt__aQLnvpwW4pq1EzrC0UFT7-p26jbvI243R7W6NfES3Z-YUyvxOX5ujRg7-dslnIfgl_gzw0/" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: times;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1582" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh780nGYFTK0vVTVcUEEIe90DxS67eWg9JpnxVuSzReZtkVgPCtltMd_xlzEy0Cs-Y2dCt__aQLnvpwW4pq1EzrC0UFT7-p26jbvI243R7W6NfES3Z-YUyvxOX5ujRg7-dslnIfgl_gzw0/" width="311" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;">Joe with Elvira Hernández in Hueyapan</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: times;"><br /><br />
RJC: That is exactly right. She and I, we started at the beginning of the school year. And she educated me in class, and then we had three hours a week out of class, and it was just like having an intensive teacher.<br />
<br />
MPH: <i>And when did you start getting into studying the colonial version of the language?</i><br />
<br />
RJC: <span>When
Elvira came back to Mexico, I taught Nahuatl for two more years by myself and
used sources like González Casanova's folktales and a lot of structural
material. But during those two years I started realizing that if I really
wanted to get more details of Nahuatl I would have to look at printed sources.
So I started putting the Molina 1571 Nahuatl-Spanish half dictionary on punched
cards. And it ended up that the whole second half of 1571 fit on something like
20,000 cards. That's ten boxes of cards. And then from there on, I worked in
San Antonio with the whole card deck, inserting English translations into the
boxes. So it swelled up, and so in one year -- from I think it was 75-76 -- I
managed to translate all of the Spanish of the second half into English. And
while I was doing that I was realizing that I should also enter the record by
means of another punched card with the morphology codes typed out on that card.</span></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: times; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<span style="font-family: times;"><br />
MPH: <i>So maybe you can explain a little, what is a perforated card and what is a morphology code?</i><br />
<br />
</span><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzW0xjIx4W_0OScnOxizcggiifYrupK6XpqdXZCVsuNNprmIodHo-04frkGNPWQCp7sezDCV0KGIaCO8Q-L13ly_B_eF4fPMxYSaK6ze9KNBr4Qj_lMbgz0y3kr6Qu7TlKlZ0EldWiwTs/s1600/Blue-punch-card-front-horiz+%25281%2529.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: times;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1600" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzW0xjIx4W_0OScnOxizcggiifYrupK6XpqdXZCVsuNNprmIodHo-04frkGNPWQCp7sezDCV0KGIaCO8Q-L13ly_B_eF4fPMxYSaK6ze9KNBr4Qj_lMbgz0y3kr6Qu7TlKlZ0EldWiwTs/s320/Blue-punch-card-front-horiz+%25281%2529.png" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;">Perforated card used for early digital computing.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div><span style="font-family: times;">
RJC: <span style="line-height: 115%;">A </span><span style="line-height: 115%;">punched</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"> card was a card with
eighty columns for punching holes in different combinations to represent
letters. And people who used them actually started understanding what the
perforations meant: There was a top row and a second row and the top row and
second row then correlated with a set down below of one through ten and a
combination of top and 1 was an A and top and 2 was a B and so on.</span><span face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="line-height: 115%;"> </span><br />
<br />
MPH: <i>Ok, so it was a very simple form of machine readable code? </i><br />
<br />
RJC: Yes, it weighed a lot more than a floppy disk.<br />
<br />
MPH: <i>So basically it would be fair to say that you were probably one of the first people to start using computational technology for working with Nahuatl?</i><br />
<br />
RJC: I was the first one that I knew of, and I don't remember anybody else doing it while I was working on it in the seventies. But h<span style="line-height: 115%;">ere
you must remember that when we’re talking about punch cards, ‘computerized’
only means how we stored and re-arranges data. I have seen more than one
suggestion that somehow the morphological analyses are done “by computer” and adds.
They are NOT. Every morphological analysis is my considered opinion. The computer really has nothing to do with it.</span><br />
<br />
MPH: <i>So, the first work of yours that I became aware of was an article that you had in IJAL in 1976, about the phonology of Hueyapan Nahuatl, which I read for the first time before I went to do field work in Hueyapan myself in 2003. Could you summarize how that article came about and what is the interesting part of the argument?</i><br />
<br />
RJC: <span style="line-height: 115%;">I am not sure if I can remember the data very well,
but I was working with paradigms that I learned from Elvira and I was trying to
come up with a very logical description of the morphology. And it turns out
that when you look at the representation of some words it is very straight
forward: there is part one, two and three and they sound the same in either
present tense or preterit. But then there was some verbs that looked like they
had an underlying /w/ that was phonetically a [v] that in the preterit would
turn into a velar [ŋ]. </span>And, I thought well it's underlyingly a /w/ its phonetically a [v] and in another form it is an [n], what kind of segment could that possibly be? So because of the influence of an article by <a href="http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/seattletimes/obituary.aspx?n=sol-saporta&pid=119329413" target="_blank">Sol Saporta</a> in Spanish where he talked about the problem of palatal l and l and y in Spanish, in words like [mil] "thousand" and [miyón] "million" [<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/411875" target="_blank">this article</a>], <span style="line-height: 115%;">I came up with the idea that what that segment was
could probably be a /ŋw/ a velar nasal with a labial release. So that would
explain why Hueyapan Nahuatl had the present tense form [noga:va] "I
stay", and the preterit form
[onoga:ŋ] "I stayed". </span><br />
<br />
MPH: <i>Then another really important thing you've done has been the foundation course. How did that come about?</i><br />
<br />
RJC: When I went back, well I went from San Antonio to Nebraska and stayed in Nebraska for two years, and then I went back to Indiana. And they had the Nahuatl course waiting for me when I got there and asked me to do that. And so, I didn't have a textbook, and I thought, rather than do a sort of struggling course the way I did in the early 70s, I thought what I ought to do would be to write simply a series of disconnected lessons, starting with the most simple things and doing lots of exercises where people had to do recognition and recall. And I started writing as many lessons as it took to get through the semester. And as I gave the course a couple of times more during the 80s, I wrote more and more lessons. -- Not a lot of explanation, because the explanations were mainly things that I did in class. But I gave them a lot of heavy take-home stuff to work on and come back and build up their memory on things. And as a matter of fact in 1987, I had already shown this rather big stack of exercises to Fran Karttunen who had been a friend of mine for a long long time. And at one point Fran said - that was in 1987 - she was going to have a government funded institute in the summer of ’89, and would I teach the modern dialect and she would do the classical track and could we use a selection from my set of exercises. And if we could, she would supply a denser set of explanations so it would be easier to work on at home; and she would also put in the vowel length which I had not taken the trouble to do. And that's what we did, we used it for a six week National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute in Austin Texas. </span><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br />
MPH: <i>And then the other thing is that when you finished the translation of the 1571 Molina in 1975, that was not at all the last thing you did on the Molinas. Can you tell us a little about what you have been doing with the Molina dictionary since then? </i><br />
<br />
</span><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIui5znGsODjXXUKvvoUrN43t3rc7xXiixcvRqWhYGhLldYXguFCRQq5NBBP3Bv6iEV185D2adGGmixECiFeY2YXAMf-vZOAVa7YsgqdVe-wYnTsxMNybik3B6bQFH6tOiLXZqtwWqFWI/s1600/molina+1571.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: times;"><img border="0" data-original-height="391" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIui5znGsODjXXUKvvoUrN43t3rc7xXiixcvRqWhYGhLldYXguFCRQq5NBBP3Bv6iEV185D2adGGmixECiFeY2YXAMf-vZOAVa7YsgqdVe-wYnTsxMNybik3B6bQFH6tOiLXZqtwWqFWI/s320/molina+1571.jpg" width="244" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;">Frontispiece of Molina's 1571 <i>vocabulario</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: times;">
RJC:The translation of the second part of the 1571 dictionary was just the first step. I followed it up by preparing a morphological analysis of the Nahuatl vocabulary of the Nahuatl-Spanish dictionary and doing the programming to make it possible to sort all Nahuatl entries along with their morphological analyses and English translations under each of their component morphemes.</span><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">I happened to show the resulting print-out to professors Lloyd Kasten and John Nitti of the University of Wisconsin during a reception at our house following a lecture that they gave in Bloomington involving the use of computing technology in the study and preparation of old documents. This was probably in 1984. They expressed interest in having the Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies publish the morpheme index and gave me explicit instructions to make it possible for me to insert the printing codes into my data so that the final publication came directly from the computer tape that I submitted to them -- by this time I had moved past cards-- since re-setting something so complicated would have been impossible. Somewhere there is a picture of me standing at the Post Office window posing with the 12x12 inch package in my hand. The result was my <i>A Morphological Dictionary of Classical Nahuatl: a morpheme index to the vocabulario en lengua mexicana y castellana of Fray Alonso de Molina </i>(Madison, 1985). </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">The morphology I did in the Morphological Dictionary is somewhat more rudimentary than what I am doing now. For instance if you have a word like <tlacatl>, that is a simple morpheme (well actually, it’s two, but people don’t think much about the -tl being separate), but if you have a word like <nitetlacatilia> there are actually five pieces. In the Morphological Dictionary I just coded this as tlacatl-verb-caus for the noun tlaca-tl, the verb-forming morpheme -ti- (become) and the causative -lia. I did not code the ni- (I) -te- (someone) or the other personal prefixes at all. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">Later I made up numerical codes for the prefixes that would set them up in ways that were reasonable instead of spelling them out and I made a number of separate categories for the verb-forming morphemes as well as for the causative and benefactive morphemes and the preterits. Today the morphology for nitetlacatilia is p11-p53-tla:catl-v01a-caus04. I still treat the absolutive suffixes as part of the spelling for the noun morphemes because it makes the nouns more recognizable for most people.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">Since I had done the English translation of the 1571 dictionary...The 1571 dictionary is really two dictionaries and I call them Molina 1 and Molina 2 - and I had only worked on Molina 2 - the Nahuatl-Spanish. And so I thought that what I should do would be to put in the 1555 and the first half, the Molina 1, into machine readable form. By then I had graduated from punched cards to putting them in in electronic mode - just keying them in, which struck me as a rather strange thing to do rather than using cards, but I did that. And I by-passed translating the other two dictionaries in favor of spending all my time inserting morpheme codes after each entry in all three Molina dictionaries. My goal here is what I call The Integrated Molina Dictionary -- the gathered Nahuatl entries with their morphological analyses, their Spanish equivalents and, where I have it from M2, the English translations of the Spanish. This is actually very nearly finished, except that I keep setting it aside to work on the Florentine Codex vocabulary.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: times;">
MPH: <i>So basically, rather than just translating the Spanish translation of the Nahuatl word, what you did was to also analyze the Nahuatl word piece for piece and type it up as part of the entries for the three Molina dictionaries. So about how many entries is that for the entire Molina corpus?</i><br />
<br />
RJC: Well, actually, it wasn’t “in addition” to translating. I only translated the Spanish of Molina2. Ok, I can't remember off the top of my head. But the Molina 2, the Nahuatl-Spanish dictionary has 23,623 words, and the 1555 has something over 15,000 and I don't remember what the Molina 1, the Spanish-Nahuatl, has - but it is somewhere in between those figures. And of course one of the kind of things I did was to write a program to sort Molina 1555 and Molina 1 and 2 together on lexical items, and then I had a cluster that showed what each dictionary said about any given item.<br />
<br />
MPH: <i>So how about many entries do you have in your morpheme database at this point?</i><br />
<br />
RJC: So I am a little bit unclear on this, because I also have an extra little ambitious thing that I did, which was to also code items for various kinds of things; say I would code them for an error that Molina did in parsing things, for example when Molina stripped the prefixes of a verb he would sometimes he would cut off the beginning of the verb itself. So I put in a code so that I could gather all of those things. And I was also interested in the fact that there was a certain amount of spelling variation like the dropping of n, y and w, and so I coded for either dropping or retention. And if you simply add all of the codes for those different kinds of notes plus the morphemes, right now, my "morpheme" count is around one million one hundred thousand.<br />
<br />
MPH: <i>That's a lot of words. Can you tell us briefly some of the cool things that your program can do with that data? The type of searches you can run and the kind of information you can extract?</i><br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;">RJC: The very first thing I was aiming at was being able to give an alphabetical index of all the words in the three Molinas integrated, and that is pure vanilla dictionary construction. But the next thing I wanted to do was to compile a list of morphemes so that anybody could look up alphabetically in a list of morphemes and find all the words in any one of the three Molinas that had that morpheme. So from the very beginning I was constructing a morpheme index of the whole thing. And then because of some of the advantages I saw in looking at the whole vocabulary from the end of the word, I also wrote a program that could give you a backwards index. So for example everything that ended in -tilia, you'd find every single word that had that. Parallelly and not meaning to get distracted fom Molina, but yes I did get distracted from Molina, I also together with a friend of mine from France, Marc Eisinger, we put the Nahuatl of the Florentine Codex into machine readable form, we each did one book and another, and then he did the entire verification of all the Florentine Codex, just a monstrous job. (Verification is when you re-enter data so that a program can find where one copy differs from the other.) And then I spent three years in the late eighties integrating the Nahuatl and the Dibble and Anderson English translation - it took three years to get them to match sentences. And then I spent a long time adding a regularized spelling line to the Florentine entries so that the computer could bring together instances of a word that was spelled differently in different places. And then, I could correlate words from the Florentine with words from Molina, that's one thing, and then the other thing independently from Molina, since the Florentine was text it was sentences in contexts, it would be interesting for anyone to see how a given word was used, in context, so I wrote a concordance program that will allow you to interrogate the Florentine database for any string that you wanted. For instance... well, there were two different things: one would construct an index based on any alphabetical representation so you could look for "tlacat" or you could extend it and look for "tlacatil", whatever... But the other thing was, and certainly based on favors that people did me in enlightening me - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Householder" target="_blank">Fred Householder</a> <span>at Indiana had a computer colleague that had been doing some work
on texts and he had the idea of hanging codes on words in context… He wasn't
working on Nahuatl but I turned it into working on Nahuatl. If you wanted to
look at anything that was related to <tlacatl> then you could hang a
morpheme under that and you could make an index of every morpheme and then you
would get the word in-text, in context. So what I did was to label, I had to
fill in for every word that I could, and that means a lot that I couldn't, I
made every word in the sentence a key to that sentence and then every
translation of those given Nahuatl words was a key to the Nahuatl word which
was a key to the sentence. In this way I could retrieve a lot of interesting
information.</span></span></div><div>
<span style="font-family: times;"><br />
MPH: <i>So you have been working on this for 43 years. When are you going to be done, and what is the final product going to look like?</i><br />
<br />
RJC: I originally hoped... Well I keep changing my mind about what the goal could possibly be. The original goal was to do Molina. But then I started realizing that it would be a lot more valuable to do a combined study of the Molina and the Florentine. And then I started realizing that it was very unlikely that I would have time in life to do all of it, so I said Ok, I will just do Molina. But while I have been working on Molina I never stopped analyzing sections of the Florentine. As a matter of fact it is not sections of the Florentine, but I look for a given thing in the Florentine, and I go through and find every token of it and mark it for whatever it needs - morphology, phonetic variation and things like that. And if there are errors in the Dibble and Anderson translation, I put in a note on every sentence where I find that going on. And every time I do, I always think, I am in awe of what they did, but we are all humans, we all make mistakes.<br />
<br />
MPH: <i>Yes, and we can keep improving on it. Thank you very much Joe, for telling us about your work.</i><br />
<br />
RJC: You're welcome, I enjoyed it.<br />
<br />
---<br />
</span><div>
<span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: times;">
Here, we end the blog with a list of some of Joe's most significant publications (several coauthored with his wife Mary Clayton who is also a Nahuatl scholar):</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: times;"><br />
</span><ul>
<li><span style="font-family: times;">Campbell, R. J. (1976). Underlying/ŋw/in Hueyapan nahuatl. <i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">International Journal of American Linguistics</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">42</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">(1), pp. 46-50.</span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Campbell, R. J. (1985). </span><span style="color: #222222;"><i>A Morphological Dictionary of Classical Nahuatl: A Morpheme Index to the Vocabulario en Lengua Mexicana Y Castellana of Fray Alonso de Molina.</i> Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies. University of Texas.</span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: times;">Campbell, R. J., & Clayton, M. L. (1988). Bernardino de Sahagún’s Contributions to the Lexicon of Classical Nahuatl. <i>The Work of Bernardino de Sahagún: Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-Century Aztec Mexico</i>, pp. 295-314.</span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: times;">Campbell, R. J., & Karttunen, F. E. (1989). <i>Foundation course in Nahuatl grammar</i> (Vol. 1). Institute of Latin American Studies, The University of Texas at Austin.</span></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: times;">Clayton, Mary L., and R. Joe Campbell. (2002) "Alonso de Molina as Lexicographer." <i>Making Dictionaries: Preserving Indigenous Languages of the Americas. pp.</i> 336-90.</span></span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div><br /></div></div>Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-22737982411484893392020-02-11T05:52:00.004-08:002020-02-11T05:52:59.534-08:00Introducing: The Nahuatl Space Project<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
In this blogpost, I want to introduce the research project that I am currently engaged in: <i>The Nahuatl Space Project</i>. This is a project I will be writing more about over the next year, since me and my colleagues will be carrying out fieldwork in Mexico all through 2020. </div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ-VvwWbhgv318PizRjUGBUE6flnKZQoKtih7s2_Q2VbsoDPLOrR5p0l14u9vyOOcPhjjJFd0Oo3968AdBEO8865H1kI_8gl2N_Nl1313OYSoPobjPkWYRiHtAfmvIo7rlqg-s84q9a8c/s1600/DSC_0036.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ-VvwWbhgv318PizRjUGBUE6flnKZQoKtih7s2_Q2VbsoDPLOrR5p0l14u9vyOOcPhjjJFd0Oo3968AdBEO8865H1kI_8gl2N_Nl1313OYSoPobjPkWYRiHtAfmvIo7rlqg-s84q9a8c/s640/DSC_0036.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Landscape in Mexico, just lying there, looking great. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />The aim of this project is to understand how speakers of different Nahuatl dialects use grammar in different ways to refer to spatial relations, and to see whether some of those differences are related to the fact that they are spoken in very different environments. The thing is, that previous studies have demonstrated that speakers of different Mesoamerican languages have similar preferences when it comes to how they describe space and spatial relations, and that the general preference is to use features of the environment rather than oneself as the anchor when describing such relations. For example speakers of European languages often prefer to use themselves as the anchor for describing spatial relations (leading to frequent statements a long the lines "no, no, I meant my left!" when both speaker and addressee interprets the term "left" with themselves as the center). But speakers of Mesoamerican languages tend to solve this problem by using elements in the environment as the center, leading to statements "go uphill from the tree, then turn towards where the sun rises". Linguists working with this refer to this as a preference for <i>allocentric </i>rather than <i>egocentric </i>framing. But the studies showing this preference in Mesoamerican languages, studied other languages (Maya, Zapotec, Mixe, Otomí, Cora, among others), and not Nahuatl.<br />
<br />
It makes sense that people who until recently used to live in vast open landscapes, also may have a tendency to navigate using the features of the environment rather than the symmetric layout of street grids and pedestrian-crossings and intersections. But given how different the landscapes inhabited by Nahuatl speakers are, then it also makes sense that they have to choose which features of the environment are the ones that are notable enough to serve as landmarks. And given that we know that for Mesoamerican peoples certain landscape elements tend to be particularly important (mountains, caves, springs, old trees) it becomes clear that we can probably learn something about how Nahua people experience the relation between humans and the landscape by studying how they refer to it linguistically. And in doing so test whether Nahuatl, whose speakers arrived late in Mesoamerica and a language that has now been in contact with Spanish for 500 years, has the same preference for allocentric spatial descriptions as the other Mesoamerican languages. And perhaps to find out whether and how the landscape can influence our ways of speaking and thinking about space.<br />
<br />
That in short is the point of the Nahuatl Space Project.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
<b>Our Methods:</b></h3>
We are using a set of methods that have been used for previous studies of spatial language in languages from Mesoamerica and many other regions. They include a set of experiments, a and a number of different ethnographic methods (interviews, conversation, observation and participation in everyday activities) and a geographic method which consists in creating a map of Nahuatl-speakers' knowledge of the landscape they live in.<br />
<br />
The experimental methods we use have been developed by psycholinguists who study the how language interacts with the mind. Spatial thinking is an extremely important function of the human mind, and since human languages differ quite a lot in how they describe spatial relations this raises the question of whether these differences may also reflectdifferent ways of conceptualizing space. To study this psycholinguists at the Max Planck Institute for psycholinguistics developed a set of experiments to test the relations between differences in spatial grammar, differences in describing spatial relations and spatial cognition in a scientific way. The primary kind of experiment is called a director-matcher game.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-nmiZh7Cbylop3ZFgfH5Opb-xgHg2VKHqLsMvPlQtb-Id6haeo0B-Ui1izeg-jCYEas3_tOI5Ipn9hsextIk_0gBbc1enRLexmEw2fffQ_KfS7kciA9jhOz1zYuC8Xfp4A4yESXgCFzY/s1600/man+tree.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="560" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-nmiZh7Cbylop3ZFgfH5Opb-xgHg2VKHqLsMvPlQtb-Id6haeo0B-Ui1izeg-jCYEas3_tOI5Ipn9hsextIk_0gBbc1enRLexmEw2fffQ_KfS7kciA9jhOz1zYuC8Xfp4A4yESXgCFzY/s200/man+tree.PNG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Example of a photo from one version<br />
of the Man-Tree director-matcher game.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Such a game requires two participants: A director who sees an array of photos (e.g. pictures of a man and a tree) and has to communicate which photo they are looking at to another person, the matcher, who has the same array of pictures and has to find the right photo using only the verbal description. The director usually has a number of different options for framing their description of the photo (e.g. "the man looks this way and stands to the left of the tree"; "the man looks this way and has his left hand towards the tree"; "the man is west of the tree looking south", "the man is towards the river from the tree and looks downhill" etc.), and they have to chose one that the matcher is likely to understand. And it is usually the case that the director and matcher quickly find a strategy that works well. It is also usually the case that other speakers of the same language tends to choose the same strategy, while speakers of other languages may tend to use another. <br />
<br />
So by using this game we can see how Nahuatl speakers in different places prefer to describe spatial relations, whether they prefer egocentric or geocentric framings. The most likely is that in each community there will be a good deal of variation, some speakers using more egocentric framings and others using more geocentric ones. Our hypothesis is that people who have more experience walking around in the landscape will be more likely to use geocentric framings, and people who have more experience with activities that require egocentric orientation (e.g. reading, driving) may be more likely to choose egocentric framings. And we also think that probably people who speak more Spanish than Nahuatl will be more likely to use an egocentric framing. So in order to analyze the results we need to know about the kinds of activities each speaker spends most time doing, and about whether they speak mostly Spanish or Nahuatl.<br />
<br />
Finally, we want to see whether the choice of specific geocentric framings is motivated by different ways of using and living in the landscape. Perhaps farmers who farm a terrain with a steep incline are more attentive to slopes than drivers or people who work in offices, perhaps people who live in dense jungle with few sight-lines are more attentive to the the arrangements of objects on the ground, or perhaps fishermen are more attentive to the coastline or the waves, or the sun's path. This requires us to hear how people actually speak about the landscape and spatial relations when they are going about their everyday business. So to understand more about the way Nahuatl speakers in different places experience the land we will participate with them in daily activities in the landscape, we wil interview people about their experiences (for example stories of places they have visited and how to get there), and we will elicit place names and make a map of the different places known by the speakers and what kind of places they are (are there any special resources, any dangers, any sacred sites etc. [we will of course ask the community's permission to include any sacred sites in the final map, and the community will get the map when we are done so they can use it as documentation of placenames and local geospatial knowledge]) Using GIS we will then create a map of local landscape knowledge using GIS, and we can use that map to understand more about how people interact with the landscape, and whether this knowledge influences their choice of orientation strategies in the experiments.<br /><br />To carry out this investigation we need an interdisciplinary team, and we have a great team. Apart from myself, my good friend and colleague Ditte Boeg Thomsen will be in charge of the experimental study, Sociolinguist and Nahuatl-speaker Guillermo Garrido Cruz will be in charge of the sociolinguistic aspect of the study, and Gabriela Citlahua Zepahua and Adán Sánchez Rosales, who are both Nahuatl-speakers and alumns of the Intercultural University of Veracruz will assist with the ethnographic study and with those tasks that require native speakers. Additionally we will be assisted by a team of student interns, who are helping us out for course credit and research experience - but whose assistance will be crucial to be able to do all the work we want to do in the short time we have.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
<b>Our Fieldsites: </b></h3>
We will be working in four fieldsites, and plan to stay about two months in each location.<br />
<br />
<b>Tequila, Veracruz</b><br /><br />Our first field site is the municipality of Tequila in the Zongolica region of central Veracruz. This is a region with several hundred thousand Nahuatl speakers spread out in the different municipalities of a mountainous sierra. The elevation is from 1500 to 3000 mtrs above sea level, and the climate is that of a temperate montane cloud forest, though logging has drastically reduced the amount of forest there in recent years. The Nahuatl dialect spoken here is in my opinion a central dialect (though it has some traits of an eastern substrate which has caused previous scholars to classify it as eastern). At 1800 mtrs of elevation Tequila is located in a strategic location as the gateway community both to the communities in the high sierra and the lower and warmer coffee growing regions, and Nahuas from both of these regions have to pass through Tequila on their way to the city of Orizaba. There are no other indigenous languages currently spoken in the region, though some loanwords suggest a possible Totonac presence in the past. It is of interest that Tequila is located in such a way that there are prominent hills to the East, West, North and South, but also a general upward slope along a north-south, with the low-lying regions being located to the East and North of the community.<br /><br />In Tequila we will be collaborating with the Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural, which has a campus there - the same campus where the world's first Master's program taught entirely in Nahuatl is based.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGZRNC5Z7HpI5NAnPswi0y1EQd-FfEvFGWvZVgfHINM14g81EhB0kc6Ras6AETys1NSaAQy3F_tkrHVilYd24-Hq8OEGYtHQBXC6imQBYYUzWXL_rLm3A-llICmVaQSfDLUhF_b8BnvMQ/s1600/Tequila+zoom+out.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="721" data-original-width="1600" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGZRNC5Z7HpI5NAnPswi0y1EQd-FfEvFGWvZVgfHINM14g81EhB0kc6Ras6AETys1NSaAQy3F_tkrHVilYd24-Hq8OEGYtHQBXC6imQBYYUzWXL_rLm3A-llICmVaQSfDLUhF_b8BnvMQ/s640/Tequila+zoom+out.PNG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Google earth 3D view of Tequila Municipality within the Sierra de Zongolica (© Google Earth)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<b>Tancanhuitz, San Luís Potosí</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Our second field site is the municipality of Tancanhuitz in the Huasteca region of San Luís Potosí. This is a really interesting place, because the municipality is divided between speakers of Teenek (the Mayan language historically called Huasteco) and Nahuatl. The two groups live close together and there are many people here who are trilingual in both of the indigenous languages and Spanish. Teenek communities are in the western part of the municipality and Nahuatl speakers towards the East.<br />
<br />
At about 200 mtrs above sea level, the climate is lush subtropical jungle, with relatively low rolling hills. Towards the west southwest the terrain rises into the Sierra Madre, but otherwise there are no clear large scale incline of the landscape in the region.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWlaxKdgkuVAZmq_oo51TAjZcOTkoA7dwXPltvzTRMMsekSbHLSOpTjVa5yQSQq_ETEL8v8fBR9tkrS70Q0Gk3lDnkZl7EWOUBV1vHL-SKDAkC9q4Qr2wYFgR_mBJXludaVqE9GbC27c4/s1600/Tancanhuitz.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="680" data-original-width="1600" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWlaxKdgkuVAZmq_oo51TAjZcOTkoA7dwXPltvzTRMMsekSbHLSOpTjVa5yQSQq_ETEL8v8fBR9tkrS70Q0Gk3lDnkZl7EWOUBV1vHL-SKDAkC9q4Qr2wYFgR_mBJXludaVqE9GbC27c4/s640/Tancanhuitz.PNG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Google Earth 3D view of Tancanhuitz municipality, Cuatlamayán and Piaxtla in the center (© Google Earth)</td></tr>
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<br />
<b>Huauchinango, Puebla</b><br />
<br />
In the fall of 2020 we plan to work in the area surrounding Huauchinango in the North Puebla Highlands. The Nahuatl variety spoken in this area is very close to that spoken in central Mexico at the time of the Spanish invasion (the variety documented in most colonial source), and probably originated as migration from Texcoco in the 12th or 13th century. We plan to work in a community called Xaltepec which is located next to the lake Nexapa (a recent lake made by a hydroelectric dam in the 20th century). The landscape is mountainous and at an elevation of about 1300 meters above sea level. The Nahuas here combine fishing and farming, so they may have some interesting ways of navigating on the lake and orienting around it. West of the lake the altitude falls on the macro level while there is no obvious incline axis at the more local level (there are prominent hills northwest and southwest of the lake). Historically Nahuatl has coexisted with Totonac and Otomi in this area.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHdfXFYOEtcNN3vq-q2CSbHILY8LF4F6G0UySq4d7Md4c-xnA64BVYcowmZ14D94WDDqR1LSezWWDKotm_yaEdIL2EqaTtWnvMh1UnuDV6Zw8I5drrDKzv6vYr011nzNgD_kK2PjF52wk/s1600/xaltepec+huauchinango.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1600" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHdfXFYOEtcNN3vq-q2CSbHILY8LF4F6G0UySq4d7Md4c-xnA64BVYcowmZ14D94WDDqR1LSezWWDKotm_yaEdIL2EqaTtWnvMh1UnuDV6Zw8I5drrDKzv6vYr011nzNgD_kK2PjF52wk/s640/xaltepec+huauchinango.PNG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Google Earth 3D view of Lake Nexapa, with the town of Xaltepec on the west bank Papatlazolco on the north bank (© Google Earth).</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /><br />
<b>Tatahuicapan, Veracruz</b><br />
<br />
We plan to end the fieldwork in Southern Veracruz in the community of Tatahuicapan. Here the landscape is completely flat, except for the extinct volcano Volcán de Santa Martha and the Nahuas here also combine fishing and farming - but fishing on the ocean and in the salt lagoon Laguna de Ostion. The Nahua communities in this area make up one of two Nahua groups on the coast, the other being the Nahuas of the Michoacan coast. The fact that they live in close proximity to the ocean implies a lot of interesting possibilities for how they may orient themselves and how orientation may be encoded linguistically.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp3DBpWPuticqASG4r9p8dSl78Ydcf2K6LjWPByTHDTEQCdMLhSntYsGKdZug1dqJa9HRyl3T3M6oaHY0qccDfy2r3U5Qp7BZ_4OPJ_-Np5B2gKow06-GgUw3kLEXG_RCgcyhi9A4lD6M/s1600/tatahuicapan.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="787" data-original-width="1600" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp3DBpWPuticqASG4r9p8dSl78Ydcf2K6LjWPByTHDTEQCdMLhSntYsGKdZug1dqJa9HRyl3T3M6oaHY0qccDfy2r3U5Qp7BZ_4OPJ_-Np5B2gKow06-GgUw3kLEXG_RCgcyhi9A4lD6M/s640/tatahuicapan.PNG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Google Earth 3D view of Tatahuicapan and Pajapan, with the Volcán Sta Martha in the center and the Mexican gulf to the east (© Google Earth). </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />We are just about to go into the field with our research team, and I will post further updates on the project as we progress.<br />Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-75060625160874640112019-09-12T09:43:00.009-07:002020-10-24T08:13:24.006-07:00An evaluation of the Nahuatl data in Brian Stubbs' work on Afro-Asiatic/Uto-Aztecan <span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I have <a href="https://nahuatlstudies.blogspot.com/2014/12/quetzalcoatl-precious-twin.html" target="_blank">previously written</a> about how, in the 16<sup>th</sup>
century Franciscan friars believed that St. Thomas the apostle had visited
Mexico and preached Christianity to the natives 1500 years before the arrival
of the Spaniards, and that the Indians themselves were descendants of one of
the lost tribes of Israel. The Franciscans saw similarities between Indigenous
religion and Christianity that they explained to themselves in this way. Today
such a belief of visits from the Ancient Near East to Mesoamerica is not common
among Christian denominations, but it is found today among the Latter Day
Saints (also known as Mormons), whose sacred book, the Book of Mormon tells that four Hebrew
tribes made it to the Americas. </span>Where their prophets wrote the original Book of Mormon on metal plates in a language named "Reformed Egyptian". <span style="font-family: inherit;">LDS scholars have, over the years, invested
much time and energy in trying to find external evidence in support of the account given
in the Book of Mormon, both through archaeology and linguistics. </span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR8fARDy2AK-ojnJWVc8D5WS-cT-qS4yFoKxvyhJTISVnQRFSoP7ruCmi9N0v54T-27qDcea2kWScSL8A_L7pIqRwaY4K8KGx_ezJjuY_TrkRTZfiOvLPlwxMYUaQ9_aMw4ZiCSuBOkz4/s1600/Stubbs+frontpage.PNG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="542" data-original-width="417" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR8fARDy2AK-ojnJWVc8D5WS-cT-qS4yFoKxvyhJTISVnQRFSoP7ruCmi9N0v54T-27qDcea2kWScSL8A_L7pIqRwaY4K8KGx_ezJjuY_TrkRTZfiOvLPlwxMYUaQ9_aMw4ZiCSuBOkz4/s320/Stubbs+frontpage.PNG" width="246" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Front page of the work under review.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Usually, I would follow Jay S. Gould in considering
scientific inquiry and religious confession to be non-overlapping magisteria, and
that as long as scholars keep their religious beliefs out of their scientific
inquiries then they can believe whatever they want. But sometimes this is not
so easy, and this blogpost is about one of those times. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In this blogpost, I analyze the use of Nahuatl data, in
Brian D. Stubbs self-published manuscript “<a href="https://www.academia.edu/31704574/Exploring_the_Explanatory_Power_of_Semitic_and_Egyptian_in_Uto-Aztecan" target="_blank">Exploring the Explanatory Power of Semitic and Egyptian in Uto-Aztecan</a>”. This work compares Proto-Uto-Aztecan
with Semitic and Egyptian and seeks to find signs of ancient contact between
early near-eastern and Egyptian peoples and Uto-Aztecan speaking Native
Americans. It finds a lot of such signs, in fact more than 1500 Uto-Aztecan forms
that Stubbs claims are cognate with Semitic or Egyptian forms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now, far-fetched proposals of relations between languages
that are never known to have been in contact and which defy the conventional
view of world history are a dime a
dozen. I have already described <a href="https://nahuatlstudies.blogspot.com/2014/11/nahuan-supremacy-and-aryans-on-t-s.html" target="_blank">Denison’s attempt to show that Nahuatl was an“Aryan language”</a>, and Turkic nationalists frequently look to Nahuatl when
seeking to explain their belief that all languages descend from the <a href="https://www.mediamonitors.net/turkish-language-and-the-native-americans/" target="_blank">Turkic “Sun Language”</a>. Usually, I would say that it is better not to give too much
attention to far fetched claims of long distance contact across the Atlantic,
and better not to waste one’s energy trying to debunk them since they are
usually not playing a game in which the scientific rules and methods of
historical linguistics even apply. But one thing makes this proposal different:
Namely the fact that Brian D. Stubbs is a well-esteemed expert in Uto-Aztecan
historical linguistics with many important publications to his name, not least
his monumental catalogue of Uto-Aztecan cognate sets (Stubbs 2011). This he is, in addition to
being also, apparently, a member of the LDS church. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">This makes for an
interesting conundrum, because it both gives us an apriori reason to believe in the
validity of his claims because of his expertise, and an apriori reason for doubting it,
because of the fact that his claim is clearly meant to validate the narrative
of the Book of Mormon, and his own religious belief. (it is certainly taken as such </span><a href="https://www.deseret.com/2017/6/1/20613364/near-eastern-languages-in-ancient-america" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">validation by other LDS members and publicized as such</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">) </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I have a great deal of
respect and esteem for Stubbs’ previous Uto-Aztecan comparative work, but the claim of ancient
trans-Atlantic contact, even disregarding any potential religious motivation behind it,
is a sufficiently extraordinary claim, for it to require inordinately
extraordinary evidence in its favor, before it can be accepted. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">C.S. Lewis coined the term ‘bulverism’ to describe the kind
of argument in which one simply assumes that one’s opponent in a discussion is
wrong, and then proceeds to explain to him the psychological mechanism that
must have led them astray. If we want to avoid making ourselves guilty of
bulverism, we cannot simply say “oh this is just religious crack-pottery” and
leave it at that. We have to actually show, that Stubbs’ work in this case does
not follow what is expected from rigorous linguistic scholarship, and that its
conclusions therefore cannot be accepted as valid. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The manuscript is 444 pages and includes some, 1500 proposed cognates, so it would require quite a lot of effort to analyze all of it, so
instead I will limit my analysis here to Stubbs' treatment of Nahuatl. Nahuatl being of
course my field of specialization, and the area where I will be most likely to
see weak spots in his argument and catch any methodological blunders. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Previous Reviews: Roberts, Elzinga and Rogers</span></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I am not the
first to analyze or review Stubbs' Semitic/Uto-Aztecan work. It has been previously reviewed by t</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">hree Brigham Young University linguists all specializing in Native American languages: Dirk Elzinga, John S. Robertson and Chris Rogers. It does appear, though, that my review here is the first written by a linguist who is not affiliated with the LDS-owned BYU, and not published in a LDS related journal. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Published in the "Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saints faith and scholarship", the review by John Robertson, a specialist in the Maya language, is enthusiastic and overall accepting. Robertson concludes that he </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">"</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; text-align: justify;">cannot find an easy way to challenge the breadth and depth of the data</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">". </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Published in "BYU Studies Quarterly", the <a href="https://archive.bookofmormoncentral.org/content/review-exploring-explanatory-power-semitic-and-egyptian-uto-aztecan" target="_blank">review by Dirk Elzinga</a> (a Uto-Aztecanist) is what I would call lukewarm, concluding that though the proposal looks like normal crackpottery at first glance, the authority and expertise of the author means that it merits further attention. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Published in the "Journal of Book of Mormon Studies" in 2019, t<span style="font-family: inherit;">he review by Chris Rogers,
an expert in historical linguistics and the Xinka language of El Salvador and
also a professor of linguistics at Brigham Young University, is much more critical. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Rogers points out some
serious flaws in the work: Primary of these is that it does not stick to the
established bilateral method of comparing languages with languages and
proto-languages with proto-languages, but that it frequently cherrypicks so that
a form in any Semitic or Egyptian variety can be compared with a form in any
Uto-Aztecan language. As has been demonstrated time and time again this
multilateral method hugely increases the risk of mistaking chance resemblances for cognates, and makes
it possible to prove virtually anything. As Rogers’ points out since any two
languages can be expected to have between 1% and 3% chance cognates, if we add
additional languages to the comparison the risk rises incrementally as well.
This means that once Stubbs is comparing 30 Uto-Aztecan languages with at least
three Semitic and Egyptian varieties (actually more, including at least Egyptian, Coptic, Syriac,
Hebrew, Aramaic) the number of expected chance similarities far exceeds the
1528 proposed cognates. He also notes that Stubbs does not adequately explain
non-matching segments (in fact no explanation at all is given in most cases),
and that he does not adequately account for other potential explanations of the
similarity (such as onomatopoeia). These general criticisms seem absolutely
valid to me, now on having reviewed Stubbs' work myself.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In a <a href="https://www.academia.edu/40208055/A_review_of_Chris_Rogers_A_Review_of_the_Afro-Asiatic_Uto-Aztecan_Proposal_wherein_he_reviews_Exploring_the_Explanatory_Power_of_Semitic_and_Egyptian_in_Uto-Aztecan_Stubbs_2015b_and_Changes_in_Languages_from_Nephi_to_Now_Stubbs_2016_" target="_blank">response to Rogers’</a> review published as a pdf on the academia.edu site, Stubbs defends himself by
stating first of all that Rogers has misunderstood his intent: He is not trying
to prove that Uto-Aztecan and Semitic/Egyptian are genetically related, but
that his claim is rather that proto-Uto-Aztecan was a mixed language that acquired a
major portion of its vocabulary and grammar from speakers of these Afroasiatic languages.
Therefore, it seems to follow, he does not need to follow the strict methods for
demonstrating long distance relationships. As for the charge of cherry picking, he
claims that it is only natural that some forms borrowed into the proto-langage
survive only in some of the daughter languages. This is perhaps true, but he apparently
does not recognize, or address, the fact that this practice leads
to a much higher risk of chance resemblance being mistaken for cognates, that is, random noise being mistaken for a signal. Furthermore, it cannot simply be assumed that a given form in a daughter language is a retention just because it looks like something in Hebrew, it has to be demonstrated that it is not an innovation in the individual language. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Though I can see why Rogers thought that Stubbs was arguing for a genetic relation given Stubbs presentation of the evidence, I wish Rogers had realized that Stubbs’ claim was in fact a proposal of
language contact. Because it really is a more problematic claim.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It is
problematic because there is no accepted method for demonstrating borrowing or
contact induced changes, and consequently no method for falsifying them.
Systematic sound laws do not apply in the transfer of elements of one language
to another, a language may borrow many words or few and change them in fairly random ways as they are adapted to the borrowing language's phonology, and there really is no
good way to disprove a claim about a form in one prehistoric language being
borrowed from another. This is why linguists normally would never even entertain the idea of a scenario of borrowing, unless there is independent evidence suggesting
probable historical contact between the two languages. In this, case there is
exactly <i>zero </i>independent evidence of contact between Ancient Semites or Egyptians and
Uto-Aztecans…except for the Book of Mormon. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So by presenting his hypothesis as
a claim of ancient contact and language mixture, Stubbs is in fact making a
claim that cannot be methodically falsified. When working outside of historical
disciplines, such a claim is usually called pseudoscientific, but in a historical
discipline such as this, we can only strive to classify it either as convincing
or unconvincing given the presented evidence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Analysis</span></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So, to the evidence: In the following, I will assess as many
examples as I could find of Stubbs using Nahuatl data to support a claimed cognate set. I am not looking at those parts where he uses Nahuatl as one language among many to support a PUA reconstruction, but only those where Nahuatl is the only support for a claimed relation across the families. Grantedly, most of his comparisons
are to his own reconstructed proto-Uto-Aztecan forms, but he does on many
occasions reach into Nahuan and compare Nahuan forms directly with forms in
individual semitic varieties. Looking closely at these examples will give us feel for how
Stubbs handles linguistic data - and specifically whether Stubbs' claim that dipping in to the individual languages is justified because these forms are retentions, is itself justified. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Shadow: <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>šwt</i> ‘shade,
shadow’ > Nahuatl <i>seewal</i>-li
‘shade’</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This example illustrates several problems. First is the fact
that semitic and Egyptian roots are triconsonantal, whereas Uto-Aztecan roots
almost always are CV or CVC roots. This means that from the outset when
comparing a form across the languages you have to ignore all the vowels and
look only at the consonants. This of course raises the number of potential
cognates on the Uto-Aztecan side quite a lot since you can ignore basically
half of every word. Secondly, Stubbs argues that all Semitic sibilants (three
different ones) are reflected as *s in Uto-Aztecan. So again, this kind of
merger, raises the number of potential cognates on the Semitic side. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">So now we have quite a large pool of potentially cognate
words in each of the language families, the only thing needed for a chance
resemblance to appear is if two of them have the same meaning. The greater the number of potential cognates, the greater also the chance for a semantic match or near match. Usually when
demonstrating a genetic relation only words with the exact same meaning are accepted,
since if we now also relax the degree of semantic fit we require, then the risk
of chance resemblances increase even more. Here, the fit seems to be quite
good, superficially. Because though Classical Nahuatl <i>seewalli </i>refers to 'shade', it does not do so etymologically. The etymology points to an original meaning of "a cool place", or "something that has cooled down". We know this, because it is composed of four different morphemes. The morpheme see ‘cold’ and
the verbal formant –wa form the verb <i>seewa </i>‘to be cold’, the –<i>l</i> suffix is an
old passive form, and the <i>–li</i> ending is the absolutive suffix. So the word in
Nahuatl is analyzable into mono-consonantal roots each with a distinct meaning
that comes together to become ‘cold place’ which is then extended to also mean
‘shade’, and the analysis is not at all compatible with the proposed Semitic
cognate which is a triconsonantal root.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Bow/Rainbow<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>šmrt</i> ‘large
bow’, pl <i>šmrwt</i> > -<i>samaaloo-t </i>of Nahuatl <i>koo-samaaloo-tl</i> ‘rainbow’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This example also shows the problems mentioned above, of
neglecting to analyze the Nahuatl word into its roots. What is basically being
compared here is šmrt with smlt, this can only be done because Stubbs decides
that Nahuatl <i>ko</i>- is a prefix that can be removed, and because he neglects to
remove the final –<i>t</i> which *is* a suffix and *should* be removed. But <i>ko </i>is not
likely to be a prefix, indeed the likely historical analysis of the Nahuatl
word is<i> kosa-ma-l-o-tl</i>, where the <i>kosa</i>- root is found in the word for yellow
<i>kos-tik</i> and the word for becoming yellow <i>kosawi</i>, and the word for necklace
<i>koskatl</i>. So he should compare šmrt with ksml, but that doesn’t look very much a
like at all. Then there is the problem of semantic stretch, he is comparing two
words that are related in English “bow” and “rainbow”, but why assume that this
is a natural semantic connection? Nahuatl has other words for the weapon, and
no word for the architectural feature, the Nahuatl word does not appear related to the shape at all, but
rather to the color, and Nahua myth compares it to a snake not a bow. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Reed<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <i>twr </i>‘reed’ > Nahuatl <i>tool-in</i> ‘cattails, reeds’;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This actually seems reasonable to me since I would probably
reconstruct Nahuatl toolin as coming from an earlier form along the lines of *<i>tawri</i>. But still we are only matching three segments out of five, which means
the risk of chance resemblance is high. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Son/Child<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Hebrew <i>bεn </i>‘son’; pl: <i>bəneey3</i>‘children (of)’ >
Nahuatl *<i>konee</i> 'child, offspring’:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This one is a far stretch phonologically with only the –n
being a direct match between the two forms. Stubbs argues that PUA *kw may be
correspond to Semitic *b, but konee doesn't come from a proto-form with kw (As Stubbs notes Nahuatl is one of the only UA languages to keep PUA *kw as kw). In fact I think it probably comes from the PUA root *<i>kumCa</i> reconstructed by Stubbs (2011) as meaning "husband" and as "male". </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Serpent/Twin<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Egyptian <i>qrђt </i>‘serpent’, Egyptian <i>qrђ </i>‘friend,
partner’ > UA/Nahuatl koŋwa ‘snake, twin’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here it is certainly interesting that both Egyptian and
Nahuatl have a word that means both snake and a human friend/partner/twin. Within Uto-Aztecan, Nahuatl is to my knowledge the only language that has this double
meaning of the word for snake, and thus the double meaning cannot be reconstructed for PUA. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And the
phonological form is quite far from each other: really there isn’t even a
single segment that can be considered a direct match between the two languages.
One has to accept Stubbs’ complicated sound correspondences where multiple
Semitic/Egyptian segments match a single segment in Nahuatl and in which vowels
are irrelevant, and consonant segments can dissappear. In this particular
instance, he has to insert an n to get an nw cluster that can correspond to rђ,
and to get this n into the word he cites a 1976 paper by Joe Campbell with
which I am very familiar (it is about Hueyapan Nahuatl, which is my main
expertise among Nahuatl varieties). First of all, Campbell does not in fact
argue that there is a historical /ŋw/ in any variety of Nahuatl, he only makes
the argument that synchronically there can be posited an underlying
hypothetical *ŋw phoneme that explains some irregularities in the grammar. Joe
has confirmed to me several times that he did not mean to make a historical
argument, but was only making a synchronic phonological argument in the style
of the structuralism of the 1970s. Secondly, Joe does say that the hypothetical
<i>ŋw </i>element is found in the word <i>ko:wa</i>,
but he is talking about the verb <i>ko:wa</i>
“to buy”, not the noun <i>ko:watl</i> “snake”. So it is a completely different unrelated
word. The reference to Joe’s article to justify the claimed medial /ŋw/ is both
a case of special pleading, and of misusing another scholar’s work in doing so.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Crocodile<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJqmEB0xHglPm9q0e9d2q1w_Uq6xi8ylSyg-KLiT2b0YEi_AM4Cono64s61do4w27Cv_h-QWx35mlr2HEATe8g2OfYbebvotkvjmgGytSHgE18ldfsFguwWEzeMOemV6mQxQW3Uhm9UaM/s1600/sobek.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1067" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJqmEB0xHglPm9q0e9d2q1w_Uq6xi8ylSyg-KLiT2b0YEi_AM4Cono64s61do4w27Cv_h-QWx35mlr2HEATe8g2OfYbebvotkvjmgGytSHgE18ldfsFguwWEzeMOemV6mQxQW3Uhm9UaM/s200/sobek.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Egyptian Crocodile God Sobek <br />
(photo Hedwig Storck, <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kom_Ombo,_Sobek_0320.JPG" target="_blank">WikiCommons</a>)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Egyptian <i>sbk </i>‘crocodile, the crocodile-god Sobek’ and
Classical Nahuatl <i>sipak-tli</i> ‘crocodile’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here again we have a good superficial likeness with actual
near match of all three consonants – and Stubbs’ further argues that in
Egyptian the voweling matches the Nahuatl form as well. We need to abstract, of course, from the fact that elsewhere the comparisons is between Nahuatl and Hebrew, Nahuatl and Maghrib Arabic, Nahuatl and Aramaic, and here Nahuatl and Egyptian (which is not even a Semitic language but related in the much larger Afro-Asiatic family).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil0gVCevUqNMTxvxsqC64coHk7jB5-UyeYkF5TSVaQN3XkFvmgksQITfzp7rw5SYXlPFIYs1Lxc2eRRo43C0uGSsCJPn36xHJgPZ-CZcH8-Ne7usFQdBS3w0v_ri2LHEK1oTl8tUMG_zE/s1600/Cipactli_2.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="361" data-original-width="301" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil0gVCevUqNMTxvxsqC64coHk7jB5-UyeYkF5TSVaQN3XkFvmgksQITfzp7rw5SYXlPFIYs1Lxc2eRRo43C0uGSsCJPn36xHJgPZ-CZcH8-Ne7usFQdBS3w0v_ri2LHEK1oTl8tUMG_zE/s200/Cipactli_2.jpg" width="166" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Aztec crocodile god Cipactli, <br />
from the Codex Borgia</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The problem is
that we cannot reconstruct this word for crocodile for proto-Uto-Aztecan, because
no other Uto-Aztecan language has a documented cognate of the word <i>sipaktli</i>. There is a possibility that the word could be related to the Corachol word for caiman <i>háaxi</i>, where the first syllable likely means "water". The second syllable -<i>xi </i>could then be cognate to the <i>si</i>- syllable of <i>sipaktli </i>(and in fact the <i>pa</i>- syllable could be cognate to the <i>ha</i>- syllable of corachol, the order of the elements in the compound simply reversed). This would make <i>sipaktli </i>a likely compound word, in which case it cannot match the Egyptian triconsonantal root at all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Wine-skin/Prickly
pear<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Hebrew <i>nebεl </i>‘skin-bottle, skin’ in the common phrase
of Hebrew nebεl yayin ‘skin of wine’; Syriac <i>nbl3/3n’bl </i>> Classical Nahuatl
<i>no’palli</i> ‘prickly pear’ often used to make alcoholic beverage"; </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here we have an
ok phonological match (though it unexplainedly ignores the Nahuatl Saltillo segment),
but a very bad semantic match. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Nahuatl word <i>nohpalli </i>quite simply does not mean prickly
pear, it refers to the opuntia cactus, the prickly pear of which is called
<i>noochtli</i>. <i>Nohpalitl</i>, also refers specifically to the edible ear of the cactus. Though mostly eaten as a fruit, the <i>noochtli </i>was used to produce a kind of fermented beverage called <i>noochoctli</i>. But the nohpal cactus is only tied to alcohol production in this very indirect way. Allowing this span from wineskin to cactus with a fruit used occasionally for fermented shows an very high degree of semantic latitude, and a cavalier approach to translation since <i>nohpal </i>is *not* the prickly pear or the part of the plant used for fermentation. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Bury/Tamal<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Semitic <i>ṭmn </i>> Aramaic <i>ṭmr </i>‘hide, bury’ > Nahuatl
<i>tamal-li </i>‘tamale’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Stubbs argues that the Semitic root *tmn had the “references
to ‘cooking underground or under ashes’ …which in Post-Biblical Hebrew also
meant ‘put in an oven’” He makes the final l- in the Nahuatl fit by noting that “Aramaic
changed n > r, as it often does (<i>ben </i>‘son’ > <i>bar </i>‘son’)”. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But again, he
doesn’t take the time to analyze the Nahuatl word, which does indeed come from
a verb that can be reconstructed as *<i>tɨma </i>with the meaning “cook with
steam/bake under ground”. But the final –l in tamal, is not a part of the root but a suffix, it is as mentioned before an
old passive that is used to derive deverbal passive nouns, so a tamal is
analyzable in Nahuatl and means “something steamed”. So again we have only two consonants out of three (or if counting the vowels two segments out of five) that actually match. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Perfective prefix<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Semitic perfective with <i>wa</i>- Nahuatl perfective with<i> o</i>-. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Stubbs notes that in some Semitic verbs a perfective can be
formed by adding the prefix wa- and removing the last vowel of the verb. This
is indeed quite similar to what happens in Western Nahuatl dialects, where an
<i>o</i>- prefix and the loss of the last vowel creates the perfective of one verb
class. But, this is limited to Western Nahuatl dialects, the Eastern dialects
have neither the o- prefix nor the dropping of the stemfinal vowel in any verb
class (they use a –k or –ki suffix instead). The vowel-dropping in preterit
forms cannot be reconstructed for proto-Nahuatl, but is an innovation in the
Western Branch. Karen Dakin has argued that Western Nahuatl ot the o- prefix as
a borrowing from the corachol perfective prefix <i>wa</i>-. And it probably also
shouldn’t be reconstructed for proto-Nahuatl. So here we have a pattern that is
superficially intriguingly similar, but once we know a bit about Nahuatl
historical developments it disappears entirely. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Climb up/on top<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Semitic <i>rkb </i>‘mount, climb up on’ > CN <i>tlakpa-k</i>
‘above, on top’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Again Stubbs compares a triconsonantal root to a
multimorphemic Nahuat word. The tla- in <i>tlakpak </i>is a prefix, that was
originally <i>ta</i>-, and the root <i>ikpa </i>comes from the PUA root *<i>kupa </i>‘hair’ or ‘head’
and has come to mean “top”. The root rkb
‘mount climb up’ is not a very good match for <i>kupa </i>‘hair/head’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Quail<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Hebrew <i>ś</i></span><i>ә</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>laaw
</i>‘quail’, pl:<i>salwiim</i>; Syriac <i>salway </i>‘quail’; Arabic <i>salwaa </i>‘quail’; Samaritan
<i>šalwi </i>> UA *<i>solwi </i>‘quail’: CN <i>sool-in</i> ‘quail’; Mn <i>sowi</i>’ ‘pigeon’.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here we have something that is superficially interesting
again. But we have to note that ' reconstruction of the UA term combines the Mono word for "pigeon" with the Nahuatl word for quail to get an almos<span style="font-family: inherit;">t exact match for the Semitic word. But he has missed the obvious cognates in Corachol, namely</span> Huichol <i>xïau </i>“codorniz” and Cora <i>sa’uh</i>. These forms, I reconstruct for proto-Corachol as *<i>sauri</i>, which is also the ancestral form for the Nahuatl word <i>sool-in</i>. Then we end up comparing
slw with swr (if we admit the correspondence u/w), and we would have to posit a metathesis to sustain the argument. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Understand/Grow<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Hebrew
<i>hiśkiil</i>, hiskal- ‘to understand, comprehend, make wise’ > CN <i>iskal </i>‘to
train’; CN <i>iskal-ia</i> ‘be discreet, prudent’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4AkE98wKITMuB05ZNqMilJqww23B0BuoqyhUruL7VK5nwRVujbd4valIXtwt0DuB2ZBFEmt0kZj_9ZxsfHhjMwhtwziGoYngjp6alfX6MLy1_QGmoCoOZ3n8BygQYuY3k9OFRxFSmtQY/s1600/izcali.PNG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="476" data-original-width="448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4AkE98wKITMuB05ZNqMilJqww23B0BuoqyhUruL7VK5nwRVujbd4valIXtwt0DuB2ZBFEmt0kZj_9ZxsfHhjMwhtwziGoYngjp6alfX6MLy1_QGmoCoOZ3n8BygQYuY3k9OFRxFSmtQY/s320/izcali.PNG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Simeon's entry for Izcalia</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here we have something really bad. Namely an example of a massaged translation of the Nahuatl term that
makes a large semantic stretch seem less problematic. Nahuatl <i>iskalia</i> does not mean "be discreet prudent". The intransitive iskali means “to grow” or "to revive" for example about plants that sprout. From this is derived the transitive <i>iskalia </i>that means "to make someone revive or grow" and which is used metaphorically in the sense of coming to one's senses for example after having passed out (used reflexively "make oneself revive"), and in the sense of nurturing and rearing a child to maturity (like one cultivates a plant). In Hueyapan one does respond to someone who says something silly by saying "<i>ximoskali</i>!", which is literally "come to your senses!". But is is related to reviving and coming back to life, and not to understanding or knowing. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDAP3Ka7H5uryeGyxrHik_Jv4lSoaCqswk7BaRgx5_X4cTp14m0OjbsFS1yh49LIrliCNdVDis_OBZdJk7U-q8b1CCnhBInJ37Yir9QnV874OKiht-4QmVYzX3GIP7LyoxQ99OHioX9h8/s1600/izcaliamolina.PNG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="123" data-original-width="429" height="91" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDAP3Ka7H5uryeGyxrHik_Jv4lSoaCqswk7BaRgx5_X4cTp14m0OjbsFS1yh49LIrliCNdVDis_OBZdJk7U-q8b1CCnhBInJ37Yir9QnV874OKiht-4QmVYzX3GIP7LyoxQ99OHioX9h8/s320/izcaliamolina.PNG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Molina's entry for <i>Izcalia</i> with no "prudence or discretion"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Stubbs' seems to have the "discreet, prudent" translation from the dictionary of Remi Simeon where "discreto, prudente" appears in a string of words used to translate <i>iskalia </i>(image inserted right). Simeon's dictionary is a derivative, mostly based on Alonso de Molina's dictionary, and interestingly the "discreet, prudent" doesn't appear as possible translations of the words in Molina's dictionary (image inserted). They were added by Simeon. The gloss "to train" for the putative word "<i>iskal</i>" is simply made up perhaps based on the metaphorical meaning of <i>iskalia </i>"to rear" a child. "<i>Iskal</i>" meanwhile, is not an actually existing Nahuatl word, since as I am sure Stubbs knows, all Nahuatl verbs end in a vowel. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But of course when comparing, one has to try to analyze the word's core semantics instead of the simply choosing one of the potential translations that you like best. Here the semantics simply doesn't fit, and instead of analyzing the word's meaning Stubbs simply cherry picks the two of Simeon's glosses that fit best with his Hebrew word. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Select/Take<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Hebrew(BDB) <i>brr </i>‘to select, choose’: CN <i>kwia / kwiya</i>
‘to consider s.th. one’s own, to keep’; CN <i>kwi-lia</i> ‘to take s.th.’;<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is also an example of a massaged translation, because Nahuatl
<i>kwi </i>means simply to take something, <i>kwia </i>is a derived verb that means "to wrap something" and <i>kwilia </i>is the applicative of <i>kwi </i>that means "to
take something from someone". Simeon again has a meaning of <i>kwia </i>not found in other dictionaries, namely the meaning of "keeping something borrowed". This could be a potential contextual extension of the sense of "taking something", with the added -a, to signify that it is used transitively. But given that there is no other source for this usage than Simeon's dictionary, that is not very accurate, and often supplies extra translations based on unknown evidence, it seems a bad idea to pick this specific meaning to compare with Hebrew. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Apart from this semantic mismatch, the only
element that actually matches is the b/kw. The r segment matches neither the l
in <i>kwilia </i>because this is the applicative suffix. The y in <i>kwiya </i>suggested by Simeon is spuriously inserted because
if there was the preterit would be *<i>kwix</i>, but is in fact <i>kwih</i>. Hence the *y cannot be used to match the r in the semitic form. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Pronominals<br />
</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the really eye-catching pieces of data presented by Stubbs is the correspondence between the semitic pronominal prefixes and the pronouns of Classical Nahuatl. He notes that the Aramaic verb 'to be' parallels the Nahuatl pronouns closely, being '<i>ehwe </i>"I am", <i>tehwe </i>"you are" and <i>yehwe </i>"he is". And he notes that Maghrib Arabic analogized the first person plural n- to become first person singular as in Nahuatl. Here, I reproduce Stubbs' table from page 335. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0GIoxRXaYR2GEB0P-5DhLqWuDBqQ8lYOEg6ejjwV-DajUR4bp0sVr1ulLPOSI1KAqGsCCymdcnwQg_Qvq78_wAlFqgDGf_eEkmPN5jpOlSuTkdwWVpNkVeifOjqsyeu1A_hydBFhBq74/s1600/stubbs+pronoun+comparison.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="173" data-original-width="1228" height="90" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0GIoxRXaYR2GEB0P-5DhLqWuDBqQ8lYOEg6ejjwV-DajUR4bp0sVr1ulLPOSI1KAqGsCCymdcnwQg_Qvq78_wAlFqgDGf_eEkmPN5jpOlSuTkdwWVpNkVeifOjqsyeu1A_hydBFhBq74/s640/stubbs+pronoun+comparison.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This kind of paradigm is the kind that historical linguists love, because it is a kind of relation that is relatively unlikely to arise by coincidence. But though it may be unlikely to arise by chance, it is not impossible. In this case in fact very possible.</span><br />
<br />
In their reviews, both Elzinga and Robertson catch on this example as the most convincing piece of evidence. Rogers though mentions the table critically, by pointing out the problem that Stubbs is here comparing individual varieties, and not proto-languages. Here Rogers points out a problem that in fact invalidates this example: Again the Nahuatl forms represent innovations within Nahuatl not retentions of earlier PUA forms, and hence cannot be used as examples of contact allegedly taking place thousands of years before proto-Nahuatl emerged.<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The reason Stubbs' compares with Classical Nahuatl instead of PUA, or even instead of proto-Nahuatl is clear: this particular pronoun system is *only* found in Nahuatl in the entire UA family, and consequently cannot be reconstructed for the earlier stage. In fact, we can show that it is an innovation in proto-Nahuatl by comparison with the forms found in Corachol. In proto-Corachol the paradigm was 1p </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">ne</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">-, 2p </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">pa</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">- 3p </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">pu</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">-. Stubbs himself in his catalogue of UA cognates reconstructs <i>pu</i>- as the third person singular pronominal in PUA. From a system similar to that found in corachol, Nahuatl switched the second person form, apparently adopting the </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">ti</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">- prefix of the first person plural, also as the second person singular prefix. It kept the <i>ni</i>- prefix and it dropped the third person prefix altogether since it was redundant. The <i>pu</i>- pronominal stem was in fact only kept in the third person pronouns which in proto-Nahuatl I reconstruct as *</span><i style="font-family: inherit;">yeha </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">from an earlier *</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>puha</i></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">. The initial PUA syllable *</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>pu </i></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">becomes *</span><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">h</span><span face=""calibri" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">ɨ</span></i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>-</i> in proto-Corachol-Nahuatl, then </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">ye</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">- in proto-Nahuatl and then </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">e</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">- in eastern Nahuatl (except in the pronoun because Eastern Nahuatl had changed the pronoun to </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">yaha</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, and </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">y</i><span style="font-family: inherit;">- was only dropped before e). The original pronoun furthermore did not have the -</span><i style="font-family: inherit;">wa </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">suffix, which is an innovation in the Western branch of Nahuan (so quite late, after the split of proto-Nahuatl). Consequently, the forms of the Aramaic copula and Mahgrib pronominal prefixes are complete red herrings, they only compare to the pronouns of Western Nahuatl in the postclassic period (i.e. after 900 AD). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
Moreover, the Maghrib first person form n- is an innovation while in Uto-Aztecan it is a retention, and it is probably even a retention from a much earlier stage of language evolution in the Americas given that many other language families in the Americas have <i>ni</i>- as the first person singular pronominal. So really if we were to allege contact, it would suggest that Maghrib Arabic was influenced by Nahuatl (or another Native American language), rather than the other way round. But of course this is really just a coincidence, and not evidence of contact at all.<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">If we were to compare only the oldest reconstructible stages of the two languages we would get:<br /><br /><u> Semitic Proto-Corachol-Nahua</u><br />1.sg '- ne-</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">2p.sg. t- pe- </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">3p.sg. y- pu-/Ø-</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />1p.pl. n- t-</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">2p.pl t- se-</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">3p.pl y- me-</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here, nothing at all is shared between the two systems. </span>(I presented my preliminary reconstruction of elements of proto-Corachol-Nahua at the Friends of Uto-Aztecan meetings in Tepic in 2018 including the pronominal prefixes, the proceedings are <strike>forthcoming</strike> [now published <a href="https://magnuspharao.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/capc3adtulo-3_magnus-pharao-hansen-1.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>]).<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Starting from two systems that didn't actually share anything, Proto-Nahuatl swapped a previous 2p.sg prefix pa- to ti-, and the changed the form of the 3p.sg. prefix pu- to ye-, and Mahgrib swapped 1p '- to n-, and <i>voilá: </i>the systems align. </span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In conclusion, the pronoun system that Stubbs compares with semitic is much too late for being evidence of a relation between PUA and Semitic, since it came into existence only <i>several thousand years</i> after the existence of PUA and the alleged contact between Semites, Egyptians and Uto-Aztecans. This is a case in which we can in fact show that similar pronominal paradigms have developed independently of each other. </span><br />
<h3>
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Conclusions: It’s a
no from me</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">For all these reasons, I find the proposal to be very far
from convincing. It seems to me that here, Stubbs is not at all doing the kind
of careful comparative work that he is known for. The handling of Nahuatl data
is highly problematic, with massaged translations that make words that have
virtually no semantic link falsely appear to have the same meanings, with apparently selective failure
to pay attention to segmentation and morphological analysis in the Nahuatl, and
inattention to other possible and plausible explanations even those found in his own previous work. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I should note, that since many of the reconstructions of proto-Corachol and proto-Corachol Nahuatl are my own and most of them yet unpublished, Stubbs cannot of course be faulted for not knowing or accepting them. But if anyone in the world would be equipped with enough knowledge to investigate the history of these forms in Nahuatl on their own, it is Brian Stubbs. And really, it don't seem that he has even tried to look into the immediate history of any of the Nahuatl terms he cites. He has just assumed that it was conservative. Investigating alternative explanations of one's data is of course a basic part of establishing a hypothesis in a rigorous manner. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I am not equipped to
evaluate Stubbs’ usage of the data from many of the other UA languages, nor the
Semitic or Egyptian, but given how the Nahuatl is treated, it cannot simply be assumed
that it is being handled well. I pass the baton to the next scholars to check how he handles the languages of their expertise, both Uto-Aztecan and Afro-Asiatic.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">J. S. Gould also showed us that we all as scholars are prone
to the error of confirmation bias. Dearly held beliefs, whether religious,
political or theoretical, are likely to color our interpretation of data and
dull our critical sense about our own conclusions. I think as a discipline, historical
linguistics, because it relies on our ability to see intricate patterns that
others have not yet seen, is more prone to being influenced by our biases in interpretations than
most other kinds of science. Really, I think historical linguistics is perhaps
more of an art, though an art that should be approached with a scientific
mindset. This proneness to confirmation bias of course no less affects me as an non-theist scholar with a distinct set of ideas about what happened in prehistoric Mesoamerica, than it does people of other diverse persuasions and ideas. But this is why these kinds of scholarly endeavors have to stand and fall on the evaluation of empirical data by people with different biases: we are all entitled to our interpretations, but no one is entitled to their own facts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">What would be needed for a proposal like this to be convincing to me? First of all
the question is, how much will be left once experts in different other languages involved weed out the infelicitous examples as I have done here. This sample suggests that quite little would be left after such a pass-through. But the next version of this proposal should also take some steps to remedy the basic methodological flaws:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -18pt;">I would very much prefer non-linguistic (that is
archaeological or genetic) corroboration of ancient trans-atlantic contact before I would
entertain the hypothesis of contact between Uto-Aztecan and ancient Afroasiatic
languages as a reasonable explanation of likenesses between the languages. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -18pt;">I would
want a much more thorough description of the proposed borrowings, including
vowels. Uto-Aztecans would have heard the semitic words with vowels, and
borrowed them with vowels. So it is simply not possible to simply ignore the
vowels as Stubbs does (exept when he finds one that accidentally fits). I would
expect systematic vowel patterns for verbs, nouns etc. Also forms with partial
matches, where only two of three consonants match, cannot be allowed.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -18pt;">I would want attention paid to chronology. When
did the supposed borrowings take place? Already before proto-Uto-Aztecan? In
that case all proposed borrowings must be reconstructible to </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -18pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -18pt;">PUA and to which ever layer of Afro-Asiatic or
Semitic one believes was spoken at that period. It is not reasonable to cherry
pick forms from the individual daughter languages and claim that they are
retentions when the may as well be innovations (such retentions can only be
posited after the relationship is established).</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -18pt;">As Chris Rogers’ points out a convincing
proposal would in fact have much fewer correspondence pairs, of much higher
quality, and preferably, they would be paradigmatically related. For example, what
is closest to appear convincing for example is the pronominal forms, where the
n, t- y- pattern looks highly intriguing (until you remember that the first
person n- is pan-American and realize the y- doesn’t fit).</span></li>
</ul>
<!--[if !supportLists]--><br />
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One thing that makes me uncomfortable is the
fact that Stubbs worked on this simultaneously with working on his catalogue of
Uto-Aztecan reconstructions. I cannot help but worry that the reconstructions
of UA forms there, may be subtly compromised by Stubbs unconsciously trying to
make them fit with his Semitic data. I will have to use it with a degree of apprehension in the future.</span></span><br />
<h3>
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Texts Cited/Mentioned:</span></span></h3>
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Elzinga, Dirk. 2016. "Review of Exploring the Explanatory Power of Semitic and Egyptian in Uto-Aztecan" in BYU Studies Quarterly. 55(4):172-176</li>
<li>Rogers, Chris. 2019. “A Review of the Afro-Asiatic: Uto-Aztecan Proposal” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, Vol. 28, 258-267</li>
<li>Robertson, John S. 2017. "Exploring Semitic and Egyptian in Uto-Aztecan Languages".</li>
<li><i>Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship</i> 25: 103-116</li>
<li>Stubbs, Brian D. 2015. <a href="https://www.academia.edu/31704574/Exploring_the_Explanatory_Power_of_Semitic_and_Egyptian_in_Uto-Aztecan" target="_blank">Exploring the Explanatory Power of Semitic and Egyptian in Uto-Aztecan</a>. Grover Publications. </li>
<li>Stubbs, Brian D. 2011. Uto-aztecan: a comparative vocabulary. By Brian D. Stubbs. Blanding, Utah: Rocky Mountain Books and Publications</li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="line-height: 107%;"></span>Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-37358716133792392982019-09-06T16:20:00.001-07:002019-09-06T16:20:41.885-07:00Maestriah Ipan Totlahtol: The world's first MA program taught entirely in Nahuatl<b>“<a href="https://www.uv.mx/iie/files/2013/02/Tekipanolismachiyotl_1pan_Tzonkolihkan.pdf" target="_blank">In ichikawaltilis in masewalnemilistli tlen powi Anawak ipan Weyitlamachtiloyan in ik tlahtolkuepalistli iwan in tlahtolihkuilolistli ika masewaltlahtolmeh</a>”</b><br />
<br />
"the strengthening of indigenous American lifeways in the University through translation, and writing in indigenous languages" (Miguel Figueroa Saavedra/Rafael Nava Vite)<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_oP4_ziYW6i4WKET2x78duWrwAcPdF8ZUAUBtJymtMWERhoV_45j5K7fUnuzJZpSgDOlzfcvIkHYYrREVnCryVxoAYWmqHQJgde2ES7i85rk9szCOAw_mXVOXC89bpz8EtoD9edbL3EU/s1600/UVI+tequila.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="500" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_oP4_ziYW6i4WKET2x78duWrwAcPdF8ZUAUBtJymtMWERhoV_45j5K7fUnuzJZpSgDOlzfcvIkHYYrREVnCryVxoAYWmqHQJgde2ES7i85rk9szCOAw_mXVOXC89bpz8EtoD9edbL3EU/s320/UVI+tequila.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Tequila Campus if the UVI, <br />
where the Nawatl MA-program will be based.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
In this blogpost, I describe an exciting development that will definitely have a major impact on the future of the Nahuatl language. At the <a href="http://www.sinmuros.com.mx/noticias/regional/14422/trabaja-uvi-para-implementar-maestr-a-en-la-sede-de-tequila.html" target="_blank">Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural </a>(UVI, the intercultural university branch of the University of Veracruz) next academic year will see the initiation of a MA degree program in Nahua Language and Culture, taught entirely in Nahuatl (or nawatl as they write it in the UVI).<br />
<br />
The program is called <i>Maestriah Ipan Totlahtol Iwan Tonemilis</i>, and is accepting applications from Nahuatl-speaking students with BA degrees o begin studies in February 2020. Here is a <a href="https://www.uv.mx/mlcn/2019/09/06/maestriah-ipan-totlahtol-iwan-tonemilis-mtt-maestria-en-lengua-y-cultura-nahua-mlcn/" target="_blank">link to the call for applications</a>.<br />
<br />
In 2013, I did field work at the UVI interviewing students and teachers and observing the ongoing practices of language revitalization in the university, and I have been peripherally involved as an occasional adviser for certain questions of curriculum development as the MA program has been designed. The MA program is part of a broader project to strengthen the presence of indigenous languages in higher education in the UVI. <a href="http://www.anuies.mx/noticias_ies/uv-nica-institucin-que-recibe-tesis-en-lengua-materna" target="_blank">The UV has already been the first and this far only Mexican University to accept BA theses written entirely in Nahuatl</a>, but now it is planning to make it a requirement for the students of the new MA program to work in the language.<br />
<br />
Veracruz is the Mexican state with the highest dialectal diversity of Nahuatl. There are three completely distinct dialect areas (Veracruz, Zongolica, Isthmus) and several divergent dialects. It also has one of the largest Nahuatl speaking populations numbering in the hundreds of thousands - and it has the highest rates of monolingual speakers. The UVI has regional campuses in the three Nahua regions (and one in the Totonac speaking region).<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6rLgM01Jw0rugS3jKode7TRHGl8b8aqBAv_9B31-YxHsKVfTgUs6sxRkceVh3Fh9IhfLvkRgU7N7YbqjjEfDAHipJSsBVKlY94Df7bTvPCZ5O33RRnur3TuH_MlPBNW1qNrpEIEXATew/s1600/uvi-3+momahctihkeh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1217" data-original-width="700" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6rLgM01Jw0rugS3jKode7TRHGl8b8aqBAv_9B31-YxHsKVfTgUs6sxRkceVh3Fh9IhfLvkRgU7N7YbqjjEfDAHipJSsBVKlY94Df7bTvPCZ5O33RRnur3TuH_MlPBNW1qNrpEIEXATew/s320/uvi-3+momahctihkeh.jpg" width="184" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Students and faculty at the UVI <br />
have been at the forefront for demanding <br />
equal education rights for <br />
nahua youths.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The program will offer courses in Nahuatl orthography and grammar, in Nahua culture and history, and in investigative methods among other things - all taught in the language, and with mostly Nahuatl-language literature.<br />
<br />
<h4>
This MA program is really exceptional and important for several reasons: </h4>
First of all, in Mexico an elsewhere indigenous language and culture has usually been taught only as a subject - but the teaching itself is normally done in the majority language. In a haphazard ways some individual teachers have used indigenous languages as media of instruction when they are highly proficient themselves and have had students who are dominant in the indigenous language, but there have been very few experiments with using an indigenous languages as medium of instruction in organized systematic ways. So this is in itself a major step in helping not just Nahuatl, but all indigenous languages to work towards becoming equal languages with a full range of uses in the society where they are spoken.<br />
<br />
Secondly, the last time there was an intellectual tradition producing scholarly works written in the Nahuatl language was in the 16th century. The program will necessarily initiate a completely new intellectual tradition in Nahuatl, producing vast amounts of texts about many different subjects, and it will create a class of Nahuatl intellectuals who are able to work entirely in the language. I do not doubt that this will contribute significantly to producing a strong cultural revival in Nahua communities, as Nahua people will become able to talk about their own culture and future in new ways.<br />
<br />
Thirdly, it will be a big push for Mexican indigenous language education in general - it will set the bar much higher than it has been untill now for which kind of public programs can be offered in indigenous languages. It will be a new source of highly educated indigenous skilled workers who can teach, interpret, translate, and offer language based services inside and outside their own communities. Hopefully similar programs will be created in other regions and for other indigenous communities.<br />
<br />
Fourth, it will definitely produce new dynamics of linguistic change for the Nahuatl language as a whole. The Nahuatl variety used by the UVI MA program will incorporate traits from the different varieties and create a new koinéization process as speakers interact with eachothers' dialects. I have already witnessed this process in Tequila as speakers of the divergent variety spoken in <a href="http://nahuatlstudies.blogspot.dk/2014/07/notes-on-ixhuatlancillo-nahuatl.html" target="_blank">Ixhuatlancillo</a> adopted language traits from the more populous dialects of the Zongolica highlands. The materials I have seen this far use many traits from the Huasteca dialect, but presents a mixture of traits from the different areas. It will be very interesting to observe how traits will spread between the regions, and how new registers are created.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhthQMJccQ831p2GALvmp65s0Z6HNZexw8LL8y1i11ceuLm_NaUUK5tNkvyI7J-T-5l0UZo1_p_wWnsBFn5a4FX_yyz4keILlcfZyevOfI1q0rjMLsLbls_jv00o5w8WxRbgnifCEoR0_Y/s1600/P1020825.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhthQMJccQ831p2GALvmp65s0Z6HNZexw8LL8y1i11ceuLm_NaUUK5tNkvyI7J-T-5l0UZo1_p_wWnsBFn5a4FX_yyz4keILlcfZyevOfI1q0rjMLsLbls_jv00o5w8WxRbgnifCEoR0_Y/s640/P1020825.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Classroom in the Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural in Tequila, <br />
where a group of students (most of whom are Nahuatl speakers) <br />
are presenting work about the local agricultural practices in the language. <br />
Presumably this kind of class will also take place in the new MA program.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-18787886511991803902018-12-25T02:59:00.001-08:002020-08-22T22:20:55.161-07:00Was the Voynich manuscript written in Nahuatl? <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfnHpntpqhidWGPiLt4iclwE0EbAeF_mo4lvCydonHoKzCWQ5Tdko-D7FcuLqjBwcdHBUJhVkeNRCiQjmvcsTFdS6hhdrH6GGkK0zJbM7XVRBC6q_wK8byEB6drqQhDgWAONYPDJNBgTc/s1600/2000px-Voynich_manuscript_excerpt.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1586" data-original-width="1600" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfnHpntpqhidWGPiLt4iclwE0EbAeF_mo4lvCydonHoKzCWQ5Tdko-D7FcuLqjBwcdHBUJhVkeNRCiQjmvcsTFdS6hhdrH6GGkK0zJbM7XVRBC6q_wK8byEB6drqQhDgWAONYPDJNBgTc/s320/2000px-Voynich_manuscript_excerpt.svg.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Excerpt of the text from the Voynich Codex<br />
showing the odd script.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Recently a number of papers by a group of botanists from Purdue University have proposed that the enigmatic Voynich manuscript which has so far resisted decipherment was written in Nahuatl in the 16th century.<br />
<br />
The Voynich manuscript is a codex written on 15th century vellum paper, which clearly includes botanical illustrations, but also a number of baffling illustrations that seem to be cosmological as well as maps. The pictures are accompanied by writing in a mysterious script that has been subject to multiple analyses and decipherment attempts.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In this blogpost, I give my impression of the linguistics of the proposed decipherment of the Voynich manuscript as a kind of Nahuatl.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1dpxtxSAduG72P2sptG_OgZF1PCZrJVbeNig985-tjhuSWJ-AmUsSKHoTc92QpMFshIWYmw9Dv6TEmqyVCn1TfRJSzT73WIIK6xhAd3IPi7E2rQhjsXWBx6poIqROCP9vzqg3pklpBNY/s1600/papaloquilitl+badianus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="298" data-original-width="350" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1dpxtxSAduG72P2sptG_OgZF1PCZrJVbeNig985-tjhuSWJ-AmUsSKHoTc92QpMFshIWYmw9Dv6TEmqyVCn1TfRJSzT73WIIK6xhAd3IPi7E2rQhjsXWBx6poIqROCP9vzqg3pklpBNY/s320/papaloquilitl+badianus.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Excerpt from the 16th century Nahuatl language<br />
herbal Codex Badianus showing the similarity of the illustrations<br />
(Actually, I think the Badianus has much better illustrations.)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The scholars who have advanced the proposal that the codex is written in a form of Nahuatl are Arthur Tucker and Rexford Talbert and Jules Janick. They published their 2013 proposal titled "A <i>Preliminary Analysis of the Botany, Zoology, and Mineralogy of the Voynich Manuscript</i> " in <a href="http://cms.herbalgram.org/herbalgram/issue100/hg100-feat-voynich.html?ts=1453983736&signature=a12184795c35716628c4a4072c5929c6&ts=1517678665&signature=c263ea01cd5513250b96e442ea0c32d2" target="_blank">HerbalGram, the Journal of the American Botanical Council</a>. With additional material published at <a href="https://hort.purdue.edu/voynich/" target="_blank">their institutional deposititory</a>.<br />
<br />
Now, in 2018, Janick and Tucker published a book titled "<a href="https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319772936" target="_blank">Unraveling the Voynich</a>" on Springer Press, which presents the entire argument in favor of seeing the Voynich manuscript as a Mexican codex, written largely in Nahuatl - with some Spanish and Taino mixed in.<br />
<br />
<br />
<h4>
<b>The Codex: </b></h4>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt-6P9OZjhg8bB3Jr-zvnyb_845sr9prMkvG2V4kpfHYKDijJuVl1q5i3Wx_uI2SGEOBUG4vv8weHeEl7si66qXdeNE2EGfOyANckQQcDQKVWwCZPl2IQuGpjL52pAY22KZCULLvYqmTw/s1600/folio+9r+voynich.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="741" data-original-width="529" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt-6P9OZjhg8bB3Jr-zvnyb_845sr9prMkvG2V4kpfHYKDijJuVl1q5i3Wx_uI2SGEOBUG4vv8weHeEl7si66qXdeNE2EGfOyANckQQcDQKVWwCZPl2IQuGpjL52pAY22KZCULLvYqmTw/s320/folio+9r+voynich.PNG" width="228" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Folio 9r of the Voynich Manuscript <br />
showing a plant with odd shaped leaves.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The codex has 240 pages, some of which are wide fold-out pages. Analysis of the parchment has shown it to be from the early 15th century, made from calf skin. Most of the contents are illustrations of plants with small texts written in an odd script. Other pages are astrological charts, populated with little nude ladies who bathe and shower in odd tubs connected with pipes.<br />
<br />
T<span style="font-family: inherit;">he first known owner was Georg Baresch a 17t century alchemist in Prague. Other owners seem to have been Emperor Rudolph II, Jesuit scholar and self-proclaimed decipherer of the egyptian hieroglyphs Athanasius Kircher. When the Jesuit society decided to sell the manuscript it was bought by Lithuanian bibliophile Wilfrid Voynich after whom it is named. Today it is housed in the Beinecke Library at Yale University where it is catalogued as <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">"Beinecke MS 408", where it has been digitized and put online for anyone to inspect (located here: </span></span><span style="color: #222222;"><a href="https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3519597">https://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3519597</a></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">)</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
All of the pages have writing in the odd script, and in spite of a host of the world's quirkiest minds working to decipher it, it has still not been read.<br />
<br />
Here is a chart of the symbols (from Wikipedia) - the correspondence with the Latin alphabet is only to be able to name each glyph with letters from A to B:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_YucwwlxgZUl90gVqosNZH0ew1mzyShP9F7gCWt_k91-YOZqZilv0uUtQD5drwFE5U4vVlj8St6R-TLaRqwpGNNvc_cS92u9T6PWEgFo7hyphenhyphen53wxZq5jCpOa2re1DWCJ5gQqEIGIlWCX8/s1600/voynich+letters+from+wikipedia.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="146" data-original-width="792" height="115" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_YucwwlxgZUl90gVqosNZH0ew1mzyShP9F7gCWt_k91-YOZqZilv0uUtQD5drwFE5U4vVlj8St6R-TLaRqwpGNNvc_cS92u9T6PWEgFo7hyphenhyphen53wxZq5jCpOa2re1DWCJ5gQqEIGIlWCX8/s640/voynich+letters+from+wikipedia.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
As mentioned the mysterious manuscript has been scrutinized by many of the world's quirkiest minds - the same type of mind that would spend a career seeking to prove that Basque or Burushaski are Indo-European languages - and they have produced an amazing gamut of different proposals: From codes and ciphers, or a hoax, or shorthand Latin, or glossolalia, or an East Asian language, and now, Nahuatl.<br />
<br />
But most of these odd proposals have not been published as presumably(?) peer-reviewed edited volumes by Springer, so the Nahuatl proposal does merit serious attention. Especially given the fact that no Nahuatl specialists have been involved in the decipherment.<br />
<br />
<h4>
The Argument for Nahuatl: </h4>
There are three main arguments used for identifying the manuscript as written in Nahuatl:<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>The herbological part of the codex has similarities to Mexican herbological codices produced in the mid 16th century, and the botanists argue that many of the plants can be identified as new world species. And that a map of a city can be identified as "angelopolis" which they identify as the city of Puebla (de los Ángeles) in the state of Puebla. </li>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUsqnLz6qT7rwdaHgoNFA95WM_gSledbjl_YatqaVPJeORHhCghDphY9rp7WRGnI03-lNZFVSbhZQGKnzfuOC42zGyIN4dLcPxY_6H_1AgTI2JuYv7BkDyCKKfGCFyHe-FL1wF60Vb3AI/s1600/tlanequilis.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="51" data-original-width="238" height="42" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUsqnLz6qT7rwdaHgoNFA95WM_gSledbjl_YatqaVPJeORHhCghDphY9rp7WRGnI03-lNZFVSbhZQGKnzfuOC42zGyIN4dLcPxY_6H_1AgTI2JuYv7BkDyCKKfGCFyHe-FL1wF60Vb3AI/s200/tlanequilis.PNG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> The proposed tl-letter looks like the first letter in</span><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"> this word <i style="text-align: left;">tlanequilis </i></span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="text-align: left;">from </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="text-align: left;">a</span></span><span style="font-size: xx-small; text-align: left;">n 18th-century </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="text-align: left;">Nahuatl testament. </span></span><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;"> </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<li>The character <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg15thAFD02Foj7OkbVqWV20yIeNuafHSjBKoNqaediq7XWMl_B-cu1S30EQB33IG6wAjOskdhj2SVPF06L5002bapCP40KIaZnGOf03Qh3u3bedA1MdpNJzf5bhFL8GWkUbeGnP3bE6Bw/s1600/tl+glyph.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="38" data-original-width="26" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg15thAFD02Foj7OkbVqWV20yIeNuafHSjBKoNqaediq7XWMl_B-cu1S30EQB33IG6wAjOskdhj2SVPF06L5002bapCP40KIaZnGOf03Qh3u3bedA1MdpNJzf5bhFL8GWkUbeGnP3bE6Bw/s1600/tl+glyph.PNG" /></a> which is very frequent in the manuscript, is similar to a ligature character found in some Mexican codices representing the Nahuatl consonant tl. (It also sort of looks like the way I write capital H when I write my signature, and like how many people write a double l) </li>
<li>The proponents argue that some of the plants can be identified by Nahuatl names, and claim that they can read some of the text in Nahuatl, using their identification of the glyphs with Nahuatl phonemes. </li>
</ol>
I will look primarily at the third of these arguments, both because this is the actual claim to a decipherment. Arguments one and two can be true even if the language is not Nahuatl. All claims to decipherment of course rest on the degree to which they actually allow us to read the texts written in the script that they are claiming to decipher.<br />
<br />
The main argument of the book is that the book contains elements of Nahuatl and new world flora, that it contains inspiration from the Jewish Kabbalah (which they claim was practiced among Franciscans in the New World), and that it refers to the city of Puebla de los Angeles which was founded by the Franciscan friar Toribio Benavente "Motolinia".<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, an odd chapter by the linguist Fernando Moreira, looks at the readings and compares them with different Mesoamerican languages, finding that it doesn't really match any of them - and then proposes an undescribed Mesoamerican language which he calls "<i>acolhuacatlatolli</i>" (the Nahuatl word for "language of the Acolhua"). The Acolhuas were the Nahuatl-otomí ethnic group that lived in Texcoco. We know their language very well since most of what we today call "Classical Nahuatl" is in fact the Acolhua dialect of Nahuatl. Moreira nevertheless, oddly suggests that it could have been a form of Popoloca (which is what Nahuas called all the languages they couldn't understand including at first Spanish).<br />
<br />
So while the general argument of the book is that the language is a form of mixed Nahuatl-Spanish, the chapter by Moreira argues that it is not, and then introduces an unknown and undescribed language as a sort of <i>deus ex machina </i>that allows them to maintain the main parts of their hypothesis when the evidence is shown not to support it. In the rest of this blog post, I will argue based on the original proposal that it is Nahuatl or has a Nahuatl element, and not based on the alternative hypothesis that it represents an undescribed Mesoamerican language, nor the possibility that it represents a language spoken by space aliens who built the Mexican pyramids.<br />
<br />
<h4>
The Problems: </h4>
Ok, I am already going into the problems with the proposal. The most nefarious problem is that it is pseudo-rigorous - that is it, it works hard to give the appearance of being rigorous scholarship while in fact it is not at all. They cite lots of serious scholarship, and mostly they cite it correctly, but nevertheless all the citations are used only for circumstantial evidence. As soon as we look at the concrete examples and the readings they are unsupported by this evidence and rests on pure speculation - often uninformed speculation.<br />
<br />
For me the best problem, best because it is so solid that it clearly invalidates the entire endeavor, is the fact that none of the proposed readings are valid - hardly a single one of the proposed words actually read like a bona fide Nahuatl word.<br />
<br />
Many of them are completely alien to Nahua phonological structure. And to be honest I am surprised that the scholars haven't found it to be odd that a few of the letters are so frequent that they appear in almost all words - for example more than half of the proposed plant names (and names of the nude ladies they call "nymphs") start with the letter that they read as /a/ - that would be very odd in a natural language, unless the a was a very frequent grammatical prefix (which it isn't in Nahuatl).<br />
<br />
<b>The readings:</b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh707_iqIvH2UI5q2zYvA53_dy0bfoPQUO0HBqMhcGJQOSwuE6sET1tvKuM2P10yG0m6xe8dvkDAVrOOGpJk3LVqX-JxOmqmehDLP6hWSy7s4Y4XkFpU-K2UIZ8nsuD5EytQEjkMM9jEmI/s1600/proposed+latin+equivalent.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="795" data-original-width="288" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh707_iqIvH2UI5q2zYvA53_dy0bfoPQUO0HBqMhcGJQOSwuE6sET1tvKuM2P10yG0m6xe8dvkDAVrOOGpJk3LVqX-JxOmqmehDLP6hWSy7s4Y4XkFpU-K2UIZ8nsuD5EytQEjkMM9jEmI/s400/proposed+latin+equivalent.PNG" width="142" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Table from Janick & Tucker 2018:141</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><br /></b>
Janick and Tucker produce a full set of proposed readings for the voynichese symbols given in two tables on page 141-142. I reproduce the first part of the table here to the right (non-underlined Latin equivalents are "tentative").<br />
<br />
Following the tradition of comparing letter frequencies in decipherment proposals, the table also supplies the frequency of each symbol in the Voynich Manuscript and the frequency of the proposed Latin equivalent in a randomly selected Nahuatl manuscript.<br />
<br />
It is odd that the proposed readings include both signs for single phonemes as well as sings for syllables câ (we are not told what the circumflex above the â is supposed to mean? Does it represent a saltillo?) and yâ/hâ (hâ is not actually a possible Nahuatl syllable).<br />
<br />
It also seems that Janick and Tucker fail to realize that the letter u found after c and h in classical Nahuatl texts is not actually a vowel, but represent the sound of the consonant /w/ or the lip rounding in the phoneme /kw/. This is basic stuff, and why it makes no sense to seek to make a decipherment using a language that one does not in fact understand (Champollion knew this, and that was why he spent so much time studying Coptic and other Semitic languages).<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA85IGk-mSs1QMR-kS0Mq_PFUZqgNdY-AHFZXvl_RBf999KEoHdp2TKUjFJo4OR5M50-Ft_UmG5qagkjorG06Yd5yDEOuP3UexIv1tQvS6Lt6HQ4ZCMivAIOAX87rRRrbASpOzqzio2bs/s1600/nashtlibig.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="150" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA85IGk-mSs1QMR-kS0Mq_PFUZqgNdY-AHFZXvl_RBf999KEoHdp2TKUjFJo4OR5M50-Ft_UmG5qagkjorG06Yd5yDEOuP3UexIv1tQvS6Lt6HQ4ZCMivAIOAX87rRRrbASpOzqzio2bs/s200/nashtlibig.PNG" width="80" /></a>Here are some of their readings of the names of plants.<br />
<br />
First the one that seems to be their <i>clou</i>: the reading of the name of a cactus-like plant as <N<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Ā</span>SHTLI>. They argue that this reading resembles the Nahuatl name of the fruit of the nopal cactus which is <i>n</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>ōchtli. </i>And sure, it does look similar to that word. The -<i>tli </i>ending looks like the absolutive suffix, and the root </span>N<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Ā</span>SH is superficially similar to <i>n</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>ōch-, </i>and the reading follows Nahua phonological rules. Nevertheless, a and o are different vowels in Nahuatl, and sh (x) and ch are different consonants - so only one out of three letters in the root of the proposed reading actually match, the others are "near matches" at best.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Other readings fare a lot worse. Look for example at these images proposals:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"></span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4qaJ4JesMN_a54rjqWi6tyXW_rqhuItMMUmsuXzOvKMicWzBeg0j9hfQWAeCydOY0dKSbx8UWAF1SspqYsYpyIertlAFiUvtqmOzgUBS2vN1a7_ZtNTIWQ4d7RGmUPu8nrjoT3RSy6g0/s1600/voynich+readings.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="287" data-original-width="549" height="334" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4qaJ4JesMN_a54rjqWi6tyXW_rqhuItMMUmsuXzOvKMicWzBeg0j9hfQWAeCydOY0dKSbx8UWAF1SspqYsYpyIertlAFiUvtqmOzgUBS2vN1a7_ZtNTIWQ4d7RGmUPu8nrjoT3RSy6g0/s640/voynich+readings.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
As is known to any serious student of Nahuatl, Nahuatl does not allow consonant clusters in the beginning or end of syllables, and also does not allow clusters of more than two consonants in the middle of words. Words like <i>ichpchi </i>or <i>itlmamcho </i>or <i>itlmaca </i>or <i>itlmchi </i>are not possible words in any dialect of Nahuatl.<br />
<br />
It seems reasonable to expect more of a decipherment than for it to produce one near match and then a load of meaningless gibberish.<br />
<br />
Some of the syllables or even sequences of two syllables that occur frequently in their readings do have potential readings - but this is only natural given that Nahuatl has a rather small phoneme inventory and therefore not many different potential syllables. For example they note that <i>m</i><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>ā </i>means "hand" and <i>cui</i> means "to take" and <i>m</i></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><i>āca</i> means "to give" - but given how short these monsyllabic sequences are and how frequent the elements are, it is simply a coincidence. When there aren't more letters, and the letters have been assigned Nahuatl equivalents, some sequences in the reading are bound to look like some sequences in the vast vocabulary of Nahuatl. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">The chance of random matches gets even worse when they admit the possibility of readings in Spanish and Taino and of weird mixtures of the two (unlike anything found in any colonial Document). Why for example, would a Nahua or Nahuatl speaker, given that Nahuas were expert cultivators of agave, use the Taino word for agave "maguey" (in the mangled spelling <MAHUEOI>) and not the Nahuatl word <i>metl</i>? </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<b>A Test: </b><br />
<br />
The best way to assess a proposed decipherment is of course by testing it on a piece of text and see what it produces, and if it is intelligible.<br />
<br />
I tried such a test on a piece of text from the top of folio 28v, and below is the result. It is utterly unintelligible, it has only the vaguest resemblance to Nahuatl - and that is only because of the strong association between the /TL/ phoneme and Nahuatl. The phonology is alien to Nahuatl, allowing for example consonant clusters in the beginning and end of words, and failing to respect the Nahua phonological rules of assimilation. Nahuatl is of course a language that has few phonemes and a lot of a's and a lot of tl's and cu's and hu's and so does this proposed reading - but that is only because the decipherers on purpose have assigned those readings to the most frequent letters. Furthermore these letters are twice as frequent in this "language" than they are in Nahuatl according to their own count - for example Nahuatl only has the frequency 4,7% for tl, whereas the Voynich has the frequency 10%. So what we get is a text that superficially looks like Nahuatl, but only to someone who doesn't actually know any Nahuatl.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, anyone who knows any dialect of Nahuatl will be able to see that the below is not Nahuatl, and that only certain words resemble Nahuatl because they have the sounds and endings that are frequent in nahuatl such as -tli and -câ (why do the decipherers add the ^ symbol above the a in the câ letter? They never explain what it is supposed to represent).<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_SuHJlxD3EHdWMn8n1zoaXsKwP1a4599UNgtcxv16lZanIsx_jH693VCQPPuPYplCkEyiv-0s6CHIMLqanJZBlSL3b-gvtNofDc7Typrwsmz8VNaGtEguUmBGtoItqICtntsVitz-ct8/s1600/voynich+text.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="171" data-original-width="910" height="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_SuHJlxD3EHdWMn8n1zoaXsKwP1a4599UNgtcxv16lZanIsx_jH693VCQPPuPYplCkEyiv-0s6CHIMLqanJZBlSL3b-gvtNofDc7Typrwsmz8VNaGtEguUmBGtoItqICtntsVitz-ct8/s640/voynich+text.PNG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Following the proposed decipherment this text reads:<br />
TLMCÂ CUAALL MAE HUMOLL MAHUMI CUATLI CHIMAEI<br />
ITLMACÂI CUATLO MICHI CUATLMAE MAE TLMI CUATLMAECHI MAEA<br />
MAE MACÂ MI MALL</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<h4>
Could it be Nahuatl or inspired by Nahuatl?</h4>
The language of the proposed reading clearly is not Nahuatl. It has only the most superficial structural resemblance to Nahuatl, even if we were to admit the possibility of undescribed dialects. When we decide to read the most frequent signs of the script as their most frequent Nahuatl counterparts the text naturally comes to resemble Nahuatl. But since it violates the phonological rules expected of Nahuatl, and is entirely void of any recognizable grammatical structure from Nahuatl (we can't even see differences between verbs and nouns, much less actual grammatical morphology) this can safely be discarded.<br />
<br />
A further argument against the plausibility of the background story of the proposal is historical: In mid-16th century Mexico anyone who would be able to produce a codex would also have been able to write it in proper Nahuatl - even Spanish friars (this was a requirement for being a priest in Mexico at this time). So, OK maybe they would want to invent a new script so that nobody could read what they had written about all those little naked ladies - but one would of course assume that they would then write intelligible Nahuatl. Otherwise why bother?<br />
<br />
The <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis, </i>also known as the Codex Badianus is an actual herbal manuscript which is known to have been written by Nahua scholar Martin de la Cruz in 1552 and later translated into Latin by another Nahua scholar, Juan Badiano. Nahua people in the 16th century were not only able to write intelligible Nahuatl, they were also able to translate it into Latin. And to boot the illustrations are much better, and allows easy identification of the different species - the Voynich plant drawings come across as crude by comparison. </span></span><br />
<i style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i>
Finally, as I read the example it bothered me that there is a certain repetitiveness in the deciphered text, the same letters seem to occur very frequently in combinations with specific other letters. This is not usually the case for natural languages - but very frequent in something like glossolalia of the baby-speech "lalala balala malalaba"- type.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi75X8V5GJbhHVmibgolKHslNuyLooz1r8b5-pjlevsWukjOndMulkBEgxtqxS-X0PGAOszBB4hOiGPG0x4IDvVeKb0ITP-eu-beeFtOu80YDTmiYW9rJ_UpTJTTGMqZ0-SdfOXM7TPchg/s1600/folio+80r+detail+voynich.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="194" data-original-width="1025" height="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi75X8V5GJbhHVmibgolKHslNuyLooz1r8b5-pjlevsWukjOndMulkBEgxtqxS-X0PGAOszBB4hOiGPG0x4IDvVeKb0ITP-eu-beeFtOu80YDTmiYW9rJ_UpTJTTGMqZ0-SdfOXM7TPchg/s640/folio+80r+detail+voynich.PNG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Some of the little naked ladies, these ones from folio 80r. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<h4>
Bibliography:</h4>
<ul>
<li>Janick, J., & Tucker, A. O. (2018). <i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Unraveling the Voynich Codex</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">. Springer.</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-60414058546509416782018-07-24T18:31:00.003-07:002018-12-27T04:04:31.919-08:00Meat and Mushrooms: Food words in Nahuan and Coracholan<br />
Food related words make for fun etymology, especially in Mesoamerican languages because Mesoamerican food is so delicious. I have previously dealt with the Nahuatl etymologies of the words for salt, avocado, chocolate and cocoa.<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;">In this blog post, I will look at some food words in Nahuan and Coracholan noting what seems to be an intricate web of semantic changes between the languages. The words show changes of meaning that cross between general and specific terms, and between animal- and plant-based foods. </span><br />
<br />
It is a common thing in the world's languages that words for food products shift their meanings to other foods, and that words for general types of food change their meaning to become specific, or words for specific foods become general. This is of course because we have a tendency to think in terms of staple foods, so that the name of whatever kind of food we eat the most tends to become the general term for food , or conversely, we tend to use the general term "food" to refer to the specific kind of food we eat the most (for example in Danish the general word for food "mad" when used as a count noun ("en mad") refers specifically to an open-faced ryebread sandwhich) .<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white;">In the history of English and Nordic languages we see for example that the English word "meat" is related to the Nordic word "mat" meaning "food", and that the word "meal" is related to the Nordic word "mel" meaning "flour", and that "flæsk", the Nordic cognate of the English word "flesh", means "pork". When I inquired for similar changes in the Historical linguistics Facebook-group </span><span style="background-color: white;">it was </span><span style="background-color: white;">pointed out that the Semitic root</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1d2129;"> </span><span style="color: #1d2129;"><i>lħm </i>probably meant "basic food", since the meanings of its modern cognates are "meat" in Arabic, "cow" in EthioSemitic, "fish" in Modern South Arabic [edit: thanks to Whyght], and "bread" in Hebrew. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1d2129;">Now, take a look at these sets of words in Nahuatl and reconstructed Corachol:</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1d2129;">Nahuatl: </span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1d2129;"><i>nakatl </i>"meat"</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1d2129;"><i>nanakatl </i>"mushroom"</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1d2129;"><i>xonakatl </i>"onion"</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1d2129;"><i>yetl/etl</i> "beans"</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1d2129;"><i>nohpalitl </i>"nopal cactus" (<i>Opuntia spp.</i>)</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;">Corachol: </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i>*nakari </i>"nopal cactus"</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i>*muume </i>"beans"</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i>*wai </i>"meat"</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><i>*yekwa </i>"mushroom"</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;">At first glance we notice that the root <i>*naka</i> looks similar in Nahuan and Corachol. In Nahuatl it refers to meat but also to two kinds of foods that both have an umami-like, meaty taste and texture - namely onions and mushrooms. In Corachol the root refers to another plant with an umami-like meaty taste and texture, namely the nopal cactus. So either, the root <i>naka</i>- originally referred to meat and was then extended to refer to meaty-plants, or else it originally simply meant "meaty food" (the kind that can carry a good meal all by itself) and was then in Nahuatl changed to refer specifically to animal meat. Either of these processes seem plausible.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;">Knowing a bit about the sound changes that have operated in Nahuan and Corachol we can see one more likely cognate: In Corachol initial w- often comes from a previous *p. And in Nahuatl e often comes from a previous *<i>ai</i>, and initial y- before e often corresponds to a previous *p. Knowing this, we see that Corachol <i>wai </i>"meat" is in fact a potential cognate of Nahuan <i>yetl/etl</i> "beans". No good etymology has been proposed for the Nahuatl root <i>ye/e</i> "beans" and Nahuan is alone among the Southern Uto-Aztecan languages in not having a cognate of the root *<i>muni </i>"beans". So here it seems as if Nahuatl has changed a word *<i>pai </i>(or *pa'i) previously meaning "meat" to meaning instead "beans", and dropping the original word for beans altogether. The semantic change from "meat" to "beans" may seem implausible at first, but I swear if you ever taste a thick, salty broth of <i>ayocote </i>beans the umami is so strong that you will be willing to bet there is bacon in there. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;">The Corachol root for mushroom *<i>yekwáh</i><i> </i>seems related to the Uto-Aztecan root *<i>pakuwa </i>"mushroom" (reconstructed by Stubbs for Numic, Tepiman, Tarahumaran and Cahita). But we don't usually get the reflex y from PUA *p in Coracholan - only Nahuan seems to have y from *p. So maybe this word was loaned into Coracholan from Nahuan (where <i>yekwa </i>would be the expected reflex of *<i>pakuwa</i>, with the intermediate stage *<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>yak</i></span></span></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>ɨwa</i></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;">), and then subsequently the root was swapped for <i>nanakatl </i>in Nahuan! (this is admittedly speculative, but the pattern fits).</span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;">This would make a scheme of semantic changes something like this: </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSaszz1iUl8LsCUOzMFAFn3kz1IrmLx8hRZqvkwS7PjTA5-YYP_MjpgZg4Lfmw5-tzyzUAibNFf2QotD47jaJYx0kdPmWeFY-naAjuQw2XtKlVtZxDHMHUw82WXKGhnQEoPR7V_TDFFsM/s1600/Corachol+food+terms.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="974" height="435" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSaszz1iUl8LsCUOzMFAFn3kz1IrmLx8hRZqvkwS7PjTA5-YYP_MjpgZg4Lfmw5-tzyzUAibNFf2QotD47jaJYx0kdPmWeFY-naAjuQw2XtKlVtZxDHMHUw82WXKGhnQEoPR7V_TDFFsM/s640/Corachol+food+terms.PNG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Model 1.</b> Red is proto-forms, blue is Nahuan, and purple is Coracholan. It looks like Corachol is conservative and Nahuan innovative. (Photos from wikicommons https://commons.wikimedia.org.)</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br />But there is an alternative that may be preferable, because in the Northern Uto-Aztecan language group Numic <i>naka</i>- is the name of the bighorn sheep (which is presumably tasty). So perhaps the original meaning of <i>naka </i>was "bighorn sheep" which then in Southern Uto-Aztecan became "meat" which in Nahuatl and Corachol was extended to "meaty plants" and then in Corachol was fixed as "nopal". </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;">And guess what? It turns out that <i>wai </i>"meat" in Corachol (and <i>yetl </i>"bean in Nahuatl") which must have come from something like *pa'i, may also originally have referred to</span></span><span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"> bighorn sheep (Stubbs reconstructs <i>*pa'a</i>)</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;">! </span><br />
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<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBL4N5sHvtcMpKDFTjQITZ4p7J3Ng-wUF2bc5U-jsXk0OJnJx4GUzjdgIuaHgYmrTMccS4ck-h-G9dOCKsJTLG0sXbHrdMugOa1RYl7jrPbdMy1uRfK2b3tFOt_O0C-FmSZQDrrrVBIfY/s1600/naka+utoaztec.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="659" data-original-width="975" height="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBL4N5sHvtcMpKDFTjQITZ4p7J3Ng-wUF2bc5U-jsXk0OJnJx4GUzjdgIuaHgYmrTMccS4ck-h-G9dOCKsJTLG0sXbHrdMugOa1RYl7jrPbdMy1uRfK2b3tFOt_O0C-FmSZQDrrrVBIfY/s640/naka+utoaztec.PNG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Model 2. </b>If we accept this model, Coracholan shared the "bighorn>meat" change with Nahuan and then innovated the <i>nopal </i>meaning. The Nahuan change of <i>nakatl </i>to mean "meaty" plants would then be a subsequent unrelated, but semantically convergent, change. (Photos from wikicommons, https://commons.wikimedia.org)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;">But it is also possible that the original meaning of <i>naka</i>- was "meaty umami-tasting food", which for the Northern Uto-Aztecan hunter-gatherers came to refer proto-typically to the bighorn sheep, and came to refer to meat in Nahuan (but kept its connotation of meatiness in the words for onion and mushroom), and that it separately came to refer to the nopal cactus among the desert-dwelling Coracholan nomads. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr2eZWKiVvaAb0XBQeaHRJ0N1LdyZ0rDabfplySyoVonrueDPz7V-7hSTQTELiG0bgVeYFjBjdakqMj8NE6YHsHX6rKjqt1mqpIWWd5DcEMZqtqX699ePliQpJFwPyfBxkd5FaUlWJMgE/s1600/numic+naga.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="984" height="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr2eZWKiVvaAb0XBQeaHRJ0N1LdyZ0rDabfplySyoVonrueDPz7V-7hSTQTELiG0bgVeYFjBjdakqMj8NE6YHsHX6rKjqt1mqpIWWd5DcEMZqtqX699ePliQpJFwPyfBxkd5FaUlWJMgE/s640/numic+naga.PNG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Model 3. Here the original meaning of naka is assumed to have been meat and meaty food, and Numic (in green) is assumed to have changed this to bighorn sheep. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;">Interestingly, I have been able to observe a semantic change like this in process in Nahuatl: A couple of years ago when I was working in the Zongolica region a Nahuatl-speaking friend of mine pointed out that he was annoyed at how some people in the region had started using the word <i>to:chin</i> "rabbit" in the meaning "meat". He made fun of how they would for example say "<i>tochin de puerco</i>" (i.e. literally "rabbit of pig" ) in the meaning "pork". </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;">Am I the only one who could eat a grilled bighorn sheep with mushrooms, onions, and beans right about now?</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1d2129;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-54244866633809029342018-06-30T11:08:00.000-07:002018-07-03T18:22:12.266-07:00Salt and Whiteness: The etymology of white stuff in Nahuan<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwHlmQ4Ko_16-un8-7YnNHnQMJtjKMf9nFq2var8hlENhXsEVZs6aR8OK5vOhfQFcEenC6fFBEYg7XaFm3FWOtNy-N_0M1ImqfEsK5c3udZlfDpDk4puDFsCFeKJ3OsXsSkXuRtSzzOvA/s1600/salt.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="532" data-original-width="680" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwHlmQ4Ko_16-un8-7YnNHnQMJtjKMf9nFq2var8hlENhXsEVZs6aR8OK5vOhfQFcEenC6fFBEYg7XaFm3FWOtNy-N_0M1ImqfEsK5c3udZlfDpDk4puDFsCFeKJ3OsXsSkXuRtSzzOvA/s320/salt.PNG" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">This post arises from a conversation I had yesterday with R. Joe Campbell, who is one of the world's great Nahuatl scholars as well as an amazingly knowledgeable and kind man, whom I have had the great fortune to get to know when I lived in the US. Joe is working on a major analytical database that analyzes the morphology of all of the words in Alonso de Molina's dictionary. For that reason he is extremely interested in finding out how all of the thousands of Nahuatl words in the dictionary can best be analyzed. This often leads to interesting questions. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The question of today's debate is this: Is the Nahuatl adjective <i><span style="font-family: inherit;">ist</span></i></span><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>ā</i></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">k </span></i>that names the color white, derived from <i>istatl </i>the noun meaning "salt"; or is the noun 'salt' derived from the adjective 'white'?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The question is relevant because it has ramifications for how we understand some basic things about Nahuatl grammar. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In Nahuatl there is a clear tendency for color words to be derived from nouns that describe something with a particular color. This is of course very common in the world's languages: "orange" being an obvious example of this in English. In Nahuatl, many color names like are similarly derived. The word <i>chichiltik "</i>red" is transparently derived from the word <i>chilli "</i>chili<i>"</i>, and the color word <i>tlīltik "</i>black" is derived from the word <i>tlīlli </i>'ink/soot'. Indeed in modern Nahuatl, one can productively derive new color terms by using the suffix -<i>tik </i>which produces an adjective with the sense of "like X". So <i>nēxtik </i>"like ashes" can mean 'grey', <i>cafēntik </i>"like coffee" or <i>chocolatik </i>"like chocolate" can mean "brown". And sometimes color words are even borrowed from Spanish with the -<i>tik </i>suffix, so that <i>azultik </i>is used for 'blue' in several dialects that I have encountered. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This -<i>tik </i>suffix is generally regarded as a kind of participial form where the -k is the preterit ending describing a completed action, and the -<i>ti</i>- morpheme is related to the intransitive version of the causative (sort of like an inchoative) that means 'to become' (e.g. in <i>tlākati </i>"to be born" composed of <i>tlāka </i>"human" and -<i>ti</i>). This means, interestingly, that apparently denominal adjectives in Nahuatl are in fact deverbal, since the noun has to be "verbed" before the adjective can be derived. Many other adjectival verbs are derived from verbs using only the preterit ending -k, forexample <i>tom<span style="line-height: 107%;">āw</span>ak </i>'fat', and <i>chikāwak </i>'strong' respectively derived from the inchoative verbs <i>tom<span style="line-height: 107%;">āw</span>a </i>'to become fat' and <i>chikāwa </i>'to become strong'. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But not all denominal adjectives have the -tik ending, and nor do all color words. Notably the word for 'white' </span><i>ist</i><span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>ā</i></span></span><i>k </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">, does not, but seems to have a simple -k suffix that is added to the stem <i>ista</i>- 'salt' producing the same effect as the -<i>tik </i>suffix. Other <i>tik</i>-less adjectives are <i>xokok </i>'sour' (related to <i>xokotl </i>'fruit'), <i>kokok </i>'spicy' (related to <i>kokoa </i>'hurt'), s<i>es</i></span><i>ēk </i>'cold' (related to s<i>etl </i>"ice" or to s<i>ēwa ''be cold </i><i>)</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>.</i> This challenges us to think about how the derivational process works in these cases, where the noun does not seem to have been verbalized before derivation, but where the denominal adjective nevertheless carries the preterit marker -k. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Joe's proposal for how to deal with this is that the noun has indeed been verbalized, but that the verbalizing morpheme has been deleted. His argument goes like this: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There is another verbalizing suffix in Nahuatl which is -<i>ya</i>, and it also gives an inchoative meaning 'to become X' or 'to make x Y'. For example from the adjective </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">itztik </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">'cold' (maybe related to the noun </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">itztli </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">'obsidian'), one can derive a deadjectival verb </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">itztiya </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">'to become cold', and then one may form a participle with the preterit suffix -k so we get </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">itztiyak </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">'cold' (but in a sense of "cooled down", implying that it was hot before). There is also such a verb derived from <i>istatl </i>'salt', namely <i>istaya </i>'to become salty'. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">So what if, Joe proposes, there is a grammatical rule that allows the -<i>ya</i>- to be deleted, so that <i>itztik </i>really is a shortened form of <i>itztiyak</i>, and </span><i>ist</i><span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>ā</i></span></span><i>k </i><span style="font-family: inherit;">really is a shortened form of <i>istayak</i>. This would explain the seemingly non-verbalized adjectives derived from nouns. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">My argument is that this assumption is unnecessary, and in fact contradicted by the etymological evidence regarding the words for 'white' and 'salt' in Nahuatl. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Let me give a bit of theoretical context for my disagreement: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nahuatl is of course a Uto-Aztecan language, and to understand the history of words one should not look only at the productive derivational processes in the language, but also at other related languages to reconstruct the deep history of the language. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nahuatl did not emerge as a fully formed context-free grammatical system of generative processes that derive words through well-defined rules from a well-defined set of lexical items. Rather, it developed gradually and incrementally through phonological and grammatical alterations caused by speakers interacting with each other, borrowing from each other, and imitating each others ways of using the language. It is simply unrealistic to expect to be able to explain all vocabulary through synchronic grammatical processes. Rather we should invoke the historical process to explain the anomalies and irregularities that all languages have.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
Let me now describe how the Nahuatl words for salt and white relate to the same words in other Uto-Aztecan languages.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<u><b>Salt</b></u><br />
Nahuatl: <i>istatl</i><br />
Huichol: <i>únaa</i><br />
Cora: <i>uná</i><br />
Yaqui: <i>óna</i><br />
Tarahumara: <i>oná</i><br />
Northern Tepehuán: <i>ónai</i><br />
Shoshone:<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <i>oŋa</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here we see that all the Uto-Aztecan languages have the word 'salt' derived from a single root that can be reconstructed as *ona. Nahuatl is the only Uto-Aztecan language to have a word for salt from a different root. This is not odd of course, Nahuatl could for example have borrowed its word for 'salt' from another language, or have innovated it from some other root. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span>
<u><b>White</b></u>:<br />
Nahuatl: <i>ist</i><span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>ā</i></span></span><i>k </i><br />
Huichol: <i>tuxa</i><br />
Northern Tepehuán: <i>tóha</i><br />
Yaqui: <i>tosa'i</i><br />
Tarahumara: <i>tosakame</i><br />
Shoshone: <i>tosa</i><br />
<br />
Here Nahuatl again appears to be the odd one out, but in fact Nahuatl <i>istak </i>is cognate to the other Uto-Aztecan words for "white". What happened in Nahuatl is that when a word of the shape CVCV had the accent on the second syllable, then the vowel in the first syllable was weakened to the point of dissappearing - after which an prothetic i- was inserted infront of the consonant cluster: so Nahuatl followed this development:<i> tòsá > tsa > itsa</i>. "Oh, but that gives *<i>itsa </i>and not the desired <i>ista"</i>, I hear you object. And you are right, but when the vowel syncope produces a cluster of certain consonants, the two c<span style="font-family: inherit;">onsonants then switch places through a metathesis. This happens particularly with the cluster /ts/ which regularly metathesizes to /st/ after the syncope, perhaps to avoid confusion with the affricate phoneme /ʦ/. (Another example of this syncope with subsequent metathesis is the word for 'cave' <i>ostotl </i>which comes from Uto-Aztecan *<i>tɨso </i>through the process *<i>tɨso > tso > itso > isto > osto</i>). So while the word for salt in Nahuatl is not related to the uto-Aztecan root for salt, the word for white is related and clearly derives from the ancient root *<i>tosa</i>. Nahuatl also has another word derived from the same root, but without syncope and metathesis, namely <i>t</i></span><i>īsatl </i>'chalk'. Here we must assume that the proto language had two versions of *tosa distinguished by the placement of the accent, namely *<i>tòsá </i>"white" and *<i>tósà </i>"chalk" - the accentuated *<i>ó</i> developed into i, while the unaccentuated *ò was weakened and lost, producing the consonant cluster that subsequently underwent metathesis.<br />
<br />
On this ground alone, even though it is not a very common process in the world's languages, we can conclude that the noun meaning 'salt' in Nahuatl is derived from the adjective "white", and not the other way round. At some point speakers of Nahuatl stopped referring to salt as 'ona', and instead started calling it "white stuff". And other speakers of Nahuatl liked this new way of talking about salt so much that they all began doing it, and eventually forgot the word 'ona' had ever existed.<br />
<br />
This, however, also means that we still have to explain the -k ending, which then cannot really be considered a participial ending, as this would require the root to be verbalized.<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here comes my attempt at an explanation:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Whenever we learn a language, whether as children or adults, the main task is to observe and understand the different patterns of the language in a way that allows us to produce utterances that other speakers will understand. When we hear what others say, they can help us understand by using constructions that we have heard before, and that we can therefore be expected to understand. And when we speak we do the same to allow others to understand us. Irregularities hinder this process, and therefore we tend to over time convert irregular patterns to regular ones. This process is called analogy. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Speakers of Nahuatl have used a set of patterns to help themselves distinguish well between different parts of their language. The final segment of a word tends to give a clear hint to the listener about whether the word is a verb, a noun or something else. Nahuatl has two major open word classes: verbs and nouns (and then some minor closed word classes such as particles, and a small class of true adjectives). Because Nahuatl has very free wordorder, it is helpful to be able to recognize words as nouns or verbs by their phonological form.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Verb stems always end in a vowel, and this vowel is usually a, less frequently i, very rarely o, and never e. Most nouns end with the absolutive suffix that has the most frequent form -tl/-tli. Perfective forms, both verbal and participial (participals of cours ebeing sort of mid-way between verbs and nouns), end with -k or -ki. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In Nahuatl adjectives form an odd word class, since adjectives may be 'verby' either by being derived from verbs or by being participial forms of verbs. Others are 'nouny' and take nominal morphology (for example <i>kwalli </i>'good' which originated a nominal form of the verb 'eat', and originally meant 'edible'). And yet others are neither verby or nouny (the ones we could call "true adjectives"): for example <i>w</i><span style="line-height: 107%;">ē</span><i>we </i>'old', <i>w</i><span style="line-height: 107%;">ē</span><i>yi </i>'big'. Most adjectives however are verby participials ending in -k or -ki. This ambiguity, where a single class of words is a kind of irregularity that makes it harder for listeners to cognitively process utterances, because there is no overt mark associated with adjectives. This is the kind of situation that can cause processes of analogical change to kick in, by enforcing the dominant pattern on the irregular cases. The dominant pattern is that adjectives end in -k or -<i>ki</i>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">What I propose is therefore that the class of true adjectives was originally unmarked in the Uto-Aztecan languages, as is also the case in most of the languages today. But speakers of Nahuatl began to derive adjectives deverbally as participials creating a huge class of adjectives ending in -k. They then started gradually extending the -k pattern also to those true adjectives that originally ended in a vowel (and therefore looked verby) making them more recognizably adjective. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>ista </i>'white' became </span><i>ist</i><span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>ā</i></span></span><i>k </i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>yankwi </i>'new' became <i>yankwik </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>yeti </i>'heavy' became <i>yetik </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>koko </i>'spicy' became <i>kokok</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>xoko </i>'sour' became <i>xokok</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>yawi </i>'blue' became <i>yawik </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In processes of analogical change often the most frequently used words are the ones that are the last to become assimilated to the regular pattern. This seems to be exactly what we see in Nahuatl, as <i><span style="font-family: inherit;">w</span><span style="line-height: 107%;">ē</span>yi</i>, <i>kwalli </i>and <i>w<span style="line-height: 107%;">ē</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">we</span> </i>are among the most frequently used adjectives. Perhaps in the future they will become *<i>w</i><span style="line-height: 107%;">ē</span><i>yik</i>, *<i>kwallik </i>and *<i>w</i><span style="line-height: 107%;">ē</span><i>wek</i>. </span><br />
<br />
It is interesting to think that perhaps <i>istatl </i>is not the only noun derived from an adjective: <i>xokotl </i>'fruit' might originally have meant "something sour", and <i>yawitl </i>'blue corn' might originally have meant "something blue". There is no word *<i>kokotl </i>in Nahuatl witha meaning similar to "something spicy" (<i>kokotl </i>in fact means "pimple"), but the word for chile in Corachol and other Southern Uto-Aztecan languages is <i>kukuri </i>where the -<i>ri </i>could well be considered equivalent to the Nahua absolutive suffix -<i>tli</i>. Perhaps Nahuatl used this same word *kokotl or *kokol in the meaning chile, before introducing the word <i>chilli</i>.<br />
<br />
The point of it all is a reminder that even though Nahuatl is a language with an insane amount of productive morphology, where derivations can be stacked upon derivations, back and forth between the categories - that does not necessarily mean that everything can be (or should be) explained through synchronic processes and grammatical rules. Even as we strive to accurately describe the different grammatical processes that operate in the Nahuatl language, we must remember that it is not in fact the grammatical rules that determine how people speak, but rather, it is, the ways in which people speak that produce the rules of grammar.Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-59305044497594552712017-12-22T11:18:00.004-08:002023-06-06T11:41:54.917-07:00How similar is Nahuatl to Hopi?<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I recently encountered a surprising claim in a book called "<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;"><i><a href="https://books.google.dk/books?id=2y9iBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA98&lpg=PA98&dq=nahuatl+hopi+understand+each+other&source=bl&ots=flm81jKPPt&sig=cw_tL-yrKgNvibP9iH2xA3WlHu8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjv5aDajJnYAhUPJ1AKHe7eDZkQ6AEIWjAL#v=onepage&q=nahuatl%20hopi%20understand%20each%20other&f=false" target="_blank">Our Sacred Maíz Is Our Mother: Indigeneity and Belonging in the Americas</a></i></span>", by Roberto Cintli Rodriguez. The claim is that Nahuatl and Hopi are so closely related that people who speak one will also be able to understand the other. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nahuatl and Hopi are both Uto-Aztecan languages, but linguists classify them are as far from eachother in the Uto-Aztecan language family as is possible. So given that even dialects of Nahuatl can be impossible to understand to speakers of other dialects, it is a remarkable claim that a Nahuatl speaker should be able to understand Hopi</span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3J_mczQYkDAmLu8i6BACrqW-I-VNMnYylXdWMC2RrphEhrSoMQez4qoSeLbH4895jQlE15XCT0Kruw0uflSbueNGZJAUmJXbwsEJEXzK9WX_QTRdTctnQaAqllesDCy8biAdYQpSm6FM/s1600/Flag_of_the_Hopi+%25281%2529.png" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="120" data-original-width="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3J_mczQYkDAmLu8i6BACrqW-I-VNMnYylXdWMC2RrphEhrSoMQez4qoSeLbH4895jQlE15XCT0Kruw0uflSbueNGZJAUmJXbwsEJEXzK9WX_QTRdTctnQaAqllesDCy8biAdYQpSm6FM/s1600/Flag_of_the_Hopi+%25281%2529.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Flag of the Hopi nation, <br />
with cornstalks and the four corners</span>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />Rodríguez notes that this claim is contrary to everything linguists would have to say about the relation between the two languages, but states that a Nahuatl speaker he calls Maestra Cobb has talked about an experience when she was able to understand words spoken in Hopi by Hopi elders. While no linguist can of course say that Mtra. Cobb is wrong about her own experience, we can certainly suggest that if it is true it is such an exceptionally odd occurrence that it would normally require more than anecdotal evidence for others to accept. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">From a linguistic point of view, the claim is similar to an English speaker stating that she understood spoken Greek without having ever heard the language before. The saying "it's all Greek to me", is meaningful exactly because this does not usually happen (that is ever). The distance between Nahuatl and Hopi, whether measured in miles between the two current speech communities, or in years since the last common ancestor, is about the sam</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">e as the distance between English and Greek. The father of empiricism, David Hume once wrote that "<span style="background-color: white; color: #252525;">"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence" (repeated by Carl Sagan as "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence").</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #252525;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #252525;">In the following, I will compare Nahuatl and Hopi to demonstrate just how extraordinary the claim made by Rodríguez' and Mtra. Cobb is. Since, I don't know Hopi myself, I will take phrases and words from Milo Kalectaca and Robert Langacker's 1978 "Lessons in Hopi" and compare them to their Nahuatl equivalents. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #252525;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #252525;">Lets start with 10 basic vocabulary items: </span></span><br />
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<span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><b>English<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><b>Hopi<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><b>Nahuatl</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">I <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">nu'<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">neh/nah</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">You <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">um <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">teh/tah</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Man <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">taaqa<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">tlaakatl/taaka</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Woman <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">wuùti<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">siwaatl</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Moon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 4cm;" valign="top" width="151"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">muuyaw<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 106.35pt;" valign="top" width="142"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">metztli</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Star <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">soohu<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">citlaalin</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 56.45pt;" valign="top" width="75"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Corn <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 4cm;" valign="top" width="151"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">tuùpevu/sööngo<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 106.35pt;" valign="top" width="142"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">tlaolli/sentli/sintli</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 56.45pt;" valign="top" width="75"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Blood <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 4cm;" valign="top" width="151"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">ungwa<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 106.35pt;" valign="top" width="142"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">yestli/estli</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 56.45pt;" valign="top" width="75"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Food <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 4cm;" valign="top" width="151"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">nöösiwqa<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 106.35pt;" valign="top" width="142"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">tlakwalli</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 56.45pt;" valign="top" width="75"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Water <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 4cm;" valign="top" width="151"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">kuuyi /paahu<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 106.35pt;" valign="top" width="142"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span style="background: white; color: #252525; font-family: "inherit" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">a:tl</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="color: #252525;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span>
Of these ten only two are close enough that a person knowing the word in either Hopi or Nahuatl might reasonably be expected to guess the meaning of the word in the other languages: "I" and "man". Of the other words, four more are in fact related ("moon", "corn", "water", "star" and "blood"), but are so far from eachother in sound that it would be very surprising if someone was able to guess the meaning of the related word in the other language. The last 4, are not related at all but come from separate roots: probably for these one of the languages language borrowed their terms from another unrelated language.<br />
<br />
Now lets compare actual sentences: The grammar of the two languages is also very different.<br />
<br />
"What is your name":<br />
Hopi: <i>Um hin maatsiwa</i>? (literally: "you how be.named")<br />
Nahuatl: <i>kenin timotoka</i>? (literally "how you.name.yourself") (or in the Huasteca variants <i>kenihki motoka</i>)<br />
<br />
Here, Hopi has three words, Nahuatl has two, the only words that seem related are the words for "how" - but I am not in fact sure they are. Certainly a person speaking one language but asked in another, would only be able to guess the meaning from the context, in the same way that we might guess that someone speaking a foreign language is presenting themselves if we see them shaking hands and saying the same thing to various people. One would be understanding the context, but not the words (this is of course how we all learn our first language, without a dictionary).<br />
<br />
"She is eating"<br />
Hopi: <i>Pam tuumoyta </i>(literally. he/she/it is.eating)<br />
Nahuatl: <i>(yeh) tlakwa</i> (literally. he/she/it something-eat)<br />
<br />
Here we see that neither the third person singular pronoun or the verb "to eat" seem related. In Nahuatl the pronoun can be omitted, but in Hopi it cannot.<br />
<br />
Here we see another very big difference between Hopi and Nahuatl:<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>maana tiyot tsotsoona</i> "the girl kisses the boy"<br />
girl boy kisses<br />
<br />
<i>tiyo maanat tsotsoona</i> "the boy kisses the girl"<br />
boy girl kisses<br />
<br />
In Hopi the subject of the sentence usually comes first, the object second and the verb last. Nouns have a special object-form, (the ending in -t) that makes it possible to see if a noun is object in a sentence.<br /><i><br /></i>
In Nahuatl the same sentence can be said in any of the following ways:<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>kipitsoa in piltontli in ichpokatl</i><br />
kisses.it the boy the girl<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>kipitsoa in ichpokatl in piltontli</i><br />
kisses.it the girl the boy<br />
<br />
<i>in ichpokatl kipitsoa in piltontli</i><br />
the girl kisses.it the boy<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>in piltontli kipitsoa in ichpokatl</i><br />
the boy kisses.it the girl<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>in piltontli in ichpokatl kipitsoa</i><br />
the boy the girl kisses.it<br />
<br />
<br />
But regardless of the order of the elements in the sentence the sentence can mean either "the boy kisses the girl" or "the girl kisses the boy". The order of the words is irrelevant, and there is no specific object or subject form on the nouns that lets us see what role the noun has in the sentence. Only intonation and context allows us to decide whether the sentence means that the boy or the girl does the kissing. Also, the Nahuatl verb has the prefix <i>ki</i>- which marks that the object is third person singular, i.e. "he/she/it". This is a very big difference in the way that the grammar of the two languages works: Hopi is a language with fixed word order and grammatical case marking on nouns, Nahuatl is a language with free word order and grammatical marking on verbs. Additionally of course, none of the words in this sentence are related or even look like each other.<br />
<br />
The last example I will give is:<br />
<br />
"I see you"<br />
Hopi: <i>na ung tuwa</i><br />
Nahuatl: <i>nimitzitta</i><br />
<br />
Here Hopi has three words and Nahuatl has one, and in fact two of the elements are related the verb for "to see" in Hopi is <i>tuwa </i>and in Nahuatl <i>itta </i>- but they are in fact related; and the word for "I" in Hopi <i>na, </i>is in fact related to the Nahuatl prefix for the first person subject <i>ni</i>-. But even though the elements are related, I have a very hard time imagining that any Nahuatl speaker or Hopi speaker will be able to understand the meaning of the word in the opposite language.<br />
<br />
So I would say that while Rodríguez' friend Mtra. Cobb may have been able to guess the meaning of a sentence in Hopi, or perhaps have heard some words of Hopi before that allowed her to understand some parts of a sentence, it seems highly unlikely that she would - and even more unlikely that a random Nahuatl speaker would be able to understand a random Hopi speaker, much less to converse.<br />
<br />
But in the end it is of course an empirical question that can only be answered by carrying out the experiment.<br />
<br />
I have always wanted to go visit Hopi, and I have Nahua friends who I am sure will be happy to come with me to meet their distant cousins up there.Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-54042293400173327782017-07-28T14:03:00.002-07:002021-04-03T12:23:01.712-07:00Reviewing Kaufman’s evidence for Mixe-Zoque, Wastekan and Totonakan borrowings in proto-Nahuan<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://www.google.com.mx/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiZ6Nut76zVAhVD74MKHUvFBlMQFggoMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.albany.edu%2Fpdlma%2FNawa.pdf&usg=AFQjCNHjHQQk8_4jpRed1pmdof8qkFgKKA" target="_blank">In a 2001 paper, distributed on the internet through the website of the Project for theDocumentation of Languages of Mesoamerica (PDLMA)</a> the eminent linguist and
expert in Mesoamerican languages Terrence Kaufman analyzed the prehistory of
Nahuan languages. He focused specifically on showing how influence from the
languages of the Mesoamerican Language Area participated in shaping the
Southern Uto-Aztecan dialect proto-Nahuan into the Mesoamerican language
Nahuatl. The data used for the paper is very impressive, his conclusions well
argued, and Kaufman’s writing style is as always very authoritative, and so the
paper has been cited quite a few times (30 citations in google scholar). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">In this
post, I will take issue with some of the conclusions in Kaufman’s paper,
specifically I will show that Kaufman significantly overstates his evidence for
substantial lexical influence from Mesoamerican languages on proto-Nahuan,
because he does not adequately take into account alternative, potential or
probable etymologies from Uto-Aztcan sources. I show that most of his proposed
borrowings into proto-Nahuan are in fact equally (or more) likely to have
Uto-Aztecan etymologies, either from proto-Uto-Aztecan, from
proto-Corachol-Nahuan or can be plausibly analyzed as originating as
combinations of Nahuan roots. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">My
conclusion is that there are much fewer borrowings from Mixe-Zoquean, Wastekan
and Totonakan in proto-Nahuan than often thought, and that we therefore cannot
use this contact as evidence that proto-Nahuatl was spoken in the area of
north-eastern Mesoamerica where Kaufman locates the speech community. Rather we
should locate the proto-Nahuan speech community on the north-western periphery
of Mesoamerica in close contact with Corachol and with Oto-Pamean languages. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3>
<b><span lang="EN-US">Proposed loans from Mixe-Zoque in all Nahuan</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; margin-left: 56.45pt; mso-border-insideh: none; mso-border-insidev: none; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184; width: 482px;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 87.25pt;" valign="top" width="116"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Word<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 54.55pt;" valign="top" width="73"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Nahuan<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Kaufman’s source<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 120.5pt;" valign="top" width="161"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Potential UA etymology<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border: none; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 87.25pt;" valign="top" width="116"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Cacao<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border: none; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 54.55pt;" valign="top" width="73"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">kakawa<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="border: none; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">*<i>kakawa</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border: none; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 120.5pt;" valign="top" width="161"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">PUA *<i>kawa</i> “shell”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 87.25pt;" valign="top" width="116"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Footwear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 54.55pt;" valign="top" width="73"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">kak</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">i<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">PZ *<i>k</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ɨ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">’ak</span></i><span lang="EN-US"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 120.5pt;" valign="top" width="161"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">PCN *<i>kakai</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 87.25pt;" valign="top" width="116"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Head<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 54.55pt;" valign="top" width="73"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">kopak-</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">i<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">-kwa<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">ikpak<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">PMZ *<i>kopak</i> “head”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 120.5pt;" valign="top" width="161"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">*PUA *<i>kupa</i> “top of head/hair”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 87.25pt;" valign="top" width="116"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Break<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 54.55pt;" valign="top" width="73"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">pos-teki<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">PMi *<i>pus</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 120.5pt;" valign="top" width="161"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Huichol *<i>purusi</i> “stub, cut short”<PCN *<i>puyusi</i> “stub”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 87.25pt;" valign="top" width="116"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Mat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 54.55pt;" valign="top" width="73"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">pe</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">a</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">PZo *<i>pata’</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 120.5pt;" valign="top" width="161"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">PCN *<i>p</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ɨ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">ta</span></i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 87.25pt;" valign="top" width="116"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Old man<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">/Sorcerer/shape-shifter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 54.55pt;" valign="top" width="73"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">nawal<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">PMZ *<i>na’w</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 120.5pt;" valign="top" width="161"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">PCN *<i>nawari</i> “thief” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">*<i>nawa</i> “steal”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 87.25pt;" valign="top" width="116"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Ant<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 54.55pt;" valign="top" width="73"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">¢</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">ikatl<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">PMZ *<i>(hah)-</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">¢</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">uku</span></i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 120.5pt;" valign="top" width="161"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 87.25pt;" valign="top" width="116"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Turkey<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 54.55pt;" valign="top" width="73"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">totolin<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">PMZ *<i>tu’nuk</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 120.5pt;" valign="top" width="161"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Corachol *<i>tutuvi</i> “large parrot”, Nahua <i>toto</i> “bird”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 87.25pt;" valign="top" width="116"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Adobe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 54.55pt;" valign="top" width="73"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">šamitl<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">PMZ *<i>sam</i> “heat”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 120.5pt;" valign="top" width="161"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">PCN *<i>sia</i> “sand/clay” + <i>mi</i> “collective plural”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 87.25pt;" valign="top" width="116"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Enter-house<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 54.55pt;" valign="top" width="73"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">kal-aki<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">PMZ calque of <i>*t</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ɨ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">’k-</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ɨ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">y </span></i><span lang="EN-US">“house enter”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 120.5pt;" valign="top" width="161"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Kaufman
proposes 9 borrowings and a lexical calque from proto-Mixe-Zoque, proto-Zoque
or proto-Mixe into proto-Nahuan. Of these borrowings, 7 have equally probable
Uto-Aztecan etymologies, and 5 have definite cognates in Corachol, suggesting
that if they are borrowings and not inherited then the borrowing would have
been between proto-Mixe and proto-Corachol-Nahuan. The calque seems likely, and
the word for ant seems possible. Also, I actually think the word for cacao is a
likely borrowing from Mixe-Zoque, since the alternative “shell” etymology
proposed by Dakin and Wichmann is somewhat weak, and given the fact that it is
extremely unlikely that proto-Nahua was spoken by people who lived in a
cacao-producing region whereas proto-Mixe-Zoque almost certainly was. Nevertheless, the claim of Mixe-Zoque contact
with proto-Nahuan seems to lack real support once the alternative etymologies
are examined. This is particularly
significant because the words proposed as borrowings are highly culturally
significant suggesting that Mixe-Zoque speakers had a profound culturalizing
influence on proto-Nahua speakers, teaching them to use foot-wear, live in
adobe houses with cultivated liverstock such as turkeys, and to use the
culturally salient luxury good cacao, and that through them the Nahuas adopted
the pan-Mesoamerican belief in shapeshifting sorcerers. With these borrowings,
the role of Mixe-Zoque in this regard seems much less significant. Kaufman has
been a major proponent of seeing Mixe-Zoque speaking Olmecs as the drivers of
the development of the Mesoamerican cultural area, and they probably were – but
it does not seem to me that there was any significant contact between
Mixe-Zoque speakers and the proto-Nahuan speech community. This probably means
that the Nahuas entered Mesoamerica after the decline of Olmec civilization in
the centuries before the beginning of the first millennium. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3>
<b><span lang="EN-US">Proposed loans from Wastekan in all Nahuan</span></b></h3>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; margin-left: 56.45pt; mso-border-insideh: none; mso-border-insidev: none; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 83.7pt;" valign="top" width="112"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Word<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 65.4pt;" valign="top" width="87"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Nahuatl<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 63.8pt;" valign="top" width="85"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Kaufman’s proposal<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 120.5pt;" valign="top" width="161"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Potential UA etymology<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border: none; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 83.7pt;" valign="top" width="112"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Deer-foot<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border: none; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 65.4pt;" valign="top" width="87"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">čočolli<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="border: none; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 63.8pt;" valign="top" width="85"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>čočob</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border: none; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 120.5pt;" valign="top" width="161"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 83.7pt;" valign="top" width="112"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Pulque<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 65.4pt;" valign="top" width="87"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">ok</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">i<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 63.8pt;" valign="top" width="85"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>book</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 120.5pt;" valign="top" width="161"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 83.7pt;" valign="top" width="112"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Sp. of Parrot<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 65.4pt;" valign="top" width="87"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">kočotl<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 63.8pt;" valign="top" width="85"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>kuču’</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 120.5pt;" valign="top" width="161"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 3.4pt; mso-yfti-irow: 4;">
<td style="height: 3.4pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 83.7pt;" valign="top" width="112"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Breadnut<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 3.4pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 65.4pt;" valign="top" width="87"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">ohošihtli<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 3.4pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 63.8pt;" valign="top" width="85"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>ohoš</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 3.4pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 120.5pt;" valign="top" width="161"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Nahua <i>oši</i>-</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span><span lang="EN-US"> “sticky dirt”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 83.7pt;" valign="top" width="112"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Striated/layered<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 65.4pt;" valign="top" width="87"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">nete:č<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 63.8pt;" valign="top" width="85"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>net’eč/nit’ič</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 120.5pt;" valign="top" width="161"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Nahua <i>ne:-te:č</i> “reciprocal-together”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Kaufman
proposes 5 loans from Wastek Maya into proto-Nahuan. Of these only pulque, and
deer-foot seem likely loans. <i>Kochotl</i>
is not a general Nahuan word, and there is no reason to reconstruct it for
proto-Nahuan – likely be an exclusive eastern or Huasteca Nahua loan. <i>Netech</i> is morphologically analyzable as <i>ne-te:ch</i>. <i>Ohoxihtli</i> seems a likely reduplicated form of <i>oxitl</i> “dirt that comes of when you wash”. Nahuas in fact associated
the origin of pulque with the Huastecs, so it seems likely that this is indeed
a likely loan. In conclusion, there may have been contact between proto-Nahuan
and Wastekan, but if there was it was quite limited – the only likely loan is
the word for pulque, and in fact not all Nahuan varieties have this root, as
many use the inherited word for “honey” <i>nekw</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">i</span></i><span lang="EN-US"> instead. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3>
<b><span lang="EN-US">Proposed loans from Totonac in all Nahuan</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></b></div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; margin-left: 35.2pt; mso-border-insideh: none; mso-border-insidev: none; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 104pt;" valign="top" width="139"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Word<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 80.55pt;" valign="top" width="107"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Nahuatl<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Kaufman’s Totonac source<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border: none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 162.45pt;" valign="top" width="217"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Alternative source<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border: none; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 104pt;" valign="top" width="139"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Cottonwood <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border: none; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 80.55pt;" valign="top" width="107"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">pocho-</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="border: none; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>puučuut</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border: none; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 162.45pt;" valign="top" width="217"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">PUA (Stubbs, 2011,
#557)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.8pt; mso-yfti-irow: 2;">
<td style="height: 15.8pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 104pt;" valign="top" width="139"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Honorific/diminutive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 15.8pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 80.55pt;" valign="top" width="107"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">-</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">¢</span><i><span lang="EN-US">in</span></i><span lang="EN-US"> diminutive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 15.8pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>-</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">¢</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">iin</span></i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="height: 15.8pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 162.45pt;" valign="top" width="217"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Otomi-Mazahua <i>či</i>-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Corachol </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><i>¢</i></span><span lang="EN-US"><i>i-/-ši</i> (š is a regular cognate of
Nahuan </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">¢</span><span lang="EN-US"> in Corachol)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 104pt;" valign="top" width="139"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">jonote <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 80.55pt;" valign="top" width="107"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">šono-</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>šuunuk</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 162.45pt;" valign="top" width="217"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 104pt;" valign="top" width="139"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">tadpole<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 80.55pt;" valign="top" width="107"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">šolo-</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>šuuɬʰ</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 162.45pt;" valign="top" width="217"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Corachol *<i>siuri
</i> “tadpole” regularly becomes Nahuan *<i>šoli</i>-. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 104pt;" valign="top" width="139"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Cage/crate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 80.55pt;" valign="top" width="107"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">wahkal-</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">i<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">wahkat</span></i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 162.45pt;" valign="top" width="217"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Nahua: <i>wa(k/h)-kal-</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><i>ƛ</i></span><span lang="EN-US"><i>i</i> “drying house”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 104pt;" valign="top" width="139"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">dog<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 80.55pt;" valign="top" width="107"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">čiči<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">čiči’</span></i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 162.45pt;" valign="top" width="217"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Corachol </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">¢ɨ<i>¢</i>ɨ</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 104pt;" valign="top" width="139"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Sp. Of fish<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 80.55pt;" valign="top" width="107"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">wapo-</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">waapa</span></i><span lang="EN-US"> “tilapia” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 162.45pt;" valign="top" width="217"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 104pt;" valign="top" width="139"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Brother in law<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 80.55pt;" valign="top" width="107"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">tex-</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">i<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">tiiš</span></i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 162.45pt;" valign="top" width="217"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 104pt;" valign="top" width="139"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Older sister<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 80.55pt;" valign="top" width="107"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">pih-</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">i<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">pi:pi’</span></i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 162.45pt;" valign="top" width="217"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">-<i>pi </i>“sister” (not
younger)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 104pt;" valign="top" width="139"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Grass<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 80.55pt;" valign="top" width="107"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">saka-</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">saqa</span></i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 162.45pt;" valign="top" width="217"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">SUA *<i>saka</i> “grass”, Hopi <i>tïïsaqa</i> ”grass”, NUA *<i>saka</i> “willow” (Stubbs 2011 #1055)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 104pt;" valign="top" width="139"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Plate/flat bowl<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 80.55pt;" valign="top" width="107"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">kaši</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">qa’š</span></i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 162.45pt;" valign="top" width="217"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 104pt;" valign="top" width="139"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Wild avocado<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 80.55pt;" valign="top" width="107"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">pawa-</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">ɬʰpaw</span></i><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 162.45pt;" valign="top" width="217"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Avocado is <i>yewka</i> in Coracholan suggesting an
origin as proto-Cora-Nahuan *<i>pewaka</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 104pt;" valign="top" width="139"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Sour<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 80.55pt;" valign="top" width="107"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">šoko<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">šku’ta<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 162.45pt;" valign="top" width="217"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Proto-Corachol-Nahuan
*</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">s</span><span lang="EN-US">iwi “sour/bitter”. *iw becomes Nahua o, but the question is where the
-ko element then comes from.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 104pt;" valign="top" width="139"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Hawk<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 80.55pt;" valign="top" width="107"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">čoneh<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">čuu’ni’<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 162.45pt;" valign="top" width="217"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 104pt;" valign="top" width="139"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Phoneme<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 80.55pt;" valign="top" width="107"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">-</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 99.2pt;" valign="top" width="132"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">Totonac *</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 162.45pt;" valign="top" width="217"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Kaufman’s
14 proposed loans from Totonac fare a little better when checked for plausible
alternative etymologies. The forms <i>šolotl</i>,
<i>wahkalli</i>, <i>chichi</i>, <i>pihtli</i>, <i>pawatl</i> have viable UA etymologies. <i>Šolotl</i> and <i>chichi</i> are shared with Corachol. The diminutive -<i>tzin</i> could be borrowed from Totonac, but
Otomi-Mazahua has a diminutive/honorific prefix <i>či</i>- and Coracholan has a diminutive prefix </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">¢</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">i</span></i><span lang="EN-US">- and a honorific suffix -<i>ši</i>. The Totonac form does
match the Nahua form better than either of those sources. In any case there is
basis for considering the -</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">¢</span><span lang="EN-US">i diminutive morpheme to be an areal trait since it is shared between
Mesoamerican languages of three different linguistic families (Totonakan,
Oto-Pamean and Uto-Aztecan).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The words <i>pochotl</i> and <i>xonotl</i>, describe species with restricted distribution that likely
arose as local borrowings in the Nahuatl varieties spoken where these species
are found and only subsequently spread through inter-Nahua contact – I would
not reconstruct these words to proto-Nahuan. <i>Wapotl</i> and <i>čone</i> are not
found in all (or most?) Nahuan dialects, but are local (recent) borrowings. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">That leaves
the words for plate, brother in-law, tilapia and xonote, as well as the phoneme
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span><span lang="EN-US">, as likely borrowings
from Totonacan into proto-Nahuan. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3>
<b><span lang="EN-US">Conclusion:</span></b></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Out of 29
proposed borrowings, only 9 seem more likely to have been borrowed, than to
have been inherited. So, having reviewed the evidence of borrowings from
Mixe-Zoquean, Totonac and Wastekan, I must conclude that the extent of lexical
borrowings from Mesoamerican languages into proto-Nahuan is greatly overstated
by Kaufman.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Kaufman
also shows a long list of borrowings from Wasteko into Huastecan Nahuatl – the
Nahuatl variety that we know has been spoken in close contact with Wastekan
Maya for centuries. Here, most of the proposed borrowings seem completely
plausible, but a couple to me suggest the direction of borrowing to be the
opposite of what is assumed by Kaufman. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">For example
the Wastekan word <i>kw’itš’a</i> “grind in
mortar” which Kaufman proposes as the source of Huastecan Nahua <i>tekwicha</i> “pestle” seems likely to be
related to the Nahuan word for grinding <i>kwečoa</i>
“to grind” from PN <i>kwe</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">¢</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">iwa</span></i><span lang="EN-US">, and related to Huichol <i>rakwi</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">¢</span><i><span lang="EN-US">i</span></i><span lang="EN-US"> “nixtamal”, Cora <i>kwei</i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">¢</span><span lang="EN-US">i “dough” – suggesting a loan from Nahuan into Wasteko.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The Wastek word
<i>molik</i> “elbow” is suggestive, but it
is not restricted to Huastecan Nahuatl as Kaufman implies, it is found also in
western Nahua branch (and as <i>molic</i> in
Molina’s dictionary). This suggests either borrowing into Wastek from Nahuan or
an additional example of Wastek contact with PN. Given the otherwise
unconvincing evidence for Wastek/proto-Nahuan contact, it is probably best to
see the default hypothesis as a loan from Nahuan into Wastek. The proposed
borrowing of Wastek <i>či’im</i> “maguey
juice” as <i>čiimi</i></span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">ƛ</span></i><span lang="EN-US"> “mothers milk” in Wastek Nahuan is unlikely, since Cora has </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">¢</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">i’imé</span></i><span lang="EN-US"> “mothers milk” suggesting again borrowing in
the opposite direction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"> In the paper itself, Kaufman states that Mesoamerican languages are seemingly reluctant to borrow and that therefor any situation in which a language is permeated by borrowings shows very intense contact. I think the review of the paper suggests that proto-Nahuan was not permeated with borrowings from Wastekan, Totonakan and Mixe-Zoquean.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<h3>
References Cited: </h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 13px;">*Dakin, K., & Wichmann, S. (2000). Cacao and chocolate. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Ancient Mesoamerica</i><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 13px;">, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">11</i><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 13px;">(1), 55-75.</span><br />
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 13px;"><br /></span>
<span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 13px;">*</span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 13px;">Kaufman, T. (2001). The history of the Nawa language group from the earliest times to the sixteenth century: Some initial results. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Paper posted online at http://www. albany. edu/anthro/maldp/Nawa. pdf. University of Pittsburgh</i><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 13px;">.</span><br />
<br /></div>
Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-17183550315054656622017-07-06T15:07:00.002-07:002021-01-29T09:10:03.051-08:00The relation between Nahuatl, Cora and Huichol: initial thoughts<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lately I have been studying the two languages Cora (Náayeri) and Huichol (Wixarika) spoken in the Mexican state of Nayarit which like Nahuatl belongs to the Uto-Aztecan language family. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Everyone agrees that Cora and Huichol are closely related to eachother, and the languages are grouped together under the name Coracholan, but it is an open question whether Nahuatl is more closely related to Coracholan than to the other Uto-Aztecan languages of Mexico. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">There are some significant similarities between the three languages, but some scholars such as Karen Dakin (2017) and Terrence Kaufman (2001) argue that these similarities are most likely due to borrowing between the languages. In 1978, Lyle Campbell and Ronald Langacker proposed that Nahuan and Coracholan had undergone a shared sound change in which they all changed the previous proto-Uto-Aztecan (PUA) *u to /ɨ/. This would suggest that the languages all began as dialects of a single ancestor language (proto-Corachol-Nahuan) which was itself a daughter language of proto-Southern Uto-Aztecan (PSUA). Karen Dakin in turn has argued that Nahuatl never underwent this change but that Nahua instead changed PUA *u directly into /i/ with some instances changing to /e/ instead.</span><br />
<br />
It is an interesting question whether Coracholan and Nahuan form a single group; a question, which, if we could answer it in the positive would bring us much closer to understanding the origins of Nahuatl, both in terms of geography (it would then have originated in Western Mexico, and not as Kaufman (2001) suggests in North-Eastern Mexico), but also in terms of the linguistic development the language has passed through.<br />
<br />
As I have studied Huichol and Cora from the sparse materials about the languages (and from a short field stay in Nayarit, which is still on-going as I write), I have compiled a list of cognates (related words) between the three languages - and I believe that they are indeed closely related and that a single ancestor language can be reconstructed. I have not fully analyzed the patterns of similarity, but there are some that look particularly promising. Below I describe five particularly interesting etymologies:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNhmF7AcYJL_W4odhp6eaBzb1nbUA3iVTy26hXjKF9OQ6kdua0Pb2Sp-BipDT3o8SVckUyhDPJ9CB3hcBppCfQH571JYKmAdxcpjS6eUz-I-8uB7ror5jawOYm-5wOEU3CqKClsc-6Drg/s1600/iyari+women.PNG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="283" data-original-width="426" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNhmF7AcYJL_W4odhp6eaBzb1nbUA3iVTy26hXjKF9OQ6kdua0Pb2Sp-BipDT3o8SVckUyhDPJ9CB3hcBppCfQH571JYKmAdxcpjS6eUz-I-8uB7ror5jawOYm-5wOEU3CqKClsc-6Drg/s320/iyari+women.PNG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="font-size: 12.8px;">
Three women figures standing in front of hanging hearts</div>
<div style="font-size: 12.8px;">
(detail from a Huichol yarn painting, found at <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Arte_del_Pueblo_Huichol.jpg" target="_blank">wikicommons</a>).</div>
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<h3>
<b>1. "To live/heart" </b></h3>
In Nahuatl the root <i>yo:l</i>- has to do with living, and being alive, and with the heart. From this root we get the intransitive verb <i>yo:li </i>"to live", <i>yo:llo:tl</i> "heart" (</yo:lyo:tl/) and <i>yo:lkatl</i> "animal/living thing", and the spiritual term <i>te:yolia</i> "that which causes people to live" or "life force". The noun <i>yo:llo:tl</i> or <i>yo:llohtli</i> "heart" is composed of the root yol:- and the suffix -yotl/-yoh that derives an abstract noun or an inalienably possessed noun suggesting a meaning of something like "life-essence" or "aliveness" as the original meaning of the Nahuatl word for heart.<br />
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In Huichol the word for "heart" or "soul" is '<i>iyáari</i>, and as in Nahuatl it is central to the way that Huichol people conceive of life and life force. When one dreams the '<i>iyáari</i> travels to other worlds, and when one dies the 'iyari of a person begans a journey through the otherworld towards the land of the dead. Similar beings have similar <i>'iyáari</i> because the <i>'iyáari </i>travels through kinship bonds, which also means that the Huichol have a different '<i>iyáari </i>from other beings.<br />
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In Cora, life is expressed with the verb <i>rúhuri </i>or <i>rúuri</i>"he lives" and the noun life with the word <i>rúh. </i>And the word for "soul" or "living thing" is<i> rúuri-kame (=yol-katl).</i><br />
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At first glance the three words look quite different, but I consider them cognate. The correspondence between Nahuatl /l/ and Corachol /r/ is easy to explain - it is a very common change in the worlds languages, and in fact Huichol /r/ is often pronounced as /l/. Here we may propose that Nahuan changed Corachol-Nahuan *r to /l/ . And Huichol and Nahuatl both have /y/ as the first consonant. This leaves us to explain why Cora has begins with /r/ and why the three languages each have completely different vowels Nahuatl /o:/, Huichol /aa/ and Cora /u(h)u/.<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Cora has the reflex /r/ corresponding to Nahuan /y/ in several words: Cor. <i>šaihruh </i>"fly": Nah. <i>sayo:lin </i>"fly", Cor. <i>rú-viveh</i> "tremble": Nah. <i>wewe-yo-ka</i> "tremble" (notice that Cora constructs the compound with the roots reversed relative to Nahuatl), Cor. </span><i>ɨra’a</i> "wife", Hui. <i>'iya</i> "wife", Nah. <i>ye </i>"mother", (found in the Isthmus varieties), and in the locative suffix describing a place full of x, e.g. Nah. <i>okoyoh </i>, Hui. <i>hukuyá </i>and Cor. <i>úkúuré </i>all meaning "place full of pinetrees". So Cora /r/ is in fact a regular reflex of Nahuatl and Huichol /y/ and it is particularly common before Cora /u/ corresponding to Nahuatl /o/. We may posit as a sound law that Cora changes a proto-Coracholan *y to /r/ before back vowels (and maybe some other vowels). <br />
<br />
As for the differential vowels, there are also patterns that explain this: the first pattern is that Nahuan long /o:/ often corresponds to diphthongs /ew/ or /eu/ and /aw/ or /au/ in Coracholan for example: Cor. <i>sau'uh</i>, Hui. <i>xiauri</i>, Nah. <i>so:lin</i> "quail"; Hui. <i>teukíya</i>, Cor. <i>tye'ukwa</i>, Nah. <i>to:ka</i> "bury", Cor. <i>taya'u </i>("god"), Hui. <i>tayew "</i>name of the sungod<i>", </i>Nah<i>. teo:tl; "</i>deity/sacred<i>"; </i>Cor. <i>tyauhsa </i>Nah. <i>to:san</i> "mole" and Hui. <i>tau </i>"sun" and Nah. <i>to:na</i> "heat (of the sun)". Indeed one Cora dialect, that of Santa Teresa also has the change to a long /o:/ in its reflexes of those particular words- and the change is well known also from European languages, it is for example the same change that turned Latin <i>aurum </i>into French <i>or </i>and Spanish <i>oro. </i>Hence we can propose one more sound change: Nahuatl turns proto-Corachol-Nahuan *au into /o:/. But in this word Huichol and Cora does not have /au/ but instead Huichol has /aa/ and Cora has /u(h)u/. What went wrong? There is also a correspondence between Nahuatl o and Corachol u - and in those case we can be fairly sure that /o/ was the original (e.g. the words for fly, tremble, pine, and the "full of x" suffix). So the Cora form *uu could from a previous *oo - in that case Nahuatl and Cora would have both changed the *au to /o:/ and Cora would then have changed /o:/ to /u:/. This would be a sound change shared by Cora and Huichol, which would considerably strengthen the claim that the languages are closely related. It could however also be the case that the word was borrowed into Cora from Nahuan, since Nahuan /o/ is always borrowed as Cora /u/. But the fact that there is a Huichol cognate suggests that it is not borrowed, and the fact that Huichol has the vowel /aa/ suggests that perhaps this word simply saw a previous corachol-Nahuan *au change to /o:/ in Nahuan, to /aa/ Huichol and to /uu/ in Cora- with Cora and Huichol each leveling the previous diphthong, but one language choosing to level to the a and the other to the u.<br />
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This would suggest that all three words derive through fairly regular changes (at least changes of which there are other examples between the languages) from a proto-form close to *<i>yauri </i>or *<i>yahuri .</i><br />
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This seems like a likely explanation which just requires us explain why Cora and Huichol leveled the diphthong in this word but not in the many other words with a sequence of /au/. I will keep looking for an explanation of this exception.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH38oAAGgNfdGrtqVy3FVPaLNeFuA9YerpOvPoCtPjNhMlcOA3433Iv2sJhcty-3gR-L_pfmt193xiOqqVGFVDOLfiM0N12s-fYcBkFV6dv2Xnt_eDn6lJx1b3EzWXeVov4cvLS-hIoiY/s1600/yauri.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="333" data-original-width="469" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH38oAAGgNfdGrtqVy3FVPaLNeFuA9YerpOvPoCtPjNhMlcOA3433Iv2sJhcty-3gR-L_pfmt193xiOqqVGFVDOLfiM0N12s-fYcBkFV6dv2Xnt_eDn6lJx1b3EzWXeVov4cvLS-hIoiY/s320/yauri.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<h3>
<b>2. "Breath/to breathe"</b></h3>
The Nahuatl word for breath is <i>ihiyo:tl,</i> and it is also a culturally salient word because like <i>yo:li</i> and <i>te:yo:lia </i>it refers to one of the lifeforces that characterize human beings (Nahuas recognized at least three life forces, the <i>te:yo:lia</i> (tied to the heart), the <i>ihiyo:tl</i> (tied to the breath) and the <i>to:nalli</i> (tied to the sun and the day)).<br />
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The Cora word for breath is <i>yéh</i>, and the form that means "to breath heavily" is <i>í'iyeh</i> with the prefixed <i>í'i</i>-.<br />
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The Huichol word for "lungs" or "breath" is <i>'iiyáte.</i><i> </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
While the words seem quite similar to the word for to live (I would say they are probably derived from the same root at an earlier point in the languages' development), here we see two major differences: Cora does not have /r/ but /y/, and Cora does not have /u/ but /e/. The reflexes for Nahuatl and Huichol are the same as for the previous etymology y:y and o:/a. So why is Cora different? First we may posit that Cora retains y from *y when occuring infront of the vowel e (i.e. front vowels). This makes good sense since /y/ is a palatal consonant and palatals like front vowels - so we may propose a modification of the previous rule (Cora *y>r) to say that Cora depalatalizes *y to *r <i>except </i>before front vowels.<br />
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But then we need to understand why the front vowel is even there to begin with! Here we may propose the same development as before - we have a rising diphthong beginning with /a/ and while Huicho levels to the first vowel Cora levels the diphthong to the second vowel. So that would suggest a diphthong of /ae/. But why would Nahuan turn /ae/ into /o:/? I don't think it would, but it might turn the diphthong *a<i>ɨ </i>into <i>/o/ - </i>at least that seems to happen in the words for "waste/trash" which is Cora <i>saɨri </i>and Nahuatl <i>sol-. </i>And in Corachol PUA *ɨ regularly becomes /e/. So that lets us reconstruct PCN *a<i>ɨ </i>which becomes PC *ae and Huichol /a/ and Cora /e/ (I don't know why there doesn't seem to be a long vowel in any of these except for Nahuatl, this could be a secondary shortening). And the previous rule allows us to show that the depalatalization of *y to /r/ in Cora happened after the leveling of the diphthong.<br />
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In this way, using basically the same sound changes proposed for the first etymology, leads to a final reconstruction of a proto-Corachol-Nahuan root *<i>iyaɨ </i>"breath/to breathe". Note also how the Huichol nominal ending -<i>te </i>seems to match the Nahuatl absolutive suffix -tli, suggesting that this suffix comes from a previous *<i>tɨ </i>(Karen Dakin and Alexis Manaster-Ramer have already suggested this).<i> </i><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfw-d0Vk7Q8QlMnncAk3tP_L0se_anV6HBDqBCUKOk31TntXB74aAdoSEZFXjLB5Pj4-0Ll1DRVVglVpM6AlxJbAnRUU37heB1Qo6yk-gSlMZXLD-RZDUnent1tqKAo2FlRpw9kLavlEY/s1600/iya%252B.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="340" data-original-width="514" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfw-d0Vk7Q8QlMnncAk3tP_L0se_anV6HBDqBCUKOk31TntXB74aAdoSEZFXjLB5Pj4-0Ll1DRVVglVpM6AlxJbAnRUU37heB1Qo6yk-gSlMZXLD-RZDUnent1tqKAo2FlRpw9kLavlEY/s320/iya%252B.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<h3>
<br /><b>3. "To degrain corn/c</b><b>orn kernels</b><b>"</b></h3>
In Nahuatl there are several words for maize: in general maize is <i>sentli </i>or <i>sintli</i>, though in some varieties this refers specificlly to the dried corncob as opposed to the fresh corn cob which is called <i>yelo:tl</i> ot <i>elo:tl</i>. But another word is for the dried corn kernels after they have been taken off the cob, these are the ones that are boiled with lime to make the <i>nixtamal </i>porridge that is in turn ground into dough. These dried kernels are called <i>tlao:lli</i> (or in some varieties <i>tleo:lli</i>, <i>tlao:yalli</i>, or <i>tau:lli </i>and other variants) this is a patientive noun derived from the verb <i>oya </i>"to degrain corn". The root of this verb is <i>o:</i> and -<i>ya </i>is one of the different verbal stem formant suffixes.<br />
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I would usually posit that the old common-Nahuan term was /<i>tlao:yalli/ </i>which ponemically is /<span face=""calibri" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">ƛa-o:y</span><span face=""calibri" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 14.6667px;">a-l-</span><span face=""calibri" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 14.6667px;">ƛ</span><span face=""calibri" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">i</span>/, where the /y/ is assimilated to the /<span face=""calibri" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 14.6667px;">ƛ</span>/ to become a double ll. But the most common form of the word in Nahuan is /tlao:lli/ where the thematic vowel -a of the transitive verb seems to be deleted (as sometimes happens to penultimate vowels in Nahuan). But it is also possible that the common-Nahuan form was <i>tlao:lli </i>with the phonemic form /<i><span face=""calibri" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 14.6667px;">ƛao:l-</span><span face=""calibri" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 14.6667px;">ƛi</span></i>/. Based on the Nahuan form alone we would reconstruct a pre-Nahuan (that is, the stage before proto-Nahuatl where the language had still not undergone the changes that would turn it into Nahuan) /*<i>ta- o:-ri-tɨ</i>/ or /*<i>ta- oya-ri-tɨ</i>/ where the -<i>ri</i>- is the passive morpheme that becomes -l- in Nahuan.<br />
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Now, in Huichol the corresponding forms I have found in a dictionary is <i>'urika</i> "to degrain corn" and <i>reuyusáata </i>"corn grain", ("corn" in general is <i>'ikú</i>). the root here is <i>'u-</i>. In Cora the forms are <i>yuu </i>"degrain corn", <i>yuuri </i>“corn grain (and in general)” <span style="font-family: inherit;">and <i>yuhuri </i>the verbal form for “it has been degrained”, the root clearly being <i>yuu</i>-. </span><br />
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Where Nahuan has the stem formant -<i>ya</i>, Huichol has the transitive verbal stem formants -<i>rika, </i>but in the noun we see the form<i> uyu </i>suggesting that the long <i>o</i> in Nahuatl is a simplification of an original<i> oyo </i>sequence (making the full Huicho root <i>uyu</i>). We could then hypothesize that the Huichol <i>re</i>- prefix is cognate with the Nahuan <i>tla</i>- prefix, and that the -<i>sáa </i>suffix is a patientive like the Nahuan -<i>l</i>- and the -<i>ta </i>suffix is cognate with the Nahuan absolutive suffix.<br />
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In Cora the -<i>ri </i>suffix corresponds to the patientive suffix in Nahuatl, and the root <i>yuu </i>seems to correspond with the Nahua root <i>o:</i> and the Huichol root <i>'u(yu)</i>. We know from the Cora vocabulario published by Father de Ortega in 1732 that Cora in the 18th century still had traces of an original set of absolutive prefixes, one of which was -t (Vázquez Soto 2000), and if we look up the word <i>maiz </i>(<a href="https://archive.org/details/vocabulariodelas00orte" target="_blank">yes, the 1732 cora vocabulary is available online!</a>) we find the form <i>yuurit </i>showing the final absolutive suffix. Now the three languages match entirely phoneme for phoneme and morpheme for morpheme. <br />
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This gives us the following correspondence between the forms in the three languages:<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br /></b></span>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Proto Nahuatl</b>: <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">/*<i>ta- o: -ri -tɨ</i>/ <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Huichol</b>:<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">/<i>re- uyu -sáa -ta</i>/<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Cora</b>:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">/<i>Ø- yuu -ri -t/</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="font-size: x-small;">OBJ</span>- degrain <span style="font-size: x-small;">-PASS -ABS</span></span></div>
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This comparison gives us some valuable information about the grammatical development of the languages as well: Nahuan includes the verbal formant when it derives verbs (unless we argue that the form <i>tlao:lli</i>, is in fact the one found in common Nahuatl and that it didn't drop the -ya verbalized but simply never included it, which I think is likely). It also shows us that if this comparison of morphemes holds, then Huichol and Nahuatl are similar in both having the prefix tla- which would then be expected to be an object marker referring to an inanimate object "something", but that Cora does not need such an object marker on a patientive noun derived from a transitive verb. This suggests that Huichol and Cora have both developed a grammatical requirement of transitive nouns to mark their objects arguments explicitly, while Cora has not. On the other hand Nahuatl groups with Cora in having the patientive suffix -<i>ri</i>, suggesting that we need to reconstruct it for proto-Corachol-Nahuan and consider the Huichol -<i>sáa </i>an innovation. But finally, it is interesting that while the word in each language is composed of cognate morphemes and following the same grammatical model, they result in different words, suggesting that while the proto-Corachol-Nahuan language had a verb for "degraining corn", each daughter language derived the noun from this verb in a separate process.<br />
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So we can reconstruct *<i>oyo </i>or <i>*oo </i>as the proto-Corachol-Nahuan verb for "to degrain corn"; and while we could reconstruct the patientive noun as something like *<i>ooritɨ </i>or *<i>oyoritɨ, </i>we should probably not do that, since it seems each language derived the noun on its own. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeFrVPRqL-tEovZ1mvcem6gk0jpcJK3RDNefZN485spVlM5zpKAWYI8ichEVljy5xYnJBsQdLBr3HDEPsyv5325iDcDKfVYwxrft5PCARoNWvIBGYhk6Wtpd54Y3HAhwqaxUjauwccwoY/s1600/oyo.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="342" data-original-width="478" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeFrVPRqL-tEovZ1mvcem6gk0jpcJK3RDNefZN485spVlM5zpKAWYI8ichEVljy5xYnJBsQdLBr3HDEPsyv5325iDcDKfVYwxrft5PCARoNWvIBGYhk6Wtpd54Y3HAhwqaxUjauwccwoY/s320/oyo.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<h3>
<b>4. "To bury/plant" (and "spiders" and "names")</b></h3>
Apart from grinding corn kernels into dough another thing you can do with them is to plant them, that is use them as seeds. In Nahuatl the word for planting is /<i>to:ka</i>/, and it also means "to bury" (persons or things) and the word for seed is /a<span face=""calibri" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">č-ƛi</span>/. Interestingly the word for name and naming is a homophone /<i>t:oka</i>/ "to name" and /<i>to:ka-yi-(<span face=""calibri" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 14.6667px;">ƛ</span>)</i>/ "a name", and there is another set of near homophones namely /<i>toka</i>/ "follow" and /<i>toka<span face=""calibri" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 14.6667px;">ƛ</span></i>/ "spider", with a short /o/ instead of a long one. Such homophones and near homophones make for interesting cases in reconstructing a relationship because they test our understanding of the phonology of the proto-language.<br />
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In Huichol "to plant" is <i>tuárika</i>, but "to bury" is a separate verb <i>tewkíya. "</i>Seed" is<i> hasí, </i>"name" is<i> tewa </i>and spider is <i>tuuká. </i>A word that seems related to "name" is <i>tewkari </i>which refers to that grandfather of a child who gives it its name in a naming ceremony. The word for "follow" is the seemingly unrelated <i>veiyarika, </i>which seems to be a transitive form of the verb for "to go"<i>.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
In Cora "to plant" is the seemingly unrelated <i>wíité</i>, but "to bury" is <i>tye’ukwa</i> or in Cora of Sta. Teresa <span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>tyo’kwa</i></span><span face=""calibri" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 11pt;">. "</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Seed" </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">is </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>haȼí</i>, "name" is <i>tyáwa </i>and spider is <i>tu'uká (1732 tùcati)</i>. The word for "to go" is given as <i>tabahara </i>in the dictionary of the McMahons. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">This gives us a set of comparisons like this:</span><br />
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<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 53.35pt;" valign="top" width="71"><b><span lang="EN-US">Bury</span></b></td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 100.9pt;" valign="top" width="135"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Plant</span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 45.2pt;" valign="top" width="60"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Seed<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 94pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Name<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 69.4pt;" valign="top" width="93"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Spider<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 71.85pt;" valign="top" width="96"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Follow<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 46.7pt;" valign="top" width="62"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Nah.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td colspan="2" style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 154.25pt;" valign="top" width="206"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<i><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">to:ka<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 45.2pt;" valign="top" width="60"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"> <i>ač-ƛi<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 94pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">t:oka</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">"to name" </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>to:ka-yi-(ƛ)</i> “name”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>to:kayo:tia</i> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">"to name someone"</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 69.4pt;" valign="top" width="93"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"> <i>toka-ƛ
<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 71.85pt;" valign="top" width="96"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">to-ka<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 46.7pt;" valign="top" width="62"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Hui.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 53.35pt;" valign="top" width="71"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">teukíya</span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 100.9pt;" valign="top" width="135"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">tuárika</span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 45.2pt;" valign="top" width="60"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"> <i>hasí</i>,
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 94pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">tewá</span></i><span lang="EN-US"> “name”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">tewkari</span></i><span lang="EN-US"> “name-giver”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 69.4pt;" valign="top" width="93"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">tuuká<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 71.85pt;" valign="top" width="96"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">veyarika<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 46.7pt;" valign="top" width="62"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">Cor.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 53.35pt;" valign="top" width="71"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">tye’ukwa</span></i><span lang="EN-US"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">(JesusMaría)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">tyo’kwa</span></i><span lang="EN-US">. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">(Sta.Teresa) </span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 100.9pt;" valign="top" width="135"><i><span lang="EN-US">wíi-té</span></i></td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 45.2pt;" valign="top" width="60"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US"> haȼí, <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 94pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i> tyáwa </i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">"to name"<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>tamwati </i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US">"to name someone"</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-US"><i>tyawarit </i>(1732)</span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 69.4pt;" valign="top" width="93"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">tu'uká <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">tùca-ti (1732)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 71.85pt;" valign="top" width="96"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">tabahara<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: 1pt solid windowtext; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 46.7pt;" valign="top" width="62"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US">PCN<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 53.35pt;" valign="top" width="71"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">*téwa-ka/-kiya/-kwa</span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 100.9pt;" valign="top" width="135"><i><span lang="EN-US">*te-wá-</span></i></td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 45.2pt;" valign="top" width="60"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">*haȼí-tɨ<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 94pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">*tewa-ka-yi<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 69.4pt;" valign="top" width="93"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">*to’ka-tɨ<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: 1pt solid windowtext; border-left: none; border-right: 1pt solid windowtext; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 71.85pt;" valign="top" width="96"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US">*tawa-?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The two that are straight forward are "seed" and "spider": </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The differing vowel in <i>tu'uka/toka</i> points towards an original *o, and we can see that apparently the double vowel in Huichol and the glottalized vowel in Cora do not correspond with a long vowel in Nahuan. We might suggest that the first syllable ended in a glottal stop, <i>*to'</i> and that in in Corachol it became glottalization with rearticulation, and in </span>Huichol the stop disappeared between two identical vowels which then coalesced into a long vowel, <span style="font-family: inherit;">whereas in Nahuatl it simply disappeared. Cora and Nahuatl show reflexes of the absolutive suffix -<i>t</i></span><span lang="EN-US"><i>ɨ, </i>whereas Huichol does not. This gives us a proto-Corachol-Nahuan reconstruction of </span><i><span lang="EN-US">*to’ka-tɨ.</span></i><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">In the word for "seed" Nahuatl lost the initial *h (probably from an earlier PUA **p), palatalized *</span><span lang="EN-US"><i>ȼ </i>to </span><i>č </i>before the front vowel i and added the absolutive suffix (the word is not recorded in the 1732 Cora vocabulary, but it probably did have the suffix in Cora). Huichol systematically changes Corachol *<span lang="EN-US"><i>ȼ </i>to <i>/s/. </i></span><span lang="EN-US">This gives us a proto-Corachol-Nahuan reconstruction of </span><i><span lang="EN-US">*haȼí-tɨ</span></i><i><span lang="EN-US">.</span></i><br />
<br />
For "bury", "plant", and "name" it looks like we may have two or three different etyma which have become homophonous in Nahuatl. In the etymology for "life/heart" we saw that PCN *<i>au/aw</i> diphthongs became Nahuan /o:/. Here it looks like the same happened for the difthong <i>eu/ew</i>. All the forms in all thre languages can be derived from a root of the shape /*<i>tewa</i>/: In Nahuatl the root becomes /<i>to:</i>/ which then combines with the verbalizing stem -<i>ka, </i>but in Corachol the development seem to depend on the accent, which in Huichol seems to cause an apocope of unstressed syllables.<br />
<br />
In Huichol we see four different developments (acute accent shows primary accent with high pitch, and grave accent a secondary rhythmic accent with low pitch, unmarked syllables are unstressed and low pitch):<br />
<div align="center">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; mso-border-insideh: none; mso-border-insidev: none; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 49.4pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">tewa-ka<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 71.1pt;" valign="top" width="95"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">tewá<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 49.4pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 71.1pt;" valign="top" width="95"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">téw-kàri<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 49.4pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 71.1pt;" valign="top" width="95"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">twá-rìka<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 49.4pt;" valign="top" width="66"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 71.1pt;" valign="top" width="95"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">téw-kíya<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div align="center">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We can see that when the root /tewa/ combines with a bisyllabic suffix which has the accent on the first syllable then the unstressed syllable in the root is lost. The accent doesn't seem to be lexical though because the "name" root has stress on the second syllable when occurring alone and on the first syllable when occurring as part of the word for "name giver". Probably rather accent shifts were used for grammatical effects, as they still are in Huichol where plural forms of some word are made by shifting the accent from one syllable to the other, or as in Cora where some noun/verb pairs have alternating accent patterns. Incidentally, it is interesting to consider whether the Huichol word for "bury" can be analyzed as "dust-enter/house-Verbalizer". In Nahuatl "dust" is <i>tew</i>-, enter is -<i>aki </i>and -<i>ya </i>is an inchoative verbalizing formant. In Huichol <i>kí </i>is "house", "enter" is <i>haayá</i>, but I have not found a root corresponding to Nahuan <i>tew</i>-. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Cora we see two different developments in the word for "bury" and "name": In both words the *t is palatalized to /ty/, which again tells us that the first /a/ in the Cora word for name is a secondary development since this palatalization usually happens only before front vowels. This suggests a process of regressive vowel harmony having affected the word and turning the original /e/ into an /a/ in anticipation of the vowel in the second syllable - this process is found both internally in Cora and in Nahuan.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the 1732 vocabulary the word has two additional suffixes not found today: <i>tyawa-ri-t</i>. The first suffix -ri could be one we have seen before as the patientive suffix, and the -t is the remnant of the absolutive suffix *<span lang="EN-US"><i>-tɨ. </i>But in fact rather than being a patientive suffix I think the -<i>ri</i>- suffix in Cora is cognate to the Nahuan suffix -<i>yi</i>- which signals abstractivation or inalienable possession. This would make the Cora morpheme sequence -<i>ri-t</i> cognate to Nahuatl the Nahuatl sequence -<i>yo:-tl</i>. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">In the word for "bury" the Cora forms show a glottalization between the /e'u/ in the form from Jesús Maria and after the /o'/ in the form from Sta. Teresa. The Sta. Teresa form is a secondary development of the eu sequence, and in fact we see Sta Teresa changing both the sequences /<i>eu</i>/ and /<i>au</i>/ to /<i>o</i>/ - just as in Nahuatl! The final change to be explained is why Cora has /kwa/ instead of /ka/ - here there are two possible explanations: One is that it is simply a different verbalizing stem that is used, the other is that Cora has labialized the /k/ which is not unlikely since Cora frequentlky labializes both /t/, /k/ and /m/ before /a/. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The word for plant in Cora is <i>wíité </i>which seems unrelated to the *<i>tewa </i>forms - unless the root for planting is -<i>té </i>and the -<i>wa </i>is and added stem formant. In which case we might be able to analyze plant as a trimorphemic root *<i>te-wa-ka</i>, "bury" as bimorphemic *<i>tew-aka</i> (dust-enter) and name as bimorphemic *<i>tewa-ka. </i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Finally the Nahuatl and Cora forms for "follow" look like they might be cognate, but from a stem <i>tawa</i>- instead of <i>tewa</i>-, but I am not going to explore that possibility now. </span></div>
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Additionally we should mention that Brian Stubbs reconstructs the PUA word for name with the vowel **</span><i>ɨ </i>and with a nasal as **<i>t</i><i>ɨnwa. </i>PUA <i>ɨ </i>regularly becomes e in Coracholan and Nahuan, and the Cora form for "to name someone" seems to show a reflex of the nasal. <br />
<br />
Notice how interesting and suprisingly beautiful it is that the word should become a homophones that describe both the first and the last ritual in the human life cycle, and the act of planting a lifeless seed into the ground to see it return as a life-sustaining plant.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZqEwIXCUiHa30IE3S86aYJZvWfkpvschfwVEb-ISi2Avoo1keDf7ShaAbbeiWw-HFcHcVB-OX31W-MR2p_XDO1NDIBwkw1btIH3BE2pSw1mciYlj9gc8NU3l2LT4KARSjZhsSGG-W0kI/s1600/teuka.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="308" data-original-width="533" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZqEwIXCUiHa30IE3S86aYJZvWfkpvschfwVEb-ISi2Avoo1keDf7ShaAbbeiWw-HFcHcVB-OX31W-MR2p_XDO1NDIBwkw1btIH3BE2pSw1mciYlj9gc8NU3l2LT4KARSjZhsSGG-W0kI/s400/teuka.PNG" width="400" /></a></div>
<h3>
</h3>
<h3>
<br />5. Sun, heat, deities and sacred energy</h3>
<div>
Having covered now terms of religious and spiritual significance to the life and the soul and to nourishment and the life cycle it enables we turn now to the last set of words, which are no less significant: The words for the sun, its heat, its status as primary deity, and the sacred energy that is associated with it. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2KWJxp4dY3p_WyIQVvpLiq9KZBaAUs7JOw38JsihaHjl4bMkkeKC0shv18FbcyKFFBxuJYlp9f9w2_U-l7GAtDJndOfUmkZDM-sZ3vSZcVU0T-gDWVVPFmDthFxDVpvdRhzwgeN6pMl8/s1600/tlacateotl+xolotl.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="182" data-original-width="336" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2KWJxp4dY3p_WyIQVvpLiq9KZBaAUs7JOw38JsihaHjl4bMkkeKC0shv18FbcyKFFBxuJYlp9f9w2_U-l7GAtDJndOfUmkZDM-sZ3vSZcVU0T-gDWVVPFmDthFxDVpvdRhzwgeN6pMl8/s320/tlacateotl+xolotl.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A depiction of a ruler called "tlacateotl" in the Codex Xolotl, <br />
his name written simply with the glyph for teo:tl, a sun.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
The Nahuatl word for "sun", "day" and the solar energy that provides humans with their individual fates is called /<i>to:nalli</i>/, and is another patientive noun derived from the verb /<i>to:na</i>/ "to be warm" (about the sun and weather), the adjective "hot" in Nahuatl is /<i>to-to:n-ki</i>/ a reduplicated form of the verb with an perfect suffix (so basically "heated"). The word for "deity" (today mostly the Christian god) and for "sacred" is <i>teo:tl</i>. There is no obvious relation between those two words - except that in the Aztec glyphic script the word<i> teo:tl </i>was written logographically with a symbol depicting a sun. Nevertheless, in the following I shall show a relation between the two, though it is not a direct etymological relation.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In Huichol the word for sun is <i>tau</i>, plain and simple. But the word <i>tau </i>can also be used to describe the solar deity who also has the personal name /<i>tayéu</i>/. There is also a prefix <i>tu</i>- used to describe sacred things <i>tukí </i>"traditional temple building" (<i>tu</i>+house), <i>tutú </i>means "the ancient tradition (i.e. Huichol religion)", <i>tutúma </i>"deity" (any deity in the large Huichol pantheon), and <i>túukah </i>means "midday". </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxyhhdhLpq7k8pFjVaPvdVWkJCzbpeCiBRb6c4ejkYRiVzzutU-jPOjxTC98JOagHNjwT8YNlwn9hHAsRSnviH8sXgoIoUhSxNGIMpYKu47XORLj3FKJ_6Wsh9iH7XuQQ6Wt8pkyv1fjM/s1600/Ojo_de_dios_anaroza.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxyhhdhLpq7k8pFjVaPvdVWkJCzbpeCiBRb6c4ejkYRiVzzutU-jPOjxTC98JOagHNjwT8YNlwn9hHAsRSnviH8sXgoIoUhSxNGIMpYKu47XORLj3FKJ_6Wsh9iH7XuQQ6Wt8pkyv1fjM/s320/Ojo_de_dios_anaroza.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A Huichol <i style="text-align: start;">sikɨri</i><span style="text-align: start;"> sun-symbol placed in the landscape.</span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
In Cora the word for "sun" and "day" and "heat" is s<i>ɨkah, </i>which seems unrelated to the Nahua and Huichol words for sun, but the word for "God" (the christian, and other deities) is <i>taya'u. </i>The word for sun seems to be related to the Huichol word for a sacred sun related symbol called "the eye of god" in Spanish, but <i>sikɨri</i> in Huichol<i>. </i>If we look under "<i>sol</i>" in the 1732 Cora vocabulary we find out why the Cora shifted to calling the sun<i> </i>s<i>ɨkah </i>because it says "<i>Sol - xeucat. Decirle tayoappa es idolatrar porque le decián que era su padre</i>" [Sun - s<i>ɨkah. </i>Saying <i>tayoappa </i>is committing idolatry because they said that was their father ]. It seems that the Cora also originally had a name for the sun and solar deity which was probably something like /<i>tayau-pa/</i> where the -<i>pa </i>is a likely locative suffix, but that missionaries in the 18th century forbade them to use that word. </div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
The picture is complicated however by the fact that both Cora and Huichol has borrowed a lot of words from Nahuatl, many in the ecclesiastical realm as Nahuatl was the langage used as a lingua franca by missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries. For example the word for "church" is <i>teyeupáni </i>in Huichol, and<i> teyuhpwa </i>in Cora both borrowed from Nahuatl <i>teo:pan </i>(Knab 1976)<i>. </i>Luckily it seems that we can count on the borrowed form of <i>teo:tl </i>to be identified by having /e/ as the first vowel. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This gives us the following breakdown of probable relations: </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; margin-left: 106.1pt; mso-border-insideh: none; mso-border-insidev: none; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 54.35pt;" valign="top" width="72"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 59.05pt;" valign="top" width="79"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sun<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Deity<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 54.35pt;" valign="top" width="72"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Huichol<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 59.05pt;" valign="top" width="79"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">tau<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">tayeu<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 54.35pt;" valign="top" width="72"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 59.05pt;" valign="top" width="79"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">tu<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 54.35pt;" valign="top" width="72"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Nahuatl<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 59.05pt;" valign="top" width="79"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">to:- (na)<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">teo:-<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 54.35pt;" valign="top" width="72"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Cora <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 59.05pt;" valign="top" width="79"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">tayau-pa<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
<td style="padding: 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">taya’u<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
At this point we can see that Nahuatl /<i>to:</i>/ is the regular reflex of proto-Corachol-Nahuan *<i>tau</i>, the -<i>na </i>is a verbalizing stem formant deriving the verb "to sunheat" from the noun root. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The word for deity/sacred energy/name of the Solar deity/God has two syllables: we can assume that *e was the original and that it either god blended with the word for sun, or that the /e/ assimilated to the following vowel if that was /a/. The long Nahua /o:/ could be from either /ew/ or /aw/, so that doesn't provide a definitive clue. We should probably reconstruct the proto-Nahuan form with a /y/ glide between the two syllables as *<i>teyo</i>:-, this glide simple disappears phonologically when found in between a front and a back vowel (the same reason the glide in the Nahuatl verb /piya/ "to have" can only be distinguished when the final /a/ drops in the past tense and the /y/ devoices to<span style="font-family: inherit;"> [<span style="font-size: 11pt;">š]</span>). </span> </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This leaves the Huichol shortform <i>tu </i>to be explained: Here I would again invoke the accent phenomenon that causes apocope of unstressed vowels: tú < *taú, in the same way that <i>tuá- </i>"to plant"<i> </i>comes from <i>tewá</i>. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Stubbs reconstructs a PUA root **t<i>ɨyo "deity" </i>which he only finds in the Aztecan branch, I have hereby demonstrated that the root is shared with Coracholan and should be reconstructed as<i> *tɨyaw </i>or <i>*tɨyew. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSCgA7fACz1AJc6fFC60NCADIWg1ho9w20P7BSUEsrYrYoZcs0yRzKlsGN6fggbgINmJefRWfnui-c3vvGTDGoJceFKkPmUPPVNQP-48ERPW03Hq3Kq0EDQo_BgFQlRxm9J4ZmUi-_Jig/s1600/tautiyaw.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="322" data-original-width="941" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSCgA7fACz1AJc6fFC60NCADIWg1ho9w20P7BSUEsrYrYoZcs0yRzKlsGN6fggbgINmJefRWfnui-c3vvGTDGoJceFKkPmUPPVNQP-48ERPW03Hq3Kq0EDQo_BgFQlRxm9J4ZmUi-_Jig/s640/tautiyaw.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">6. Conclusions: </span></h3>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In this post, I have basically attempted to solve the relations between life and death, sustenance, birth and the sacred in Nahuatl and Corachol - at least the etymological relations. And I believe that I have shown that the three languages are indeed very closely related, sharing not only a set of linguistic forms derived from the same root, but also a system of cultural conceptualizations of the relations between life, death, food and religion. I cannot say that I have demonstrated that Corachol and Nahuatl are more closely related than either group is to other Southern Uto-Aztecan languages (to do that I would need to include those groups in the comparison), but I think that it is fairly improbable that the same degree of phonologica, semantic, lexical and morphological similarity can be found with any of the other UA languages of Mexico. </span><br />
<br />
<h3>
Bibliography:</h3>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Campbell, L., & Langacker, R. W. (1978). Proto-Aztecan vowels: part I, II, III. <i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">International Journal of American Linguistics</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">44</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">(2), 85-102; </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">no. 3: 197-210; </span>no. 4: 262-279</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dakin, Karen. "Western and Central Nahua dialects." <i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Language Contact and Change in Mesoamerica and Beyond</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> 185 (2017): 263.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dakin, K. (1983). Proto-Aztecan vowels and Pochutec: An alternative analysis. <i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">International Journal of American Linguistics</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">49</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">(2), 196-203.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Kaufman, T. (2001). The history of the Nawa language group from the earliest times to the sixteenth century: Some initial results. <i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Paper posted online at http://www. albany. edu/anthro/maldp/Nawa. pdf. University of Pittsburgh</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Knab, T. (1976). Huichol-Nahuatl borrowings and their implications in the ethnohistory of the region. <i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">International Journal of American Linguistics</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">42</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">(3), 261-264.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">Manaster-Ramer, A. (1996). On Whorf's law and related questions of Aztecan phonology and etymology. <i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">International journal of American linguistics</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">62</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">(2), 176-187.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;">McMahon, A., & de McMahon, M. A. (1959). Vocabulario cora. <i style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Instituto Linguistico de Verano, Vocabularios Indigenas 2</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222;">Stubbs, B. D. (2011). <i>Uto-Aztecan: A comparative vocabulary</i>. Shumway Family History Services.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Vázquez Soto, Veronica (2000<span style="font-family: inherit;">). Morphology and Syllable Weight in Cora: The Case of the Absolutive Suffix-ti. <i>Uto-Aztecan: Structural, Temporal, and Geographic Perspectives: Papers in Memory of Wick R. Miller by the Friends of Uto-Aztecan</i>, 105.</span></span></span></li>
</ul>
Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-87137919774717779842017-04-26T02:44:00.002-07:002021-03-16T00:40:52.274-07:00The Aztecs did not need a leap year: Introducing the Nuttall-Ochoa model for the Aztec Calendar<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">This
blogpost is inspired by a recent <a href="http://www.calmecacanahuac.com/blog/calendar/aztecamexica-calendar-correlations-the-good-the-bad-and-the-completely-useless/" target="_blank">blogpost by Itztli Ehecatl at Calmecac Anahuac</a>, in which he lays
out the different calendar correlations between the Aztec/Mexica calendar and the gregorian one, and in which he argues in favor of the correlation recently made by Rubén Ochoa. I agree that Ochoa’s correlation is the best available, and
in this blogpost, I describe why that is – recycling some of the arguments from
Itztli Ehecatl’s blogpost and adding others. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju1q5-i8NQ08aCjj9fQoxjfcKnELYPNMHGsOLZm1EZcW1xgzJO7gXwL0Cju3BstK3b7ORGkciwGpSGCdeI_k0d-qQJRoy3DwXDE0499JMRrlOPzh-Qp4FA0EF9SfLIQg9xCUuyTW-Z3mE/s1600/900px-Codex_Borgia_page_33.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju1q5-i8NQ08aCjj9fQoxjfcKnELYPNMHGsOLZm1EZcW1xgzJO7gXwL0Cju3BstK3b7ORGkciwGpSGCdeI_k0d-qQJRoy3DwXDE0499JMRrlOPzh-Qp4FA0EF9SfLIQg9xCUuyTW-Z3mE/s320/900px-Codex_Borgia_page_33.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Depiction of the Celebration of the feast of Tlacaxipehualiztli <br />
during the Spring Equinox in the Codex Borgia (folio 34)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /> A recurring question in the study of Aztec
calendrics has been whether the Aztec calendar did or did not
correct for leap years. Generally the question has been answered in the negative (see e.g. </span>Sprajc 2000). Archaeoastronomer and expert in Mesoamerican calendars Anthony Aveni (2016:110), in his recent chapter on calendars in the <a href="https://books.google.dk/books?id=0chjDQAAQBAJ&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&dq=The+Oxford+Handbook+of+the+Aztecs&source=bl&ots=7snajKeE31&sig=NKRKa81Nzxr47kfJaOqk9ThlocM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwicr7bJ-8HTAhVJjCwKHVsEA9wQ6AEITTAI#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank">Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs</a>, concludes that “there is little evidence that the Aztecs employed
a leap-year correction”, but that the question is open.<br />
Rather, I think the
question is wrongly posed - who says the Aztec calendar even needed a leap year correction the first place?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The basic
problem is that there is little explicit evidence that the Aztecs used an
intercalary leap year in their <i>xiuhpohualli</i>
solar year count, but also it seems that the monthly feasts, many of which were
related to an agricultural cycle and themes were usually celebrated at the appropriate
time of year for a given agricultural event. This poses a basic question of how
to reconcile the idea of calendric agricultural rituals with a calendar count
that cannot be fixed in relation to the tropical year. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">But as I see it the question can be resolved quite simply by recognizing, as several
scholars have, that the beginning of the Aztec year was fixed by the vernal
equinox and that the <i>nemontemi</i> are
simply the days between the end of the 360-day cycle and the beginning of the
next. This would make the question of leap year moot for the Aztec calendar
since the equinox/new year would automatically fix the calendar to the tropical
year every year, and the need to have an explicit principle for intercalating days
or months due to the increasing disjuncture between the astronomical and
calendric year would never arise. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Currently,
none of the most widely accepted correlations between the Aztec calendar and
the Gregorian adopt this solution to the leap year problem. But the solution
emerges naturally from the argument that the vernal equinox marked the
beginning of the Aztec year. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Today, the most
scholars use one of two correlations – Caso’s or Tena’s. Alfonso Caso’s correlation does not correct for the
bissextile year and so does not begin on a specific day relative to the
Gregorian calendar, it would result in the Aztec year starting on a different day each year with the monthly ceremonies gradually changing their position relative to the tropical year. Rafael Tena’s model, in turn, does
correct for leap year, but he argues the year begins on February 26<sup>th</sup>
with the veintena of Atlcahualo. </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">Oddly, as noted by Itztli Ehecatl, neither
Caso nor Tena cites Nuttall’s 1894 paper or her 1904 article in American
Anthropologist in response to Eduard Seler. The argument against the
intercalation of an extra day to correct for leap year is that some scholars
find that it disrupts the ongoing count of the other calendrical cycles – the
260 day <i>tonalpohualli</i> and the lunar
and venus counts. The argument for an intercalary day has mostly been the
seemingly correct correspondence with sowing and fertility rituals in the
spring months and the harvest rituals in the fall. Some scholars (e.g. Graulich 2002) have argued that the agricultural associations of the monthly feasts were so vague that they didn't really require being performed at a specific time of year (which is debatable), and that farmers don't need a calendar to tell them when to sow and harvest (which is right). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Nuttall was
the first to propose the equinox as marking the end and beginning of the Aztec solar year. Her
proposal however has been echoed also by Lopez Luján (2005), who argues, based
on the astronomical alignment of the Templo Mayor, and in accordance with
Nuttall, that Tlacaxipehualiztli was the first 20-day month of the Aztec year
and that its beginning was fixed by the equinox. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Recently, Rubén Ochoa has verified that Nuttall’s correlation is consistent with the evidence
from prehispanic calendric codices, and that the length of the <i>nemontemi</i> must have varied so as to
gradually adjust to the tropical year. He notes that the addition of a day is
evident in the relation between the two most securely dated events in Aztec
history: the arrival of Cortés in
Tenochtitlan on November 8<sup>th</sup> 1519 (2 <i>quecholli</i>/8 <i>ehecatl</i>) and the
fall of Tenochtitlan on August 13th 1521 (15 <i>miccailhuitontli</i>/1 <i>coatl</i>). He notes
that counting from the first date to the second requires at least one
intercalary day, which he supposes would have extended the <i>nemontemi</i> of one of
the two interceding years with one day from 5 to 6 days. The explanation of Ochoa’s model and the evidence from the codices can be found
<a href="http://www.calmecacanahuac.com/tlaahcicacaquiliztli/Ruben_Ochoa_Count" target="_blank">here </a>and the evidence showing how the model works for the known dates around 1519-1521 is found <a href="http://www.calmecacanahuac.com/tlaahcicacaquiliztli/Calendar_Correlation" target="_blank">here</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Nuttall
however, followed the colonial chronicler De La Serna in believing that there was a 13-day intercalary
trecena every 52 years, when the New Fire ceremony was celebrated. But as noted
by Hassig, this would have had the effect of throwing the correlation between
the agricultural year and the calendric year off so much that it would be impractical as an agricultural calendar. Hassig proposes
that rather than resetting directly to the astronomical year, the New Fire
Ceremony reset the year to 7 days earlier than the exact match, which would
mean that the total variance between the agricultural year and the calendar would
vary over the 52-year period, but without becoming greater than about 7 days
which is agriculturally tolerable. The main problem with Hassig’s explanation
is that it is entirely conjectural.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">What sets
apart Ochoa’s solution from those of de la Serna, Nuttall and Hassig is that when
following the principle of beginning the calendar year on the day after the observable
equionox, no explicit intercalation is necessary, nor are any calculations or
record-keeping of a deep day count. The
intercalation arises naturally as the number of days between the end of the
360- <i>xiuhpohualli</i> and the beginning
of the next after the equinox naturally varies between five and six days. For the
Aztec commoner, the principle is simply that when the last day of the year is
over, the waiting period for the beginning of the new year begins, and the
waiting period ends when the priests calls that the sun is in the right
position. Calendar priests will be aware that every four years there are six
days before the equinox rather than the usual five, but since the <i>nemontemi</i> are already out of count and
simply fill up the rest of the year, they do not need to make explicit mention
of any “intercalation”, they simply keep counting the <i>tonalpohualli </i>day count
and then restart the year count on the equinox. In this way, the Aztecs had a
smoothly functioning calendar which could function without significant
deviation from the tropical year, and which could be observed in all
communities that shared the custom of beginning the new year on the vernal
equinox, regardless of what month they used as the first in the year.</span><br />
<br />
The Nuttall-Ochoa model
has a number of major advantages over all previous calendar models:</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="text-indent: -18pt;">It solves the leap year problem
without the necessity of explaining how the intercalation of days was
accomplished without further confounding any existing mismatch between local
calendar variants.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="text-indent: -18pt;">It requires minimal astronomical
knowledge to use since it can be maintained as a self-correcting system through
the simple cultural practice of beginning the year count the day after the observable
equinox, without the necessity of making calculations into the past or future or
keeping records of bissextile years.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="text-indent: -18pt;">It is congruent with the clear
cultural relations between the calendar rituals and the agricultural cycle and
the close cultural association between the year and the growth period.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="text-indent: -18pt;">It is congruent with the
archeologically attested importance of the equinox, and with the use of
westward-oriented double temples that allow for ease of observation of the
equinox sun between the two temples, and which symbolically divides the year
into two deities who then represent the estival and hibernal solstices.</span></li>
<li>It is linguistically plausible based
on the literal and cultural meanings of ‘<i>nemontemi</i>’ (“they vainly fill up”),
and ‘<i>xihuitl</i>’ (year/herb/green(-stone)/comet).</li>
<li><span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="text-indent: -18pt;">It is congruent with what we know
about the practices surrounding the Maya solar calendar, including the architectural
use of E groups as observation points from where the vernal equinox can be
observed relative to the main temple structures.</span></li>
<li><span lang="EN-US" style="text-indent: -18pt;">It is congruent with the known correlation dates for the arrival of Cortés in Tenochtitlan in 1519 and the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521.</span></li>
</ul>
<div style="text-indent: -24px;">
To me however the best argument comes from the Templo Mayor and has been used by Leonardo Lopez Luján to argue that the temple was tied to the equinox and to the calendar: If we assume that the Mexica new year started right after observing the spring equinox (usually march 21st in the Gregorian calendar), then the sun would rise exactly in between the two shrines on top of the Templo Mayor. AND: The feast for Huizilopochtli in Panquetzaliztli the sun would fall around the Winter Solstice when the sun would be above the Huitzilopochtli temple, and the feast for Tlaloc in Etzalcualiztli would fall on the summer solstice (during the rainy season in central Mexico). With Ochoa's model, but not with any of the others, this would be the same year after year, without any need to discuss how to put the calendar back in sync with the sun. </div>
<div style="text-indent: -24px;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipTJrwUbh_31phIKuYLwnoHI7__V85hiVJUtPLeDoxB82hWMUjZsqwSSg1os2r3aGg83lLnKVbWgwfjaiGhWJAaofwg2MLIywqd4vFt1m0uvjTSyt03ISRnVP4bDN8Mv7Zg1RJbUjqBcU/s1600/templo+mayor.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="516" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipTJrwUbh_31phIKuYLwnoHI7__V85hiVJUtPLeDoxB82hWMUjZsqwSSg1os2r3aGg83lLnKVbWgwfjaiGhWJAaofwg2MLIywqd4vFt1m0uvjTSyt03ISRnVP4bDN8Mv7Zg1RJbUjqBcU/s640/templo+mayor.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This image based on the official model of the Templo Mayor at the Museo Templo Mayor, shows how the sun would be observed from the Quetzalcoatl temple on the Equinox, and on the winter solstices - if Ochoa's model is correct. <br />
Can this be a coincidence?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Finally, as a treat, here is a <a href="http://www.calmecacanahuac.com/tonalpohualli.php" target="_blank">link to Calmecac Anahuacs "Aztec Date app"</a> which calculates any given date according to the Nuttall-Ochoa correlation. You can use it to find out what date you were born, married in the Aztec calendar.<br />
<br />
<h3>
Update (28/04/2017): Additional Arguments:</h3>
I have been encouraged to also mention the main arguments against the Nuttall-Ochoa correlation, so I will do this here. Traditionally it has been believed that the Aztec year was named after the day-sign (in the <i>tonalpohualli </i>ritual calendar) of the first day in the year. If we follow the Nuttall-Ochoa model, the first day of the year however is not the one that defines the year bearer - rather years seem to be named after the thirteenth day of the new year - this does seem a somewhat arbitrary principle, although thirteen is of course an important number. <br />
<br />
Also a final argument in favor of the correlation , although a somewhat subjective one, is that in the Nuttall-Ochoa correlation and none of the others, my birthday falls on the Tonalpohualli day <i>13 Ozomahtli, </i>about which the Florentine codex writes (in Anderson and Dibble's translation):<span itemprop="description"> "<i>It was said that anyone who was born upon this day sign became a highly favored person; he succeeded and endured on Earth. He was well respected and recognized; he was famed and honored; hence he was one who prospered, enjoyed glory, was compassionate, and served others. As a chieftain, he was strong, daring in battle, esteemed, intrepid, able, sharp-witted, quick-acting, prudent, sage, learned and discreet; an able talker, and attentive. To everyone he brought happiness, as much as to comfort the afflicted and provide succor. And if such did not befall one, it was said that he himself, by his own doing, neglected and destroyed his day sign through vice, because perchance he took not good heed, perhaps did not perform the penances well.The closing day sign 13 Ozomatli was named Tonacatecutli. And likewise they said that the one then born would become aged; they said that he would finish his work, endure on Earth, and be admired</i>" (Florentine Codex, vol. 4-5:53-54).</span><br />
<h3>
<b><u>Bibliography</u></b>:</h3>
<ul>
<li>Aveni, A. F. (2016). The Measure, Meaning, and Transformation of Aztec Time and Calendars. In<span class="apple-converted-space" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Oxford Handbook of the Aztecs</i><span class="apple-converted-space" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">(p. 107). Oxford University Press.</span></li>
<li>Caso, A. (1967).<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Los calendarios prehispánicos</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>(Vol. 6). <span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 17.12px;">Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.</span></li>
<li><a href="http://www.historicas.unam.mx/publicaciones/revistas/nahuatl/pdf/ecn33/652.pdf" target="_blank">Graulich, M. (2002). Acerca del” Problema de ajustes del año Calendárico mesoamericano al año trópico”. Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl, 33(033).</a></li>
<li>Hassig, R. (2001). Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico. <span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">University of Texas Press.</span></li>
<li>Lopez Luján, L. (2005).<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The offerings of the Templo Mayor of Tenochtitlan</i>. <span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 17.12px;">UNM Press.</span></li>
<li><a href="http://www.calmecacanahuac.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Note_on_the_Ancient_Mexican_Calendar_Sys.pdf" target="_blank">Nuttall,Zelia. 1894. Note on the Ancient Mexican Calendar System. Communicated to theTenth International Congress of Americanists in Stockholm. Bruno Schulze.Dresden.</a></li>
<li>Nuttall, Z. (1904). The periodical adjustments of the ancient Mexican calendar. <i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">American Anthropologist</i><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 13px;">, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">6</i><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 13px;">(4), 486-500.</span></li>
<li><a href="http://www.revistas.unam.mx/index.php/antropologia/article/view/394" target="_blank">Sprajc, I. (2000, January).Problema de ajustes del año calendárico mesoamericano al año trópico. In Anales de Antropología (Vol. 34, pp. 133-160). UniversidadNacional Autonoma de Mexico, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropologicas.</a></li>
<li>Tena, R. (1987).<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>El
calendario mexica y la cronografía</i><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>(Vol.
161). <span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; line-height: 107%;">Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.</span></li>
</ul>
Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-77511962734905156022016-07-26T10:26:00.003-07:002016-07-31T00:17:56.464-07:00How to spell Nahuatl? Nawatl? Nauatl? <br />
<br />
My last blog post was about how the Nahua people wrote before the arrival of Europeans with their alphabetic writing system. But almost all Nahuatl texts from the colonial period onwards are of course written in alphabetic writing. In this blog post, I describe the many different conventions for writing Nahuatl using the Latin script.<br />
<br />
For the past 80 years, Nahuatl scholars have argued about how to standardize Nahuatl orthography and what conventions to use. Different groups of scholars and activists have recommended and supported different systems. Sometimes scholars and Nahauatl activists seem to be spending more time arguing about how to write Nahuatl than they do on actually writing it. There are even cases where a single community has two different lanugage revitalization projects that refuse to cooperate because they use different spelling systems!<br />
<br />
In this post, I try to describe the different types of writing conventions that are in use for Nahuatl, and to show their relation to different schools of thought within Nahuatl scholarship.<br />
<br />
Roughly we can classify Nahuatl orthographies into two main types, each of which has a bunch of variatoins. One group we can call "<i>Classical orthographies</i>", because they base their orthographic choices on the conventions used by the Spanish speaking friars who wrote the first alphabetic texts in the early 16th century. The other group we can call "<i>Modern orthographies</i>" because they were introduced by academic linguists working to find the most linguistically efficient ways to represent the Nahuatl language in writing in the early 20th century. Both types of orthographies can be used to represent colonial Nahuatl as well as contemporary varieties.<br />
<br />
For the current purpose we can define the two types of orthographies in this way:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Classical Orthographies</b>: are those that <b>value continuity</b> with the colonial tradition of nahuatl writing - and which adopt <b>colonial conventions</b> because of the value they have as connectors with that tradition.</li>
<li><b>Modern Orthographies</b>: are those that <b>value linguistic efficiency </b>and which aim to represent the Nahuatl language in ways that are either <b>easier to learn</b> or which facilitate a higher <b>analytical precision </b>by representing linguistic elements (phonemes, morphemes) in ways that are minimally variable and maximally efficient.</li>
</ul>
<div>
In practice most orthographies include elements of both "classical" and "modern" principles. </div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3>
Classical Orthographies: </h3>
<div>
Sometimes people talk about "classical orthography" as if it is a single well-established standard. Really it is not, and it never was. In the 16th century when Nahuatl was first written alphabetically, the idea of a standardized orthography didn't even exist - and there was no established orthography for any of the spoken main languages such as English or Spanish (as anyone trying to read Shakespeare or Cortés' letters will realize). Authors writing in any of these languages simply used the writing conventions they learned from their teachers and put them to the best possible use to get their points across in the easiest way. They tended to write these languages as they were spoken, representing the sounds more or less as they pronounced them. And when they began writing Nahuatl they did the same, tried to use the conventions they knew from writing Spanish to represent the sounds of Nahuatl. This is why the only thing that is really shared by all "classical orthographies" is the fact that they represent the sounds that exist both in Nahuatl and in Spanish using the letters that were most commonly used in Spanish to represent these sounds. For example, Spanish had adopted the Latin convention of writing the sound [k] with the letter <c> before the vowels [a] and [o] but with the letters <qu> before the vowels [i] and [e]. Luckily, actually most of the sounds in Nahuatl are also found in Spanish, which meant that this method was fairly succesful. And in fact in the 16th century, Spanish phonology was even more similar to that of Nahuatl - because at that time Spanish didnt have the harsh j-sound (like in scottish Lo<b>ch</b>), but instead had a soft sh-sound as in fi<b>sh</b> which also exists in Nahuatl. They wrote this sound with the letter <x>, because that is how they generally wrote the sh-sound in Spanish. Only over the next century did Spanish gradually change the sh-sound to the harsh j-sound (and eventually began writing it with a j). (This, incidentally, is why the x is pronounced harshly in words like Mexico/Mejico, Oaxaca and Xalapa/Jalapa - but not in the corresponding Nahuatl versions which are pronounced <i>meshi'ko</i>, <i>washakak </i>and <i>shalapan</i>).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
However there are some sounds that are found in Nahuatl that do not exist in Spanish: Primarily, the Nahuatl signature sound the tl (written in the International Phonetic Alphabet as <span style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.4px;"> [</span><span class="IPA" style="background-color: #f9f9f9; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.4px;" title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)">t͡ɬ]</span>), but this turned out to be easy to write with the letter combination <tl>. The sound [kw] (as in <b>qu</b>een )likewise turned out to be easy to write, since this sound also existed in Spanish as (although in Spanish it is a combination of k and u, and not a single consonant sound) so they wrote it <qu> or <cu>. The Nahuatl consonant [ t͡s] also didnt exist in Spanoish, but the Friars knew the sound from Hebrew and wrote it in the same way they would when transliterating the scripture using the letter combination <tz>. Nahuatl also had the consonant sound [w] (as in "wat?") which was not found in Spanish - friars couldn't quite decide on how to write this one, but usually they simply represented it with the vowel letter <u> - sometimes combined with a consonant letter such as <hu> or <gu> (More about this below, under Canger's orthography). <br />
<br />
But the most difficult sounds to write were the glottal stop (or h) neither of which existed in Spanish; and the distinction between long and short vowel duration. At first most friars didn't even realize that these sounds actually existed in Nahuatl, so they simply didnt write them! This is the main difference between the orthographies of the Franciscan friars and the Jesuits. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4>
Franciscan style orthographies:</h4>
<div>
In the 16th century the most widely used Nahuatl orthographies were those developed by the Franciscans. The Franciscans had a highly practical approach to evangelizing, without too many theoretical considerations - they just did whatever seemed to work (which sometimes got them on the wrong side of other ecclesiastic orders such as the more orthodox Dominicans). The same approach worked in the area of orthography, where the Franciscans never pined much about being consistent or about how best to write. This pragmatic approach was probably partly what allowed the Franciscans friars and their indigenous aides to author the most extensive documentation of any Indigenous language in the colonial Americas. The 16th century saw major Nahuatl works like Andres de Olmos' Nahuatl grammar, Bernardino de Sahagún's 12 volume encyclopedia about Indigenous Nahua culture (now called the Florentine Codex) and Alonso de Molina's vocabularies. None of these works represented the saltillo or the vowel length distinction, and they were extremely inconsistent in representing sounds like [w] and [j] - and even so they worked fine and thousands of Nahuas learned to write using these loose conventions. Apparently they didn't loose much sleep worrying about the fact that the representation of some minimal pairs was ambiguous (e.g. [tla:tia] "to hide" and [tlatia] "to burn" both of which was written <tlatia>, or [paʔti] "to become well" or [pa:ti] "to melt" both of which were written <pati>, and even the difference between plural and singular of verbs in the present tense as [kochi] "he sleeps" and [kochiʔ] "they sleep" were both written <cochi>). When Franciscans sometimes heard the saltillo (they only ever seem to have heard it bwhen it occurred before another consonant) and decided to write it, they used the letter <h> giving <<i>pahti</i>> "to cure", <<i>pati</i>> "to melt". </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Other than these conventions Franciscans (and the vast majority of colonial </div>
<div>
Nahuatl authors) were very unruly in their orthographies - for example they used the letters u and o interchangeably for the vowels [o] and [o:], they used the letters <i> and <j> and <y> interchangeably both for the vowel [i] and the consonant [j], they used <hu>, <u> and <o> intechangeably for the consonant [w] and used the letters <z>, <c> and <<span style="background-color: white; color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.4px;">ç</span>> for the sound [s]. '</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Really, by modern standards the Franciscan orthography was a mess - and yet we are fully able to read it today just as they were back in the 16th century. This tells me that consistency and standardization of orthographies is vastly overrated. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>Jesuit style orthographies: </b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzURMU21mSmt4nlDHApwrfYirHY914N8Kva1dA5zj1MVSnEBRpd7-tJuKHVMA9R7wb6yekz-3hMjoXa7Oxk2G_OrUkpj52XpQgOCOV-VhcqgBEu_6n4aIxfmMjNR_dXpucf6avXkUAaU4/s1600/24-carochi.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzURMU21mSmt4nlDHApwrfYirHY914N8Kva1dA5zj1MVSnEBRpd7-tJuKHVMA9R7wb6yekz-3hMjoXa7Oxk2G_OrUkpj52XpQgOCOV-VhcqgBEu_6n4aIxfmMjNR_dXpucf6avXkUAaU4/s400/24-carochi.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Page from Carochi's 1645 grammar which uses macron to show long vowels <br />
and circumflex accent to show wordfinal saltillo.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
Among the catholic orders the Jesuits have a reputation for being studious and academically inclined. The jesuit orthographic tradition for Nahuatl embodies this reputation for thoughtfulness, and Jesuits were among the first scholars to have theoretical insights about how the Nahuatl language differed from Spanish and other well known languages and how this ought to influence the way the language was written. Nonetheless, most of the honor for these insights should probably be given to the first Nahuatl grammarian who was also a Nahua person and a Nahuatl native speaker: the jesuit priest Antonio del Rincon. He wrote a short grammar in which he noted the existence of the saltillo and vowel length distinction and to suggest marking it in writing to represent the language more faithfully. His suggestions were taken up a fifty years later by fellow Jesuit Horacio Carochi who introduced a fully developed system for marking vowel length and saltillo systematically. Following Rincon, Carochi used diacritical marks to show these distinctions and he marked the saltillo with an accent (grave, or circumflex) and vowel length with a macron.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Hence the words "to cure" and "to melt" he wrote <<i>pàti</i>> and <<i>pāti</i>> respectively and the difference between "he sleeps" and "they sleep" he wrote <<i>cochi</i>> and <<i>cochî</i>>. Sometimes he marked short vowels with a breve sign <ă>, but he did not do this consistently (since it is redundant to mark both long and short, he only marked short vowels when a long vowel would change the meaning).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>The Andrews-Campbell-Karttunen orthography:</b></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0GV2kkR5cD6jJmdBD4F5AaPpgMFHN2BNWwL8z_26BEnqa0ylVF2C4QWPG775YSKtDSQDqh0DCBONwkale2VfYIfCObt99pxgBNTL6WKb4FDaMaBIcRMrqVjJiSiGejwbGqR89ni_esCM/s1600/analytical.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0GV2kkR5cD6jJmdBD4F5AaPpgMFHN2BNWwL8z_26BEnqa0ylVF2C4QWPG775YSKtDSQDqh0DCBONwkale2VfYIfCObt99pxgBNTL6WKb4FDaMaBIcRMrqVjJiSiGejwbGqR89ni_esCM/s400/analytical.jpg" width="263" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Karttunen's dictionary which has <br />
popularized the ACK orthography.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
In the mid-twentieth century American historians discovered the rich trove of Nahuatl language writings and began working with them. Among the earliest historians looking at these works were Arthur Anderson and Charles Dibble who translated Sahagun's Florentine Codex into English. Another scholar to take up the study of Nahuatl was the grammarian J. Richard Andrews, who published his grammar of the "classical" language in 1975. He chose an orthography that was linguistically accurate marking all the phonemes including the vowel length distinction and the saltillo - and which combined aspects of the Franciscan and Jesuit tradition. Specifically he adopted Carochi's use of macron for marking long vowels, and the tradition penchant for marking the saltillo with <h>. He conventionalized the use of <hu> to write the sound <w> before a vowel and <uh> syllable-finally</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Andrews' orthography was in turn adopted and conventionalized further by R. Joe Campbell and Frances Karttunen in their Foundation Course and in Campbell's morphological dictionary, and the important dictionary of Frances Karttunen (the first full Nahuatl-English dictionary, and the first to consistently mark the vowel length distinction). This orthography was further adopted by the school of historians trained by James Lockhart who collaborated with Karttunen in the 1970s. Today, almost all new editions of colonial Nahuatl texts adopt the Andrews-Campbell-Karttunen orthography as the standard (although many of them choose not to mark vowel length). </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One problematic feature of the ACK orthography (thanks to John Sullivan for introducing this term which i stole from one of his facebook statuses) is that it uses the letter <h> in three distinct functions - as the saltillo and as a part of the <hu>-digraph used to write [w] and as part of the <ch> digraph. This gives spellings with two consecutive h's such as <i>michhuacan </i>[mit͡ʃwaʔka:n] (name of the state Michoacan - "Place of Fishowners"), or <i>ohhui </i>[oʔwi]"difficult". And it also creates near-ambiguity in cases where a [k] sound written with <c> precedes a [w] written with <hu> over a syllable boundary (e.g. <i>cachuia </i>"to provide someone with sandals" where the reader has to realize that the <ch> is pronounced as [kw] and not [ch].) From the point of view of a proponent of a modern "efficiency based" orthography, clusters like <hhu>, <chhu> and <chu> where the letter <h> has a different value, comes across as unelegant and unnecessary - even though it is not technically ambiguous.<br />
<br />
The use of <h> for saltillo also has the problem that it makes it impossible to distinguish in writing between varieties that pronounce the saltillo as a glottal stop, and those that pronounce it as an [h] - and it also somewhat implies that the h-pronunciation is the norm, when in fact we know that the normative pronunciation in the Nahua capital of Tenochtitlan was the glottal stop. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The main advantages of the ACK orthography is that 1. it is very similar to the ortography used for most colonial texts and makes the transition from the study of the grammars (using Andrews and Karttunen's works) to the reading of colonial texts very easy, 2. it marks each Nahuatl phoneme with a single letter (or letter combination) and uses only symbols found on a standard American keyboard. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4>
Launey's orthography</h4>
<div>
About the same time that Andrews was working in the US, a French linguist was also working on a major analysis of the Nahuatl language based on the Florentine Codex and on Carochi's grammar. Michel Launey published a full didactic grammar of Nahuatl in French in 1979. He chose to use Carochi's conventions for marking saltillo with diacritic marks, standardizing them, and getting rid of the breve accent on short vowels. Since Launey's work was first published only in French and Spanish, (and a somewhat inadequate English translation in 2011) it mostly gained currency in Europe and Mexico, and among linguists more than among historians. His main work, the 1986 <i>thèse d'etat</i>, still exists only in French. It is to my mind the single best grammar of colonial Nahuatl written - surpassing the work of Andrews, and that of Carochi (francophone readers can check it out <a href="http://celia.cnrs.fr/FichExt/Etudes/Launey/tm.htm" target="_blank">here</a>). </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Carochi-Launey orthography has the advantage that because the saltillo is marked as a diacritic it avoids the collisions of digraphs that are found in the ACK orthography, and it avoids implicitly suggesting the pronunciation <h> as the way to pronounce the saltillo.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4>
Canger's orthography</h4>
<div>
Una Canger is a Danish linguist (and my first Nahuatl teacher) and writes in many different orthographies - this is because she works with many contemporary varieties and adopt the conventions that work best with the variety and its speakers and her own linguistic sensibilities. For the writing of Nahuatl she has made one important proposal. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In a <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8394306" target="_blank">2011 article</a>, Canger described the how it happened that Nahuatl grammarians ended up writing the sound [w] with the letter combination <hu>. She shows that the tradition originates with the Franciscan Andres de Olmos - but she also shows that he did not always write the phoneme [w] as <hu> or <uh> - in fact he mostly did this when the [w] followed a consonant or preceded a word boundary or a consonant in the subsequent syllable. When the u was For example he wrote the word [siwatl] "woman" as <<i>çiuatl</i>>, but the word [<i>yeʔwatl</i>] "he/she/it" he writes <<i>yehuatl</i>> and the word "my wife" [<i>nosiwaw</i>] he writes <<i>noçiuauh</i>>. This leads Canger to suggest that what Olmos was doing was that he was using the <h> to show to the reader that the <w> is pronounced differently when it occurs wordfinally or before or after a consonant than when it occurs between two vowels. In fact drawing on her knowledge of contemporary Nahuatl, Canger suggests that it is exactly the aspiration that often accompanies the devoiced variant of <w> that Olmos was representing with the h (this argument is also strengthened by the fact that Olmos also writes h after the letter l in the same positions - since l also devoices under those conditions). Canger then shows that subsequent grammarians adopted Olmos convention of using hu without understanding the way that he used it, and instead of writing only devoiced w with h they used it across the board. This confusion is the ultimate reason for the problematic digraphs found in the ACK orthography and other orthographies that use the <hu> convention. Instead, Canger suggests returning to Olmos original principle - representing the [w] sound with the vowel letter <u>. Hence Canger does not write "<i>nahuatl</i>" but <i>nauatl </i>(as did Olmos and many colonial authors) or else <i>nawatl </i>writing the [w] as <w>. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
While it seems that Canger would prefer a more modern orthography using <i>k</i> and <i>w</i> and s instead of <i>c/qu</i> and u and <i>z/c</i>, she suggests that also scholars who prefer a classical style of orthography ought to return to writing [w] as <u>. Canger's proposal shares all the advantages of the ACK and Launey orthographies - and avoids the problematic digraphs combination found in both of them. The main drawback is that the other orthographies are already in wide usage and that by now it will be quite hard to get people to start writing Nauatl instead of Nahuatl.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4>
Comparison of "Classical orthographies":</h4>
<div>
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-table-layout-alt: fixed; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184; width: 867px;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 73.9pt;" valign="top" width="123"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 73.9pt;" valign="top" width="123"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<b>IPA<o:p></o:p></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 90.6pt;" valign="top" width="151"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<b>Franciscan<o:p></o:p></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 75.05pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<b>Jesuit<o:p></o:p></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 76.2pt;" valign="top" width="127"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<b>ACK<o:p></o:p></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 74.7pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<b>Launey<o:p></o:p></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 55.85pt;" valign="top" width="93"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<b>Canger<o:p></o:p></b></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 73.9pt;" valign="top" width="123"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
”Nahuatl”<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 73.9pt;" valign="top" width="123"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
nawat͡ɬ <o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 90.6pt;" valign="top" width="151"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
nauatl</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
/nahuatl<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 75.05pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
nahuatl<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 76.2pt;" valign="top" width="127"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
nahuatl<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 74.7pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
nahuatl<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 55.85pt;" valign="top" width="93"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
nauatl<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 73.9pt;" valign="top" width="123"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
”He/she/it”<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 73.9pt;" valign="top" width="123"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
jeʔwat͡ɬ <o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 90.6pt;" valign="top" width="151"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
yehuatl<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 75.05pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
yèhuatl<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 76.2pt;" valign="top" width="127"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
yehhuatl<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 74.7pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
yèhuatl<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 55.85pt;" valign="top" width="93"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
yehuatl<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 73.9pt;" valign="top" width="123"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
”we do it”<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 73.9pt;" valign="top" width="123"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
tikt͡ʃi:waʔ<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 90.6pt;" valign="top" width="151"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
ticchiua</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
/ticchihua<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 75.05pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
nicchīhuâ<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 76.2pt;" valign="top" width="127"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
nicchīhuah<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 74.7pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
ticchīhuâ<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 55.85pt;" valign="top" width="93"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
ticchīuah</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
/ticchīuâ<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
Modern orthographies: </h3>
<div>
"Modern" orthographies also differ among themselves - but they share the principle that they aim for maximal efficiency rather than maximal continuity with colonial writing traditions. But efficiency can be measured in different ways that are not always compatible. One criterion of efficience might be simple graphic efficiency to have the smallest and most parsimonious array of graphic units - for example following the principle of "one phoneme - one letter". This kind of "phonemic efficiency" would prefer to remove all the digraphic letters (tl, tz, ch, kw) so that no letter is used to represent two different phonemes and no phoneme is represented by two distinct typographic units. Another kind of efficiency would be to make sure that the orthography is maximally easy to learn - a kind of "pedagogical efficiency". Another kind of efficiency is to make sure that the orthography is maximally accessible to linguists - for example by using symbols for sound values that are internationally established in the linguistic community (e.g. in the same values as in the International Phonetic alphabet, or the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet). </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4>
<b>The Americanist orthography</b></h4>
<div>
The Americanist orthography stems from the earliest studies of contemporary spoken Nahuatl by American and Mexican US-trained linguists in the first half of the 20th century. They tended to use a phonetic notatoin system now known as APA (Americanist Phonetic Alphabet), which aimed towards being strictly phonemic and based on the principle of one letter per phoneme. Hence they used single letter symbols for all of the sounds that the "classical" orthographies represented with digraphs -</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
APA style transcription key:</div>
<ul>
<li>tl = ƛ</li>
<li>tz = ¢ (or sometimes c)</li>
<li>cu/qua = kw (or sometimes q)</li>
<li>ch = č</li>
<li>x = š</li>
<li>c/qu = k</li>
<li>hu/uh = w</li>
<li>h = h</li>
<li>ʔ = '</li>
</ul>
<div>
Americanist orthography is really very efficient in this way - except that it requires a bunch fo special symbols not found on ordinary keyboards. Hence many linguists taking a practical approach retained tl, ts, ch and x avoiding unnecessary additional signs apart from those already on a standard keyboard.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Such a modified Americanist orthography was in fact adopted as the official standard by the participants in the first Aztec Congress which was held in Milpa Alta in 1940 and attended by many native speakers. They stated that they prefered this orthography exactly because it didnt use the Spanish-style digraphs que/qui ce/za etc. In this way the choice of a "modern" and "scientific" orthography was a political move towards decolonization. Today a variant of this orthography (without the special symbols, but with k and w) is used by most Nahuatl speakers in the Zongolica region where the linguist Andrés Hasler has promoted it for several decades. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4>
<b>SEP and SIL's orthographies</b></h4>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilk7Che-U0kMU-SrXZX4xI7E_WCHKmZqhgHIV8RzXRum9n9nz3mbzByoez9skm9cD3SKTCkToj1kd8Fs0KX2TM_Qi6EOqYfTF-I9yUQM89ypxUiA_2wCvrbxfa09f2hRTwGK1H1X_aH6M/s1600/chayojtle.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="91" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilk7Che-U0kMU-SrXZX4xI7E_WCHKmZqhgHIV8RzXRum9n9nz3mbzByoez9skm9cD3SKTCkToj1kd8Fs0KX2TM_Qi6EOqYfTF-I9yUQM89ypxUiA_2wCvrbxfa09f2hRTwGK1H1X_aH6M/s320/chayojtle.gif" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Example of the SEP/SIL orthography from a textbook. <br />
It uses the letter j to represent the h sound.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
In the 1940s an American missionary organization called Instituto Linguistico de Verano (Summer Institute of Linguistics or SIL) began collaborating with the Mexican Ministry of Education (SEP) to develop educational materials in indigenous languages. Because the government wanted indigenous peoples to learn Spanish and primarily wanted to use indigenous language education as a way to teach Spanish, they considered that the orthographies should only use letters already found in Spanish. They developed many different orthographies for different Nahuan varieties - some of which used the "classical" Spanish digraphs, and others which used k and w (although most use hu or simply u for [w]). The only common denominator seems to be that they use the letter j for the saltillo when it is pronounced as an [h]. This presumably is because the letter <h> is "mute" in Spanish which migh confuse the children during the gradual transition from Nahuatl to Spanish. Today SIL still consider the ease of acquisition for students who are already literate in Spanish as the main criteria for efficiency. Most SEP/SIl orthographies do not mark vowel length, because most Nahuatl speakers are not actually aware of this feature of their language, and vowel length is not very important in distinguishing words from eachother. Some of them however do and when they do they tend to use either double vowels (aa/ee/ii/oo) or underlining (<u>a</u>, <u>e</u>, <u>i</u>, <u>o</u>) to mark long vowels.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
SEP and SIL style orthographies are extremely influential in Mexico and those Nahuatl speakers who have been lucky enough to have classes in their languages in school are likely to have learned them. Also most Nahuatl language authors tend to use these orthographies (because most of them are trained as bilingual teachers through SEP). Many SEP and SIL orthographies also do not write the double [ll] sound which is very common in Nahuatl but instead writes it as a single l. This is of course because Mexican Spanish pronounces the double l as the [j] sound (which is written with y in Nahuatl).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The drawback of using <<i>j></i> to write the sound [h] is that it often causes non-Nahuatl speakers to erroneously pronounce it as the harsh Spanish j-sound and not as a soft h-sound. Writing the double l as a single-l is problematic from a grammatical viewpoint because the double-l is what happens when the absolutive suffix -<i>tli </i>occurs after a root ending in -l. So by writing only a single l, the grammatical structure of the language is obscured making it harder to teach the grammar. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4>
<b>"Intuitive orthographies"</b></h4>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7see1RgHALPCFct3KdCEEzYVpqBRIiO0rcn9DggD_39hdQhpW0IvrR055vNcYhyMnIJ4xALKmxoQegJ_ARgM3aACRSYoiaa4wlLVhb0t5VG3H0Nhiqj-SRFvDxEbM5H1-ltKye1tbJvI/s1600/a+teki.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7see1RgHALPCFct3KdCEEzYVpqBRIiO0rcn9DggD_39hdQhpW0IvrR055vNcYhyMnIJ4xALKmxoQegJ_ARgM3aACRSYoiaa4wlLVhb0t5VG3H0Nhiqj-SRFvDxEbM5H1-ltKye1tbJvI/s400/a+teki.jpg" width="380" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Example of intuitive orthpography form a kindergarten in Hueyapan. It says<br />
"<i>xi nech ate ki an xinech pojpua nochipan kion kual le ni koponis</i>"<br />
which usually would be written as<br />
"<i>xinechateki an xinechpojpoa nochipan kion kualle nikoponis</i>"<br />
which means<br />
"Water me and weed me, that way I will always bloom"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
Most Nahuatl speakers have not received any education in Nahuatl and many have never even been aware that their language can be written down. Usually Mexican schools teach only Spanish. This means that they have to invent new conventions almost from scratch (or based on Spanish) when they start writing their language since they havent been taught any of the existing orthographic conventions. These new Nahuatl-writers tend to adopt ways of writing that are intuitive to them based on their knowledge of Spanish and sometimes English orthography. Such intuitive orthographies can be seen on the internet where Nahuatl speakers sometimes converse in writing withouth ever having been taught how to write their language. These orthographies are often sinmilar to the SEP orthographies (using j for h) - but two new features that are not used in any of the established orthographies are often found in intuitive Nahuatl writing. One is that they often use <sh> instead of the traditional <x> to write the sh-sound. This is probably because most Mexicans are associate this sound with English, and know that it is written sh in the English orthography. The second is that they often write grammatical prefixes as separate words, instead of fusing them together as Nahuatl grammarians do. This is probably because they often think in Spanish when they write in Nahuatl translating from Spanish into Nahuatl and therefore isolating elements of meaning the way it is done in Spanish.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h4>
<b>Comparison of Modern Orthographies:</b></h4>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
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<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 73.9pt;" valign="top" width="123"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 73.9pt;" valign="top" width="123"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<b>IPA<o:p></o:p></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 90.6pt;" valign="top" width="151"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<b>APA<o:p></o:p></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 75.05pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<b>Hasler<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<b>/Modern<o:p></o:p></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 76.2pt;" valign="top" width="127"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<b>SEP1<o:p></o:p></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 74.7pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<b>SEP2<o:p></o:p></b></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 55.85pt;" valign="top" width="93"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<b>Intuitive<o:p></o:p></b></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 73.9pt;" valign="top" width="123"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">”Nahuatl”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 73.9pt;" valign="top" width="123"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">nawat͡ɬ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 90.6pt;" valign="top" width="151"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">nawaƛ<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 75.05pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">nahuatl<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 76.2pt;" valign="top" width="127"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">nauatl<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 74.7pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">nahuatl<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 55.85pt;" valign="top" width="93"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">nauatl<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 73.9pt;" valign="top" width="123"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">”we do it”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 73.9pt;" valign="top" width="123"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">tikt͡ʃi:waʔ<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 90.6pt;" valign="top" width="151"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">tikči:wa’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 75.05pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">tikchiwah<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 76.2pt;" valign="top" width="127"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">tikchiuaj<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 74.7pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">ticchiihuaj<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 55.85pt;" valign="top" width="93"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">tic chiua<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 73.9pt;" valign="top" width="123"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">Jump!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 73.9pt;" valign="top" width="123"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">ʃit͡sekwini<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 90.6pt;" valign="top" width="151"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">ši¢ek<sup>w</sup>ini<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 75.05pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">xitsekuini<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 76.2pt;" valign="top" width="127"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">xitsekuini<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 74.7pt;" valign="top" width="125"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">xitsecuini<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 55.85pt;" valign="top" width="93"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">shi tsecuini<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<i>Note that the SEP1 and SEP2 and the "intuitive" orthography are just possible examples, but many different combinations of the different choices exist.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<h3>
</h3>
<h3>
So Which One Should You Use?</h3>
<div>
There is no objective answer. Each orthography comes from different ideas about what is important, and is used by certain communities working within specific genealogies and traditions.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That fact of the matter is that regardless of which orthography you use someone will inevitably tell you that you are using the wrong one. I think the best approach is to learn to read all of them and to use one consistently. But really as I noted consistency is overrated. Shakespeare and Chaucer and Cervantes were able to found their national literatures without using standardized orthographies. Molina and Sahagun were able to found Nahuatl literature without one. The important part is that we keep writing and reading in Nahuatl.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 91.9pt;" valign="top" width="153"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
English<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 389.5pt;" valign="top" width="649"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Now I have told how one writes in the Nahuatl language<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 91.9pt;" valign="top" width="153"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
IPA<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 389.5pt;" valign="top" width="649"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<i>aʃka:n onikiɁtoɁ ke:nin se: t͡ɬakwilo:s i:ka nawat͡ɬaɁtolli<o:p></o:p></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 91.9pt;" valign="top" width="153"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
APA<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 389.5pt;" valign="top" width="649"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<i>aška:n oniki’to’ ke:nin se: ƛa’kwilo:s i:ka nawaƛa’tolli<o:p></o:p></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 91.9pt;" valign="top" width="153"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Franciscan<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 389.5pt;" valign="top" width="649"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<i>axcan oniquito quenin ce
tlacuiloz ica nahuatlahtolli<o:p></o:p></i></div>
</td>
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<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 91.9pt;" valign="top" width="153"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Jesuit-Carochi-Launey<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 389.5pt;" valign="top" width="649"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<i>axcān oniquìtô quēnin cē tlàcuil</i><i>ōz</i><i> īca nahuatlàtolli<o:p></o:p></i></div>
</td>
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<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 91.9pt;" valign="top" width="153"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
ACK<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 389.5pt;" valign="top" width="649"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<i>axcān oniquihtoh quēnin cē
tlahcuil</i><i>ōz</i><i> īca nahuatlahtolli<o:p></o:p></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 91.9pt;" valign="top" width="153"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
SEP<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
SEP2</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 389.5pt;" valign="top" width="649"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<i>axcan oniquijtoj quenin se
tlajcuilos ica nahuatlajtoli<br /><br /><o:p></o:p></i><br />
<i>axkan onikijtoj kenin se tlajkuilos ika nahuatlahtoli</i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 91.9pt;" valign="top" width="153"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Modern/Hasler<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 389.5pt;" valign="top" width="649"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<i>axkan onikihtoh kenin se
tlahkuilos ika nawatlahtolli<o:p></o:p></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 91.9pt;" valign="top" width="153"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
Intuitive<o:p></o:p></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 389.5pt;" valign="top" width="649"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<i>ashkan onik itoh kenin se
tlacuilos ica nahua tlajtoli<o:p></o:p></i></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div>
<br />
(Note: This post was edited on July 31st 2016 to make some minor corrections to the section on the ACK orthography based on comments from Frances Karttunen on the Nahuatl-l listserver)</div>
Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-39694547835552220342016-06-08T04:39:00.001-07:002017-12-12T14:55:09.068-08:00Aztec Writing: How does it really work?I have never written on this blog about colonial or precolonial Nahua iconography or glyphic writing. This is partly because I tend to find codices boring, prefering to work with spoken language, and partly because other people are much more knowledgeable about these things than I am. Recently, however, I have started reading up on this, and had some talks with some specialists in Nahua writing. So here comes my attempt to describe the current debates within the field of Nahua writing studies.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: start;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: start;">First of all perhaps we need to point out what we mean by Nahua glyphic writing - most Nahua texts are of course written in Latin letters - but here we mean texts written with non-European signs. In the codices this kind of writing abounds, mostly used to write personal names and the names of places.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0l5E6OaVbhNk2MzGy-XhumLEzo_h_Cf8jM0aWmIIvuQneUrvo2XGOk95_R1ceOK2JVGdmWisZbybRhNtdlpPNqTISpjhG5hMc0xeUdqdRQkXbzVyumMsMkpEGj16YSd6WSzfEBrMwy_Q/s1600/acamapich.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0l5E6OaVbhNk2MzGy-XhumLEzo_h_Cf8jM0aWmIIvuQneUrvo2XGOk95_R1ceOK2JVGdmWisZbybRhNtdlpPNqTISpjhG5hMc0xeUdqdRQkXbzVyumMsMkpEGj16YSd6WSzfEBrMwy_Q/s200/acamapich.JPG" width="155" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The name of <b>Acamapichtli </b>"handful of reeds", <br />
ruler of Tenochtitlan, written with <br />
glyphs and Latin letters. <br />
The glyphs shows a hand holding <br />
a bunch of reeds.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwOCRpZyeTuL1BIUA4NlTd3stoC6BRjxL_DHSzrQlhIKg4zlvc3-nScL25ty20Gzy73fScLyg0YbncxEixqZ5bW-fbSLEqg-HEHUENTskSryE3DsvZ5_XUMry_Ox2Gawd4YyKsC-bwrhs/s1600/2000px-Glifo_Xochimilco.svg.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwOCRpZyeTuL1BIUA4NlTd3stoC6BRjxL_DHSzrQlhIKg4zlvc3-nScL25ty20Gzy73fScLyg0YbncxEixqZ5bW-fbSLEqg-HEHUENTskSryE3DsvZ5_XUMry_Ox2Gawd4YyKsC-bwrhs/s200/2000px-Glifo_Xochimilco.svg.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The name of the town of Xochimilco "Flower field place" written with Nahua glyphs:<br />
The squares on the bottom represent a "field" - representing the root <b>MIL- </b>in Nahuatl<br />
and the flowers on top represent the root <b>XOCHI </b>"flower" in Nahuatl.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
As can be seen from the examples, we have a pretty good idea about how to read Nahua glyphs (because almost all glyphic texts are accompanied by writing in Latin letters), and generally we know what the say. But there is still some discussion about the principles based on which the Nahua wrote. Scholars have for example discussed if the Nahua simply depicted concepts with pictures, or whether their signs actually represent words and sounds? Today we know that Nahuas seem to have definitely used their signs to represent spoken words and sounds, but specialists are still discussing the technicalities of how the Nahua writing system worked.<br />
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Aztec Writing: Logographic? Phonetic? Semasiographic? Rebus-writing? </span></h3>
The decipherment of Aztec writing is not really the classic kind of situation where we have a lot of long monolingual texts that we are unable to read because we don't know the language or the principles they used to write with, and where a bilingual text (such as the Rosetta stone for Egyptian hieroglyhs, or Landa's syllabary for Maya hieroglyphs) can provide the clues to finally crack the code. On the contrary, we know that Aztec glyphic texts were written in Nahuatl, and they supply us both with the glyphic script, and with a transliteration in to the Latin alphabet, and they often even with a Spanish translation. So most of the time the question is not <b>what </b>the glyphs mean, the question is <b>how </b>they work to give that meaning. Furthermore, most texts written in Aztec glyphs are short, and consist mostly of names of places and people.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, the decipherment of Aztec writing did have to pass through some phases of confusion. Particularly, a phase in which scholars didn't consider it to be a script at all, but just drawings that could only be read non-linguistically. In some sources we can still find the claim that the Aztecs did not have "true writing". The concept of "true writing" in this sense is used to describe the fact that it does not seem the Nahuas wrote long narrative texts using their script. Rather they wrote stories using sequences of pictures, and used the script to name the persons and places who participated in the stories.<br />
<br />
The first scholars to note that the Aztec script in fact has a lot of "phoneticism" (i.e. it represents the sounds of spoken language, and not just ideas), were those 19th century antiquarians who first studied the early colonial codices. One of them was Joseph Marius Alexis Aubin, a young French scholar who accompanied Maximilian of Habsburg who went to Mexico with a contingent of French forces because Napoleon III (no, not Bonaparte) had appointed him the new Emperor of Mexico. Aubin had studied Nahuatl in France, and probably also had help from Maximilian's main Nahuatl specialist the Nahua nobleman Faustino Chimalpopoca who had worked with many of the Nahuatl language codices. Reading Aztec maps and tribute lists Aubin (1849 [<a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/002629176" target="_blank">1885</a>]) realized that all the Nahua rulers and all the cities in the codices had little name glyphs attached to them, and that these name glyphs consisted depicted concepts or words that were part of the name they represented. For example all the places that had the locative ending -<i>pan </i>in their name, had a little flag in their name glyph. "Flag" in Nahuatl is of course <i>pantli </i>or <i>pamitl </i>- so Aubin realized that the flag represented the ending. Aubin deciphered a number of glyphs in this way, by seeing that they depicted short words that could be used both to signify the word they depicted but also words that sounded similarly (e.g. a stone "tetl" signified the syllable <b>TE</b>, a pot "comitl" signified the syllable <b>KO</b>, etc.). And he noted that there was a good deal of systematicity in the way the word signs were used, going as far as describing the system as an <i>écriture syllabique [</i>a syllabic script]. Aubin was particularly inspired by finding a version of the "Pater Noster" written partly in Aztec script - it was apparently used as a medium with which the friars could better teach the Nahuas the catechism. In the Nahuatl script the title said:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzNY_zIrYyzz7eHoqvVr281Dvod_3MMQGsJFRHr5o38uivGkG_-MBdwH3Dlvpq4IXT3VXNAJysU7oY2u5z-fXShBR8So9jOvEonQXTDX8lHMo02etYyg6D6A815QjLgZCB4YDqDx9Ckbw/s1600/pantli+nochtli.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzNY_zIrYyzz7eHoqvVr281Dvod_3MMQGsJFRHr5o38uivGkG_-MBdwH3Dlvpq4IXT3VXNAJysU7oY2u5z-fXShBR8So9jOvEonQXTDX8lHMo02etYyg6D6A815QjLgZCB4YDqDx9Ckbw/s1600/pantli+nochtli.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Flag Stone Cactus Stone<br />
PAN(TLI) TE(TL) NOCH(TLI) TE(TL)<br />
<b>pa te noch te </b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Aubin realized the flag glyph was /<i>pantli</i>/ "flag" representing the root <b>pan</b>, the second symbol was the stylized symbol for /<i>tetl</i>/ "rock" representing the syllable <b>te</b>, the cactus symbol was /<i>nochtli/ </i>representing the root <b>noch </b>(the <i>tli/tl</i> suffix is not part of the stem). The phonetic reading was <b>PA TE NOCH TE</b> - a fairly close approximation of the Latin "Pater Noster" (remember that colonial Nahuatl has no /r/). This convinced Aubin that the Aztec script operated from a syllabic principle - and he considered that Nahuas were already literate in this script when the friars arrived, which why it made sense for the friars to use it.<br />
<br />
However, his argument was not very well received. A number of scholars argued that the phonetic signs were introduced by the friars simply using a rebus principle, and that it didnt represent pre-contact usage. Since all of the known texts using the script were from the early colonial period, this was hard to refute, and for many decades the consensus came to be that the Nahua script was not true writing but a "pictographic" form of primitive picture writing. Some scholars argued that Nahua iconography, and central Mexican indigenous iconography in general, is "semasiographic"in character which means that it does not represent a spoken language directly, but rather offered clues to the "reader" through which they can improvise a narrative in whichever language they happen to speak. Nonetheless a number of works on the principles used in Nahua writing were published, by Barlow & McAfee (1954), Dibble (1971), Prem (1992) and Nicholson (1973) - Nicholson particularly argued that perhaps there was a greater degree of phoneticism in precontact Nahua writing than had previously been thought - but the mainstream view continued to be that pre-conquest Nahuas did not "write".<br />
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Lacadena's Syllabary:</span></h3>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNXylP278gGSd4EXw8ovR1v9I8GC3V4Z63rymXZyc2XAWZOnInKsyyS-NJNywoKEafoAYDacjGDam2MR5b7HtiVo4I6nfsjJ6bPIIdyJRJe-nH5ne2SJSf3ESD_8GPhRVBcz1vnV-MLXg/s1600/Lacadena+Nahuatl+Syllabary.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNXylP278gGSd4EXw8ovR1v9I8GC3V4Z63rymXZyc2XAWZOnInKsyyS-NJNywoKEafoAYDacjGDam2MR5b7HtiVo4I6nfsjJ6bPIIdyJRJe-nH5ne2SJSf3ESD_8GPhRVBcz1vnV-MLXg/s320/Lacadena+Nahuatl+Syllabary.JPG" width="182" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.mesoweb.com/pari/journal/archive/PARI0804.pdf" target="_blank">Lacadena's 2008 Syllabary, <br />published in PARI journal 8:(4):p. 23</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In 2008 a major event happened in Nahuatl writing studies. Spanish linguist and Epigrapher Alfonso Lacadena published an analysis of Nahuatl writing in which he argued that Aubin had been right to call the script "syllabic". Lacadena had previously participated in the work of deciphering the Maya script, and he argued that the Nahua system was essentially similar - combining a set of logograms representing entire words, with a syllabary that could be used to phonetically spell most of the possible syllables of the language - making the system capable of representing spoken language.<br />
<br />
Lacadena had been able to arrange the known phonetic elements of the script into a syllabary similar to the Maya syllabary - showing that Nahuas in fact had syllabic signs for almost all the possible syllables in the language. He argued that several of the already recognized signs that had previously been read as logograms ("whole-word signs") in fact ought to be read as syllabograms ("syllable signs") consisting of only a consonant and a vowel - the flag glyph for example ought to be read <b>pa </b>and not <b>PAN</b>, the pot glyph <b>ko </b>and not <b>KON</b>, etc. He shows that it is possible to demonstrate that some signs that were originally read as logograms, had to be read as syllabograms in certain words. For example the drum sign which had traditionally been read <b>WEWE</b>, he proposed should be read - at least sometimes - simply as <b>we</b>. And he showed this by demonstrating that it was used to write names such as <i>tohuexiuh </i>/<b>towexiw</b>/ where it only represented one syllable, not two.<br />
<br />
A very interesting set of readings provided by Lacadena deal with the syllable /wa/ which he shows can be written either with two parallel lines, with two leaves or with a grasping hand. He argues that the two lines come from the verb <b>wa</b>wana "to scratch", that the two leaves are amaranth leaves <b>wa</b>wtli (Personally, I think they are more likely from ix<b>wa</b> "leaf" and in one of his examples the glyph actually co-occurs with an <b>IX </b>logogram (the eye), suggesting a dual representation of the <i>ix</i>-syllable - but clearly in many other cases it is only read as <b>wa</b>), and that the grasping hand is a logogram based on the possessor suffix -<b>wa'</b> (e.g. in <i>michhua </i>"fish-possessor" or <i>mazahua </i>"deer-owner"). The two former readings he considers syllabograms, while the third he considers a logogram (inspite of not representing a word, but a grammatical morpheme). These readings are very important and constitute an important move towards the syllabary.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyKRN-1PrWfI9UgMVUcudbwsXh3LXL7S2cs1LSFUNySZ57jDhpOIYy014Cx2mJ_UIYu5mRP3ll8dZEH1DrpTzKntDib748N9MjuQY5hxpojtTjoceBiLWJ-mGAXclbofhAhCRph1h9jcs/s1600/luis+vaca.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyKRN-1PrWfI9UgMVUcudbwsXh3LXL7S2cs1LSFUNySZ57jDhpOIYy014Cx2mJ_UIYu5mRP3ll8dZEH1DrpTzKntDib748N9MjuQY5hxpojtTjoceBiLWJ-mGAXclbofhAhCRph1h9jcs/s1600/luis+vaca.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The name of Spanish encomendero <i>Luis Vaca</i> written <br />
in Nahua glyphic writing. The bottom sign is an olote (dry maize stalk) (<b>OLO</b>), <br />
then an eyeball (<b>IX</b>) <span style="font-size: 12.8px;">and on top two leaves (</span><b style="font-size: 12.8px;">wa </b><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">[or maybe (</span><b style="font-size: 12.8px;">IXWA]</b><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">), </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">the long plate shaped glyph is probably a plate <b>CAX </b>or <b>ca</b></span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">. Giving the full reading (o)LO-IX-WA-KA(X) </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Lacadena demonstrated that as in the Maya (and Egyptian) scripts often the syllabograms were used as phonetic complements, added to logogram to support a specific reading - or even at times to force one of two phonetically distinct readings of the same logogram.<br />
<br />
In Lacadena's interpretation the Nahuas had a fully developed logo-syllabic writing system already in the pre-contact period, although he also recognizes that the use of phoneticism may have become more prominent as the Nahua logosyllabic script competed with the Latin alphabet. By setting up the Nahuatl phonetic signs into the syllabary format, Lacadena moved the discussion forward - it was now no longer relevant to discuss the phoneticity itself, from now on the discussion would have to be about the degree of systematicity with which the Nahuas used phonetic symbols.<br />
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-size: large;">Whittaker's Challenge:</span></h3>
<br />
In 2009, anthropologist and epigrapher Gordon Whittaker challenged Lacadena's vision of how the Aztec script worked. Following earlier work by Hanns Prem, Whittaker had studied the phonetic principles of Aztec writing for awhile and did not agree with Lacadena's strictly syllabic interpretation. In his paper "<a href="http://whp.uoregon.edu/dictionaries/nahuatl/whittakernahuatlwriting.pdf" target="_blank">Principles of Nahuatl Writing</a>" he proposed that rather than being a strict logo-syllabic script, Nahuatl writing allowed a much wider range of possibilities. For example he argued, most of Lacadena's syllable signs could be read both as syllable signs with a consonant and a vowel, but also as logograms including syllable final consonants; and sometimes polysyllabic logograms could be read as syllable signs, selecting just one of their syllables as their phonetic value. In this way the Nahuatl script included both logograms, syllabograms and bisyllabograms. Whittaker therefore suggests that the way that Nahuas read their texts were not as straightforward as Lacadena suggests - they needed access to a wider array of interpretive processes than simply reading the syllabograms. In the example below, the place name Chipiltepec is written with the syllabogram <b>chi </b>(depicting the edible seed "<i>chian</i>"), the logogram <b>HUIPIL</b>"blouse", the logogram <b>TEPE </b>and the syllabogram <b>te </b>used as a phonetic complement.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_PwU4eZ13yJr0G4ndSnAHwl8RzgmWOxnIiUClSaajmXMD-yjG3hKMrHRu2MSBSXr429keIg_vBRqa1Cp1IXA9aJ3USmHLMMzmRrLQSiavV29ypjWFq91pjtmnuTh1E3iIDh3CMbAquPg/s1600/chipiltepec.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_PwU4eZ13yJr0G4ndSnAHwl8RzgmWOxnIiUClSaajmXMD-yjG3hKMrHRu2MSBSXr429keIg_vBRqa1Cp1IXA9aJ3USmHLMMzmRrLQSiavV29ypjWFq91pjtmnuTh1E3iIDh3CMbAquPg/s1600/chipiltepec.JPG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>chi (hui)pil TEPE te</b><br />
"Chipiltepec"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The interesting part here is that the logogram HUIPIL is not read as a logogram but as a syllabogram, ignoring the first syllable and reading only the second syllable <b>pil</b>. This challenges the strict division Lacadena poses between logograms and consonant-vowel syllable signs.<br />
<br />
Whittaker also notes that several of the signs that Lacadena considers syllabograms, can be read both as syllabic Consonant-Vowel (CV) reading, as well as as a Consonant+Vowel+Consonant (CVC) group. For example the "flag" can be read both <b>pa </b>and <b>pan</b>, and the "tooth" can be read both <b>tla </b>and <b>tlan</b>. He seems to consider that the reading with final -n is not a real logogram, because it is not usually used to represent the words "flag" and "tooth", but rather to write the locative endings on place names - locative endings that happen to be homophonous with the words depicted by the logograms, but which have completely different meanings. This is another reason Whittaker considers some of the Nahua signs to be phonetic, but to represent neither CV syllables nor words - but longer sequences such as CVC or even CVCV.<br />
<br />
Furthermore, Whittaker implies, it does not seem that Nahuas thought of their phonetic writing as a self-contained closed system in the way that a syllabary is generally thought of. Rather the way he describes the system it is an array of conventions, many of them fairly loose, which the Nahua used in a creative and intuitive way. Whittaker notes for example (in a talk he gave at Yale in May 2016) that the Nahuas used ways of expressing concepts that are unique to the Nahua script. For example they used color of glyphs to convey color words (i.e. the word chichiltepec "red mountain" written as a red mountain where the color of the mountain is used as a logogram).<br />
<br />
Whittaker also produces some interesting new readings of specific signs, for example he shows that a worm-shaped glyph can be read <b>COCHIN</b>, based on the word <i>ihcochin </i>"earthworm". For example the name Tlacochin can be written with a combination of four signs: <i><b>TLACOCH </b></i>"javelin", <i><b>(ih)COCHIN</b></i>, <i><b>tla/TLAN</b></i> "tooth", and <b style="font-style: italic;">co</b><i>/</i><b style="font-style: italic;">CON </b>(here I allow for both the possibility of reading these as logograms and as syllabograms, hence the /). Interesting here each syllable (except -<i>in</i>) is spelled phonetically twice - providing no possibility for misreadings. Here, following Lacadena's method, <b>co </b>and <b>tla </b>can be read as syllable signs, and <i><b>TLACOCH </b></i>as a logogram. But the worm, spelling syllables COCHIN can neither be a logogram (because the name is likely derived from tlacochtli "spear" and not from <i>ihcochin </i>"earthworm") or a simple syllabogram.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEildmRfmm2QnR7E65jBB_eWCsIE0OfTI0Qj24LNBaxrjYhz4QjwyTZWDmW9TFgWj0SLh7rA-iQomgXuE2iFsVAAsJVKaugiXsmbr6opOW4IPrWlVOUDJ5SOQlOH4jC5lR_ai9ALvz7oVy0/s1600/Tlacochin.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEildmRfmm2QnR7E65jBB_eWCsIE0OfTI0Qj24LNBaxrjYhz4QjwyTZWDmW9TFgWj0SLh7rA-iQomgXuE2iFsVAAsJVKaugiXsmbr6opOW4IPrWlVOUDJ5SOQlOH4jC5lR_ai9ALvz7oVy0/s320/Tlacochin.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The name Tlacochin written both with Latin letters and with <br />
four Nahua glyphs. It is the wormlike creature on top of the teeth<br />
that Whittaker reads as <b>(ih)COCHIN</b>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Finally, Whittaker argues, that if the Nahuas indeed thought of their system as a complete syllabary, then it was a very deficient syllabary since there are no known syllabograms for several of the most frequently occurring syllables in the language such as <b>ti</b>, <b>ni</b>, <b>ki</b>, <b>tli</b>, <b>kwa</b>, <b>ya</b>, etc. This would make it impossible to actually represent spoken language using only syllabograms. And this in turn suggests that the Nahuas did not conceive of their phonetic signs as a systematic complete syllabary, but that rather than an organized system the syllabograms formed a repertoire of signs that had grown through accumulation in the course of the Aztec writing tradition. An incipient syllabary perhaps, but not quite there yet.<br />
<br />
So, Whittaker and Lacadena agree on considering the Nahua script to be highly phonetic - also in pre-contact times - but they disagree on what kind of system it was, and how Nahua scribes interpreted the phonetic signs. Nonetheless, it doesn't seem that either of the two epigraphers are willing to concede many points to the other. To my knowledge, Lacadena has yet to respond publicly to Whittaker's argument, while Whittaker's papers seem to me to exaggerate some of the differences between the two models (for example the difference between logograms and bisyllabograms isn't very big in practice - it is mostly a question of labeling I think). So where does Nahuatl glyph studies go from here?<br />
<br />
<h3>
My 5 Cents Worth:</h3>
While I am not an expert on Nahuatl writing, to conclude I will share my own evaluation of Lacadena's and Whittaker's competing models.<br />
<br />
Lacadenas demonstration of pervasive phoneticity of the Nahua script is extremely important, and did inaugurate a new way of looking at the Nahua script. But I am not convinced by the argument that the script can be understood as a strictly logo-syllabic script. Whittaker demonstrates that the script is considerably more flexible than that, including types of signs not known in any other scripts (e.g. the use of color to signify color words), and making more readings available to the reader. I simply dont think that there is a convincing reason to think that Aztec scribes and readers thought of their signs as representing mainly CV syllables rather than for example representing entire word-stems that could e read for their phonetic value as well as as the word-concept they represent. On the other hand I am not sure if Lacadena is actually argueing that the Aztec scribes thought of their script as a syllabary, and that the syllabic interpretation is "psychologically real" - this I think would be a problematic claim. But it is possible, I think, that he simply meant to demonstrate the pervasiveness of syllabic signs in the system to show that it is not as different from the Maya system as it has been claimed. If this is the case I think the point was well-made and Whittaker's argument can simply be considered a demonstration of additional features of the script, that Lacadena did not spend time exploring because his aim was another.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, I think Whittaker exaggerates the differences between the two interpretations. Particularly, it seems that Lacadena does allow for many of the readings that Whittaker considers disyllabograms and CVC syllables - he just considers those logograms used according to the rebus principle (Whittaker apparently doesnt like using the word "rebus" for phonetic readings of logograms). This seems to me as a mostly theoretical discussion that doesn't really impinge on our understanding of the script itself. I assume that Lacadena acknowledges that when a logogram can serve the function of expressing another word than the one that is actually depcited, this is indeed a phonetic rather than a logographic reading of the sign.<br />
<br />
Some of Lacadena's readings also beg the question about whether each sign really has only one possible reading. For example many of his syllabograms clearly must have originated as logograms, for example the <b>tla</b>- and <b>pa </b>syllabograms which are represented "logographically" with signs that must have been read originally as <b>TLAN </b>and <b>PAN </b>- and which sometimes still are clearly used to write out those exact phonetic sequences with final -n (for example in toponyms). Hence it seems to me that we must concede that these signs are either used sometimes as syllabograms and sometimes as logograms, or that we can simply conclude that the final consonants can sometimes be omitted to produce syllabic readings from logograms. Probably, over time some logograms were conventionalized as being mostly used syllabically, while others kept their double readings. Whittaker produces further evidence for this type of process when he shows that the <b>HUIPIL </b>logogram can be read simply as <b>PIL</b>. And another example would be if I am right that the double leaf symbol was originally and occasionally a logogram <i><b>IXWA </b></i>which then became conventionalized as a syllabogram <b style="font-style: italic;">wa. A</b>lthough the possible alternative reading of "Luis Vaca" as OLO IX IXWA (where <b>IX </b>is a phonetic complement noting that the leaf sign should be read IXWA and not simply wa), instead of Lacadena's reading <b>OLO IX wa</b>, suggests that maybe two readings continued to coexist)<i>.</i><br />
<br />
Where, I think Whittaker's interpretation is strongest is in that it paints a picture of a very different process of writing than Lacadena's - a process that is highly creative, combining intuitive conventions and a repertoire of established signs with local innovation. I think it is clear that Nahua writing was in many ways unique when compared to other writing systems, for example in being seemingly open-ended, and without many fixed conventions.<br />
<br />
In any case, I think any future engagement with Nahua glyphic script needs to take both Lacadena's and Whittakers arguments into account, in order to pick out the important insights of both of them. A question that needs further exploration is how systematic and or flexible the system really was - what were the limits? Which kinds of readings do we not get that we might? Also additional support for the syllabary could be provided for example if we were to find syllabograms used to spell final consonants in the Maya style (where for example BALAM can be spelled ba-la-ma).<br />
<br />
In the end it seems to me that we cannot escape the fact that even though the Nahua script was highly phonetic, and clearly shared principles with the Maya logo-syllabic script, their approach to writing was very different from that of the Maya. Nahuas do not generally seem to have considered it a function of their script to represent spoken language much beyond personal and place names used to label narratives that were represented with pictures. No clear examples of full sentences have been deciphered, and indeed it doesnt seem that the script was even capable of writing such sentences given the lack of syllabograms for such important grammatical morphemes as <i>ni</i>, <i>ti</i>, and <i>ki </i>which would be necessary to represent almost any slightly complex Nahuatl sentence. [Edit: After publishing this, I was reminded of the long sequences of glyphs found in the Codex Xolotl which may well represent something like full sentences - however I do not believe these have been deciphered yet].<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h4>
Bibliography:</h4>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/002629176" target="_blank">Aubin, Joseph Marius Alexis. 1849. Mémoire sur la peinture didactique et l’écriture figurative des anciens mexicains. Paris: Paul Dupont</a></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Barlow, Robert H. and Byron McAfee. 1949. Diccionario de elementos fonéticos en escritura jeroglífica (Códice Mendocino). Mexico, D.F.: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Dibble, Charles E. 1971. Writing in Central Mexico. in Gordon F. Ekholm and Ignacio Bernal (eds.), Handbook of Middle American Indians: Archaeology of Northern Mesoamerica, Part 1, Vol. 10, pp. 322-332. Austin: University of Texas Press.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.mesoweb.com/pari/journal/archive/PARI0804.pdf" target="_blank">Lacadena, Alfonso. 2008a. Regional scribal traditions: Methodological implications for the decipherment of Nahuatl writing. The PARI Journal 8 (4): 1-22.</a></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.mesoweb.com/pari/journal/archive/PARI0804.pdf" target="_blank">Lacadena, Alfonso. 2008b. The wa1 and wa2 phonetic signs and the logogram for WA in Nahuatl writing. The PARI Journal 8 (4): 38-45.</a></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://www.mesoweb.com/pari/journal/archive/PARI0804.pdf" target="_blank">Lacadena, Alfonso. 2008c. A Nahuatl syllabary. The PARI Journal 8 (4): 23.</a></span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Nicholson, Henry B. 1973. Phoneticism in the late Pre-Hispanic Central Mexican writing system. in Elizabeth P. Benson (ed.), Mesoamerican Writing Systems, pp. 1-46. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Prem, Hanns J. 1992. Aztec writing. in Victoria Reifler Bricker (ed.), Handbook of Middle American Indians, Supplement, Vol. 5: Epigraphy, pp. 53-69. Austin: University of Texas Press.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><a href="http://whp.uoregon.edu/dictionaries/nahuatl/whittakernahuatlwriting.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16.12px;">Whittaker, Gordon. "The Principles of Nahuatl Writing." </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16.12px;">Göttinger Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16.12px;"> 16 (2009): 47-81.</span></a></span></li>
</ul>
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<br />Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-18436743992059032016-05-25T07:50:00.000-07:002016-05-25T09:19:34.253-07:00Nahuatl one-word poems - guestblog by Ben Leeming<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><br /><i>I am very happy to present a guestblog by Ben Leeming, a Nahuatl scholar who works mostly on Christian religious texts in colonial Nahuatl. He recently published an article on "<a href="https://www.academia.edu/11804476/_Micropoetics_The_poetry_of_hypertrophic_words_in_early_colonial_Nahuatl" target="_blank">Nahuatl Micro Poetry</a>", in which he argues that the grammatical structure of Nahuatl and the ability to make very long words, enabled Nahua poets to create one-word poems: a single long word with the sense of aesthetics and wonder and the complex structure of an entire poem. These "hypertrophic" words, would probably not have been used in normal spoken conversation, but since they follow the grammatical rules of the language, poets could exploit the grammar to "unfurl" words for their listeners. Here Ben summarizes of his article as a blog post: </i></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
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<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<b> ‘Micro poetry’: One-word poems<br /> </b><b>drawn from colonial
Nahuatl texts</b></h2>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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<b>by</b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
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<b>Ben Leeming</b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Nahua Poetry:</h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">When Europeans first came into contact with Aztec (Nahua) civilization
in the early 16</span><sup style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">th</sup><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"> century, they found a rich and ancient tradition
of verbal art that in certain ways approximated western notions of poetry. For
example, the genre referred to as </span><i style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">cuicatl</i><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">
(lit. “song”) was rich in metaphorical language, often involved the repetition
of words and phrases, and was organized into lines and verses. Franciscans like
fray Bernardino de Sahagún, who was among the first European observers to
appreciate the poetry of the Nahuas, wrote down examples that today are
preserved in texts like the </span><i style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">Primeros memoriales</i><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">.
However, literate Nahuas also continued to compose traditional </span><i style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">cuicatl</i><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">, much of it contained in the
anonymous texts known as the </span><i style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">Cantares
Mexicanos</i><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"> and the </span><i style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">Romances de los
señores de la nueva españa</i><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">. All three of these texts exist in modern translations
and make very worthwhile reading; see the list of sources at the end of this
post for more information. To get a feel for Nahuatl poetry, here are a few
verses from the </span><i style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;">Romances</i><span style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in;"> text:</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Your
flowers blossom as bracelets, swelling as jades, the petals abounding, they lie
in our hands. These fragrant plume flowers are our adornment, you princes. Aya!
We only borrow them on earth.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Let
the popcorn flowers, the raven flowers be scattered, and fragrant plume flowers
lie in our hands. They are our adornment, you princes. Aya! We only borrow them
on earth.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
I,
Tizahuatzin, am grieving here. Where are we to go? To His home! There can be no
coming back, there can be no return. We go away forever. Beyond is where we go.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Let
these flowers, these songs be carried from his home. And would that I might go
away adorned. Gold raven flowers, plume popcorn flowers lie in our hands. There
can be no return. We go away forever. Beyond is where we go. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 4.0in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
[Bierhorst 2009:131]<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I’ve long been fascinated by the religious writing of early
colonial Nahuas. Trained in alphabetic literacy by the Franciscans, Dominicans,
and Augustinians, Nahuas enthusiastically embraced reading and writing in
Spanish, Latin, and their language of birth, Nahuatl. Certain members of this
cohort assisted the friars in composing religious texts in their native tongue,
some which were translated from Spanish or Latin, others that were composed from
scratch in the scriptoria of the various monastic houses. One of the cherished
cultural forms that Nahua writers sought to incorporate into their Christian
writing was characteristic traits of pre-Hispanic Nahuatl poetry. The friars
supported this, at least in theory, since it lent an air of authenticity and
prestige to the Christian message. One of the foremost hallmarks of Nahuatl poetry
was the frequent use of couplets – pairs of words that together embellished the
idea being communicated. Sometimes this pair of words could take on a third,
metaphorical meaning, a kind of “semantic couplet” that is often referred to as
a </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">difrasismo</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">. For example, the
pairing of the words </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">in xochitl </i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">and </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">in cuicatl</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> (“flower” and “song”) signified
poetry. Other well-known difrasismos include: </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">in atl in tepetl</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> (“water, hill” rendering “town”), </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">in teoatl in tlachinolli</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> (“ocean, burned
field” rendering “war”), and </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">in cueitl in
huipilli</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> (“skirt, blouse” rendering “woman”). As is seen in the verses from
the </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Romances </i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">text above, Nahuatl
poetry often employs “vocables” (words without meaning, like </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Aya!</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">) and refrains (“We only borrow them
on earth”). Finally, Nahuatl poetry tends to draw on imagery from the “flower
world” complex – iridescent tropical birds, reflective metals, brightly colored
flowers, and all their associated sensory components – sounds, sights, and
smells. To Nahuas, these were manifestations of </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">teotl</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">, the all-pervading power that animated all living (and some un-living)
things.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The friars sought to carefully supervise all writing by
native people, fearing the transmission of ideas deemed “diabolical” from
indigenous cultures into the “one true faith” they had brought. But the act of
translation is far more complicated than merely finding equivalences between
two languages. Translating Christian concepts into indigenous tongues
necessarily shaped and molded those concepts by virtue of the “stickiness” of
language. For example, when friars sought an equivalent Nahuatl word for “God”
they chose </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">teotl</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">. On one level this
fit because it was one of the words Nahuas had used to refer to their deities.
However, how does one “unstick” indigenous understandings of the divine from
the word </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">teotl</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> and stick on to it a
new, Christian one? One strategy they employed was to modify the word </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">teotl</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> with the Spanish word “Dios.” </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Teotl Dios</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> was a way of saying, “the </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Christian</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> teotl.” However, it proved
very difficult – at least for quite a long time – to unstick the old meanings
and attach new ones. Nahua Christianities (many regional varieties resulted
from the translation project) tended to borrow heavily from new </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">and</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> old in an effort to make the new
faith work within native cultural frameworks that had developed over millennia.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Megawords and Micropoetry:</span></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Nahua writers could get very creative with their use of
language, whether it be in their incorporation of </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">difrasismos</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> and other metaphorical expressions or their use of the
“flower world” imagery described above. Although it wasn’t always true,
generally speaking the less ecclesiastical supervision a writer was under the
more creative his writing would become. In my work with colonial Nahuatl texts
I am drawn to such texts, for they often contain bursts of creativity that
might otherwise have been squelched by critical friars. Some native writers of
religious texts displayed remarkable linguistic ingenuity in their effort to
elevate the tone of their compositions and express their devotion to the
saints, Mary, and Christ. Here’s a example of very florid devotional writing by
a Nahua who penned these lines in a prayer of praise to the Virgin Mary:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: .5in; margin-top: 0in; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
You,
oh vessel of jade-green water, from you will flow forth, will drip forth the
heavenly jade-green water of life, so that with utterly good water all the
world will be watered, so that in a sacred way will germinate, will sprout that
which was frozen with the ice of sin. Oh, may you rejoice, oh Saint Mary, oh
pure and forever maidenly flower…you are the finely emblazoned jade-green water
vessel. [Burkhart 2001:55]<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Notice
in this example the author’s use of couplets (“will flow forth, will drip
forth” and “will germinate, will sprout”) as well as the reference to
“jade-green” water, jade being a precious greenstone associated with the shimmering
phenomena of the flower world. One additional way this writer displays his skill
and devotion is by composing words of exceptional length. In the short passage
above there are two of these: “oh pure and forever maidenly flower” and “you
are the finely emblazoned jade-green water vessel.” Yes, these are <i>single words</i>. Here they are in their Nahuatl
form: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i><b>chipahualizcemihcacaichpochxochitzintle</b></i>
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 1.0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
(“oh pure and forever
maidenly flower”)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-left: 1.0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i><b>tiyecchalchiuhmatlalaacaxmachiotiltzintli</b></i>
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
(“you are the finely emblazoned jade-green water
vessel”)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Nahuatl
is what is called an “agglutinative” language, which means that it forms words
by adding prefixes and suffixes onto word stems. Each prefix and suffix adds
more material to the stem, to the point where these words can function as
entire sentences, as seen in the second example above. Nahua authors like those
who composed these words pushed the limits of Nahuatl’s agglutinating nature,
building words that could stretch to extreme lengths. Once I noticed this
phenomenon, I became fascinated, both by the complexity of these words and by
their obvious poetic value. When I studied them closely I made a startling
discovery. Within the boundaries of certain of these words I observed the very
characteristics of Nahuatl poetry that were common in entire lines and verses.
After accumulating a database of examples and breaking each one down into its
constituent parts, it became clear to me that what I was seeing were tiny,
single-word poems – ‘micro poetry’ of astonishing beauty.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">In order to explain how these words can be analyzed as poems,
I will next share a few examples from my database. For each example I have
first presented the word in Nahuatl followed by the translation of the
publishing author. Then, I have presented the word again in two columns. The
left-hand column presents the word broken into its individual parts and
arranged vertically. Directly across from it is a more literal translation of
each part. Finally, I offer a short commentary about each example.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: .5in; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ex. 1: <i><b>tonecuiltonolnetlamachtiliztlahtocatzin</b></i> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“our ruler of prosperity and
happiness” (Burkhart translation)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i>to</i> our<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i>necuiltonol</i> prosperity<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i>netlamachtiliz</i> richness/happiness<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i>tlahtohcatzin</i> ruler<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
This
first Nahuatl micro-poem comes from an anonymous manuscript containing a
variety of miscellaneous Christian texts of a devotional nature. Likely penned
by a Nahua early in the seventeenth century, it forms part of a prayer to the
Virgin Mary and refers to her son, Jesus Christ. My presentation above shows
that the author has embedded a pair of noun stems within the boundaries of this
lengthy word, forming an embedded couplet. Although these two words are nouns,
when compounded in this manner they modify the primary noun (<i>tlahtohcatzin</i>) and take on an adjectival
function, describing what kind of ruler Christ is. As I’ve already stated, the
couplet is one of the most characteristic features of Nahuatl poetry. However,
not all couplets were created equal. To enhance the beauty of such a pairing,
the author of this word crafted a couplet with a strong parallel structure. By
choosing noun stems that both begin with the prefix <i>ne</i> he formed a couplet that would have sounded especially pleasing
to the Nahua ear. What I find so remarkable about this example is that we see
the same propensity to form pairs here within single words as we see at the
level of entire verses. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ex. 2 <i><b>tiquetzalçacuaxiuhquecholhuihuicomacan</b></i> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“let's make troupial-and-turquiose
swan plumes twirl” (Bierhorst translation)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i>ti </i>Let
us [like]<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i> quetzal </i>quetzals<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i> zaquan </i>troupials<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i> xiuhquechol </i>motmots<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i> hui </i>climb
up…<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i>
huicomacan </i>…and up<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
This
beautiful word (keep in mind: this is <i>one
word!</i>) comes from one of the most important sources of colonial Nahuatl
poetry, the so-called <i>Cantares mexicanos</i>.
My presentation suggests that Bierhorst (a brilliant translator) may have
missed the internal structuring of this word. Notice how his translation treats
“troupial” and “turquoise swan” as types of feathers. However, “quetzal” can
refer both to feathers and the bird that bears this name. Since troupials,
“turquoise swans” (a species of motmot) and quetzals are all species of brightly-colored
tropical birds common to flower world complex of poetic imagery, it seems to me
far more likely that the author included the three as an embedded triplet
modifying the verb <i>huihuicomacan</i>. The
directional thrust of this verb (a command form of <i>huicoma,</i> “to climb”) is spiraling, upward motion. Based on the
larger context of the verse in which this word-poem appears, I believe the
composer was likening the spiraling flight of brightly colored birds with the
rising of one’s spirit in song to God. This is a spectacular example of the
melding of Christian practices with indigenous art forms, a phenomenon well
documented in longer texts and here shown to operate at the level of single
words.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ex. 3 <b><i>onquetzalchalchiuhtlapitzalicaoacatiaque</i> </b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
“They went chirping like flutes of
quetzal-green jade” (Burkhart translation)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<i>on icahuacatiaque<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
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</v:shape><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><span style="height: 18px; left: 0px; margin-left: 282px; margin-top: 3px; mso-ignore: vglayout; position: absolute; width: 46px; z-index: 251660288;"></span><!--[endif]--><i> > tlapitzal </i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i> chalchiuh _/</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
they
went chirping<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
quetzal
feather<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
flute<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
green
stone<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
This
beautiful word-poem appears in fray Bernardino de Sahagún’s cycle of songs
composed for the feast of the Nativity and describes the sounds made by the
angels attending Christ’s birth. I have formatted my presentation of this word horizontally so
as to better highlight its complex internal structure. The opening bracket is
formed by Nahuatl’s outbound directional prefix <i>on-</i>, essentially a prefix that indicates the action is moving away
from the speaker or subject. The closing bracket, the word being modified, is
the verb <i>icahuacatiaque</i> “they went
chirping.” Within these brackets the author has embedded three stems: <i>quetzal-</i> (“quetzal feather”), <i>chalchiuh-</i> (“green stone or jade”), and <i>tlapitzal-</i> (“flute”). At first I was inclined to see these stems as
forming an embedded triplet. However, there’s something more complicated going
on here. Rather than all serving the same function, the embedded stems modify
the verb <i>icahuacatiaque</i> at two
different levels. The first level is represented by <i>tlapitzal-</i> (“flute”) which modifies the verb, basically saying that
the angels “went chirping like flutes.” However, modifying this modifier is an
embedded couplet, <i>quetzal-</i> and <i>chalchiuh-</i>,
which describes the appearance of the flute. However, this is no ordinary couplet.
In fact, it is a <i>difrasismo</i> the metaphorical
meaning of which is maize leaves or rain drops. In its pre-Hispanic usage this <i>difrasismo</i> alluded to the rain deity
Tlaloc, a surprising reference in light of the Christian context of its use
here! So far this is the only <i>difrasismo</i>
I have identified within the confines of a single word poem. Given the
centrality of this particular kind of couplet in Nahuatl poetry it stands as a
striking example of the permeation of certain poetic features down to the smallest
level.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Additional examples:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
The
examples below come from the database of single-word Nahuatl poems that I have
collected over the years. Some of them contain clear evidence of the kind of
internal poetic structuring demonstrated in the two examples above; others
yield less easily to such analysis. However, all of them are shining examples
of the sort of linguistic creativity exercised by early colonial Nahua writers.
As single word poems, I find them exquisitely beautiful. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->a.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--><b><i>teucuitlaquetzalaoachpixauhtoc
</i> </b><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
trans: “A golden quetzal-colored dew
formed drops” (Anderson translation) <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->b.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--><i><b>tiquetzalçacuaxiuhquecholhuihuicomacan</b></i>
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast">
“let us like quetzals, troupials and motmots
climb up and up” (my translation) <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->c.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--><i><b>celticachipahuacateoyoticaxochitzintle
</b></i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast">
trans: “O fresh and pure one who is in a
sacred way a flower” (Burkhart translation)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->d.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--><i><b>Nicchalchiuhcozcamecaquemmachtohtoma</b></i>
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast">
“I gently unfurl [my song] as a precious
green-stone string of beads” (my translation)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->e.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--><i><b>tixochicitlalcuecuepocatimani</b></i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
“you are bursting into bloom all over with
stars like flowers” (Burkhart & Sell trans.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]-->f.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span><!--[endif]--><b><i>itlaçomahuizÇenquiscatlaçomahuizqualtilispepetlaquilisXayacatzin</i>
</b>(Burkhart trans.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
“[his] precious, wondrous, utterly
precious, wondrous, good, and shining face”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
(note: This could be the longest
word ever composed in colonial Nahuatl. It’s certainly the longest in my
database.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Conclusion:</h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
What
sense are we to make of this phenomenon? As for why certain Nahua authors
composed such lengthy words, it’s important to note that not all of them did.
For example, the massively long word above is, at its root, simply <i>ixayaca</i> “his face.” In the hands of some
authors this might have remained in this short form, or perhaps <i>ixayacatzin</i> “his face” in reverential
form. But given the ease with which Nahuatl could incorporate stems to form
more complex constructions, this word could just as easily have grown to <i>itlazohxayacatzin </i>(“his precious face”),
or even <i>itlazohmahuizxayacatzin </i>(“his
precious, marvelous face”). Authors who chose to grow their words to extreme
lengths probably did so as a way to demonstrate both their linguistic skill
(their “chops,” as it were), but owing to the fact that these examples come
almost exclusively from Christian devotional texts, also as a way of
demonstrating their piety and devotion. I see these examples of Nahuatl word
poetry as evidence of the persistence of pre-Hispanic oral tradition in the
early colonial period. That age-old tradition prized the kind of spontaneous,
improvisational, linguistic ebullience that I see preserved in the examples
shared here. Singers of <i>cuicatl</i> were
praised for “unfurling their songs,” performing <i>in xochitl in cuicatl</i> for their audience who likened their speech
to “green-stone strings of beads” or the spiraling, upward motion of quetzals,
troupials, and motmots. That native authors continued to “unfurl their songs”
into the early contact period is no surprise, and to gaze on the fruits of
their linguistic labors is one of the things I cherish most about working with
colonial Nahuatl texts. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Note: Readers who are interested in exploring Nahuatl
“micro-poetry’ in greater detail should consult the article I published in <i>Colonial Latin American Review</i>, 24:2, pp.
168-189 (2015) titled “‘<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/vSCvnRVPaxus4kcbjFEf/full" target="_blank">Micropoetics’: The poetry of hypertrophic words in early colonial Nahuatl.</a>” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
References:</h3>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u>Nahuatl poetry in modern editions<o:p></o:p></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bierhorst, John, trans.
1985. <i>Cantares Mexicanos: Songs of the Aztecs</i>. Stanford: Stanford <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
University Press. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
___. 2009. <i>Ballads of the Lords of New Spain</i>.
Austin: University of Texas Press.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Garibay, Ángel María.
1964. <i>Poesía Náhuatl</i>. Mexico City:
Universidad Nacional Autónoma <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
de México.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sullivan, T.D. and Nicholson, H.B., eds. 1997. <i>Primeros Memoriales
by fray Bernardino de <o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<i>Sahagún: Paleography of Nahuatl Text and English Translation</i>. University of
Oklahoma Press.<i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u>Christian texts that incorporate aspects of Nahuatl poetry<o:p></o:p></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Burkhart, Louise M. 1992.
“Flowery Heaven: The Aesthetic of Paradise in Nahuatl Devotional <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Literature.” <i>RES:
Anthropology and Aesthetics,</i> 21:88-109.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
_____. 2001. <i>Before
Guadalupe</i>. Albany: Institute for
Mesoamerican Studies.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sahagún, Bernardino de. 1993 [1583]. <i>Psalmodia
Christiana, </i>translated by Arthur J.O. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Anderson. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sell, Barry D. and Louise M. Burkhart, eds. 2004. <i>Nahuatl Theater</i>, Vol. 1. University of <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Oklahoma Press.<o:p></o:p></div>
Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-2289671880430454692016-02-10T13:35:00.005-08:002016-04-17T11:20:23.116-07:00No Snopes.com, the word guacamole does not come from the Nahuatl word for "ground testicles or avocados".<br />
We all know that guacamole is delicious (seriously, if I had to choose one food to eat the rest of my life guacamole would be a strong candidate), but what does the word mean?<br />
<br />
Today Snopes.com, usually a good source for debunking of all kinds of myths, wrote about Nahuatl. Unfortunately they got it pretty much backwards, so now I have to write a blog-post debunking the debunkers.(Snopes has since corrected the entry, I give the link at the end of this blogpost)<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtkeZQGME7nIXLYQmE8IUXy0bvn-18C6A2VJUaCnoZuledFV-8ZmJm1eG0FxCa53hVKanuRD1J1dYCHqop457oXEmXCu1fxM-4wzxIzp54UQFRaYb7USzTGSiNAVY8OvQdhBQ4UXi4mDo/s1600/avocado+not+testicle.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtkeZQGME7nIXLYQmE8IUXy0bvn-18C6A2VJUaCnoZuledFV-8ZmJm1eG0FxCa53hVKanuRD1J1dYCHqop457oXEmXCu1fxM-4wzxIzp54UQFRaYb7USzTGSiNAVY8OvQdhBQ4UXi4mDo/s320/avocado+not+testicle.JPG" width="320" /></a><br />
The myth that Snopes was trying to debunk is that the word "guacamole" comes from a Nahuatl word meaning "testicle sauce". That it does is a meme that sometimes makes the rounds on the internet. (for example <a href="http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/05/avocado-derives-from-a-word-meaning-testicle/" target="_blank">here</a>, and <a href="http://compoundchem.tumblr.com/post/92546904226/this-isnt-really-chemistry-related-but-its" target="_blank">here</a>).<br />
<br />
After "fact checking" the myth with dictionaries, before rewriting the article the Snopes writer concluded that "Avocado" does indeed come from a Nahuatl word that "also means testicle". But that "mole" comes from the Spanish word <i>moler </i>"to grind". Neither of these conclusions are entirely correct, but the latter was outright false.<br />
<br />
<h3>
</h3>
<h3>
</h3>
<h3>
1. The Nahuatl word <i>ahuacatl </i>does not mean testicle. </h3>
<br />
The Nahuatl word for the avocado (<i>Persea americana</i>) /<i>a:wakatl/ </i>(variously spelled <i>ahuacatl</i>, <i>aguacatl</i>, <i>auacatl </i>etc.) comes from a proto-Nahuan word *<i>pawata </i>which also means "avocado" - the word <i>pawatl </i>is still used for wild avocado in some Nahuatl varieties. All Nahuatl dictionaries give avocado fruit as the primary meaning of /<i>a:wakatl</i>/. But does or did the word also mean "testicle"?<br />
<br />
A number of English etymological dictionary mention "testicle" in relation to the Nahuatl etymology of Nahuatl. One of them is Merriam-Webster and another is the Etymology Dictionary Online (which a couple of years ago I convinced to change the definition so that it no longer states that the original meaning of Nahuatl <i>ahuacatl </i>was "testicle"). They in turn get their data from Frances Karttunen's 1987 "Analytical Dictionary", the most esteemed Nahuatl-English dictionary, which lists the meaning of <i>ahuacatl </i>as simply "avocado, testicle". Karttunen in turn derives most of her entries from Alonso de Molinas 1571, which gives us the definition as "<i>fruta conocida, o el compañon</i>" (i.e. "a known fruit or the testicle" he uses the now outdated Spanish word <i>compañon </i>for testicle).<br />
<br />
So the etymology is sound in the sense that we know that in the 16th century the word was used to refer both to the fruit and the body part - at least by some people in Mexico City where Alonso Molina grew up and learned Nahuatl on the streets with his indigenous friends. We know little more than that though, for all textual references to the word that I have come across use it only in the botanical-culinary meaning. And in Nahuatl speaking communities I have never met anyone who considered the word /<i>a:wakatl</i>/ to refer to anything but avocadoes. Molina himself gives a clue that this is the case because if you look in the Spanish part under <i>compañon. </i>Here, he does not give <i>auacatl</i> as a possible translation only the word<i> atetl</i>, which is a normal, anatomical, non-slang word for testicle in Nahuatl today and clearly also in the past (another common word is <i>xitetl</i>).<br />
<br />
It would appear that the anatomical meaning is a euphemism, based on a certain similarity of shape, the same kind of euphemism that we make use of when we refer to a penis as "a wiener" or to testicles as "nuts" (or when Spanish speakers refer to testicles as "<i>huevos</i>" "eggs" or <i>cebollas </i>"onions"). We would however not generally consider it to be "partly correct" to say that "wiener schnitzel" kind of means "Penis schnitzel" or that "nut case" kind of means "testicle box". Nor would Spanish speakers consider it meaningful to say that "torta de huevo" kind of means "testicle sandwich". <br />
<br />
So, no the Nahuatl word <i>ahuacatl /a:wakatl/ </i>does not mean "testicle", but because of the evocative shape of the fruit it can be used metaphorically in that extended sense. And it is this extended sense that Molina recorded. <br />
<br />
That was one out for snopes, but the second part is actually worse. Here the snopes writer goes completely off track. <br />
<br />
<h3>
2. The Mexican Spanish word "mole" does not come from Latin "molēre" but from Nahuatl /mo:lli/ "sauce"</h3>
She claims that the "<i>mole</i>" part of the word "guacamole" comes from the Spanish "<i>moler</i>" "to grind". This is intuitively plausible because indeed there is a bit of grinding taking place when one converts avocados into guacamole. But that two words look and have a plausible meaning alike of course does not mean that they share the same etymology. In this case there are very good reasons to think that the "mole" part does not come from Spanish, but from the Nahuatl word /<i>mo:lli/ </i>"sauce". The Snopes writer realizes that the word "<i>molli</i>" means sauce, but still she makes the weird claim that the word has now "converged with the infinitive moler". I dont know what this is supposed to mean.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But the main problem is that she was "unable to determine whether it [molli] originated from Nahuatl or entered it as a loan word from Spanish." I can help Snopes with that one: The Nahuatl word <i>molli </i>"sauce"<i> </i>is a noun derived from a root *<i>mo:l </i>that has to do with hard or thick things becoming liquid or soft. We have <i>mo:loa </i>"to dilute a sauce", <i>mo:lehua </i>"for earth to become soft" (and perhaps <i>moloni </i>"to bubble, swirl, flow"though the vowel length doesnt sem to match). So <i>mo:lli </i>most definitely is a native Nahuatl word meaning something like "watery emulsion".<br />
<br />
The best reason is the Nahuatl word for guacamole is <i>ahuacamolli</i>, which is easily analyzable as "avocado sauce". The Nahuatl word <i>ahuacamolli</i>, is indeed also the generally accepted source of the Spanish word (<a href="http://dle.rae.es/?id=JbS4HEY" target="_blank">even the RAE which is not known for getting indigenous language etymologies right actually gets this one right</a>). But Snopes claims that it is the other way round, that Spanish guacamole was borrowed into Nahuatl as <i>ahuacamolli</i>! This would be a very weird borrowing indeed, since it was Nahuas who taught Spaniards to make <i>ahuacamolli </i>in the 16th century, and since Molina's dictionary (Molina defines <i>auacamolli </i>as a "manjar de auacates con chilli" which appropriately translates as "a feast of avocadoes with chili") and the Florentine codex attest the Nahuatl word in this period - long before the first appearances of the Spanish word. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So the word guacamole does not come from a word meaning "testicle sauce", nor from a half Nahuatl half Spanish that can be analyzed as meaning "ground avocado" as Snopes.com implicitly suggests. It comes from the Nahuatl word <i>ahuacamolli </i>which means an "avocado based sauce". </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If Nahuas ever used the word as a slang word to refer to semen or other naughty "testicle juices" we will never know, but there is no evidence to suggest that they did.<br />
<br />
Also: Pro-tip to Americans: Please stop saying "<i>Guac</i>" when you order guacamole in your burrito at Chipotle Mexican Grill. Whenever you utter this abbreviation a little Nahuatl speaking kitten somewhere dies.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
[Update: Brooke Binkowski of Snopes.com has reacted to a link I posted on facebook to this blog, and <a href="http://www.snopes.com/guacamole-means-testicle-sauce/" target="_blank">edited the article which now no longer contains the (mis)information given above</a>. ]</div>
<div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6_n4Xu2IA7MZLiSvt3vlq_eqJUAkRlPDeCq6L0P3krRW-TqJq3irpCHRtz8yvimxL71rR3z2vwHMgRvuf1w4rGo6Wvna2V_z3Mk_diDWj5iu7XZ0wOd6mLi2pJs0aniXSq6S54nT5cu4/s1600/avocado.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6_n4Xu2IA7MZLiSvt3vlq_eqJUAkRlPDeCq6L0P3krRW-TqJq3irpCHRtz8yvimxL71rR3z2vwHMgRvuf1w4rGo6Wvna2V_z3Mk_diDWj5iu7XZ0wOd6mLi2pJs0aniXSq6S54nT5cu4/s320/avocado.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These are not The Hulk's testicles, <br />
even if they do kind of look that way. (Photo from wikicommons)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br /></div>
Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-35740268465376928112015-08-13T01:53:00.000-07:002015-08-17T03:04:20.378-07:00La Familia "MATI" - Guest Blog by Nahuatlahtoh Francisco J. Hernández Maciel<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i><span style="background-color: white;">This is a guest blog by Mexican Nahuatl scholar </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; white-space: nowrap;">Francisco Jesús Hernández Maciel, also known sometimes as Akapochtli. </span></i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; white-space: nowrap;">He has studied Nahuatl for 40 years </span><span style="color: #222222; white-space: nowrap;">and is a proficient speaker of modern Guerrero Nahuatl, </span></span></i><br />
<i style="color: #222222; white-space: nowrap;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">as well as a master of the colonial literary language. </span></i></div>
<h3>
<span lang="ES-MX"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; white-space: nowrap;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; font-weight: normal;"><i>In this article he gives an overview of the large family of words derived from the verb "MATI". </i></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; white-space: nowrap;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; font-weight: normal;"><i>The blog is in Spanish, which I hope most of our readers will be able to read.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; white-space: nowrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><i><br /></i></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; white-space: nowrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div>
</span></h3>
<h3>
<span lang="ES-MX">La Familia Mati</span> </h3>
<h4>
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; white-space: nowrap;">Francisco J. Hernández Maciel</span></span></i></h4>
<br />
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<span lang="ES-MX"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">Uno de los verbos más importantes
de la lengua náhuatl sin duda es mati. Propiamente la familia mati a nivel
filológicos son aquellos derivados con significados cercanos, teniendo la raíz <i>mat-</i> que deriva del proto-nahua <i>mah-</i> (forma que se preserva en el tiempo
pretérito) y que tiene en la base 3 la forma de <i>mach-</i>, que es la que da origen al pasivo <i>macho</i> y al causativo <i>machtiā</i>
(enseñar). Aquí incluimos otras formas que evolucionaron y que en la época
clásica eran parecidas en sonido. (26 verbos en total).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">De este verbo que es a la
vez un auxiliar, surgen muchos otros nuevos verbos. Encontramos en el <i>Gran Diccionario de los Verbos en Nāwatl</i>,
cerca de 130 cognados que lo tienen como terminación incluyendo sus causativos
y aplicativos.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">Esta primera parte, algo
más filológica que la segunda, está organizada iniciando con las palabras con <b><i>ma-</i></b>,
en negrita la entrada principal y le siguen significados según el contexto. Le
sigue el inicio con <b><i>tla-</i></b>, que propiamente es sólo una entrada, aunque encontraremos
en las distintas entradas sustantivos con esta sílaba que se relaciona con los
verbos. Luego vienen los verbos que inician con <b><i>ne-</i></b> que se encuentra
fijado a la raíz, siguen aquellos con una “i” (ih- ix-) y al último con <b><i>te-</i></b>.
En algunos casos para evitar confusión fue necesario señalar de que raíz se
componen los sustantivos.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">mati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. nino. pensar, sentir, reflexionar.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nom- <i>ahmīxko mokpa tommati</i> = eres un imbécil<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <i>ahiw ninomati</i> = tomar las cosas en mal
sentido<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <i>tētech ninomati</i> = gustar de la compañía
de alg., estar a gusto con alg.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <i>tētech momati</i> = familiar, bueno, dulce<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <i>iwkin aokmo nehwātl ninomati</i> = no me
reconozco, estoy fuera de mí.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nitē. conocer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nitla. saber<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <i>noyōlloh kimati</i> = sospechar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <i>ahtleh noyōlloh kimati</i> =no tener nada
que reprocharse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <i>iw kimati noyōlloh</i> = decir lo que se
piensa<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <i>tēihtik nontlamati</i> = adivinar el
pensamiento de alguien<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <i>zenkah tleh tikmati</i> = pon mucha
atención, ten mucho cuidado<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <i>nohwiyān macho</i> = ser evidente, muy
conocido <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> mahmati. nino. estar
avergonzado, estar confuso (forma frec.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nitē. sentir vergüenza de alg.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">machiā</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. ni. ser conocido, descubierto<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> ninotla. ser el
primero en escoger, en servirse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nitētla.
repartir, juzgar según el mérito de cada uno<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nitlatla.
ilustrar un libro, hacer algo con habilidad<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> machiliā. nitētla,
niktē. repartir algo según el mérito de cada uno (aplic. de machiā)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> (<i>también es el aplicativo de mati</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
<i>tinēchmachiliā in notlahtlakōl</i>
= conoces mis pecados<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> machītiā. nino. darse
a conocer, mostrarse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
nitla. hacer saber, notificar (causativo)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
nitētla, niktē. hacer ver,
mostrar algo, informar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> (<i>también es el reverencial de mati</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
<i>tehwātzin tikmomachītiā</i> =
sabes lo que es necesario, lo que conviene<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> machiltiā. (rev.
alternativo de mati)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">*machiztiā.</span></b><span lang="ES-MX"> nitla. publicar, anunciar, notificar (forma semi-causativa de
machizti)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">machtiā</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. nino. aprender<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nitē. enseñar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> ninotla.
(rev. alternativo de mati)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
<i>tehwātzin tikmomachtiā</i> = tú
sabes lo que es necesario<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> mahmachtiā. nitla.
probar algo (forma frec.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
nitē. poner a prueba a alg.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> machtiliā. ninotē.
enseñar, instruir (reverencial de machtiā)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">tlamachtiā</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. nino. ser rico, ser feliz <b>tlamachtiā
≠ tlamach</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> ninotē,
nikno. gozar de alguien (suavemente, poco a poco)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nitē.
enriquecer, hacer feliz<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> tlamachtīlli.
discípulo, alumno. R. machtiā<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> tlamatiliztli.
ciencia, saber. R. mati<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> tlamatini. sabio,
hábil. R. mati<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">nemachiliā</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. nitla, nik. ser árbitro // ser elegante, embellecer. Rel. machiā<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nemachiliztli.
sentimiento. R. mati<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">nemachitiā.</span></b><b><span lang="ES-MX"> \ </span></b><span lang="ES-MX">nitē. preparar,
prevenir, advertir</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">nemachtiā</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. / nino. arreglarse, prepararse. Rel.
machiā<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nematiliztli. idea,
pensamiento. R. mati<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">netlamachtiliā. \ nitē. enriquecer. R. tlamachtiā</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
netlamachtiltiā. /</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> netlamachtiliztli. prosperidad,
riqueza \ R. tlamachtiā<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
netlamachtīlli. bienestar, prosperidad /<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">ihmati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. nino. ser prudente, ser perspicaz // estar mejor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
<i>wel mihmati</i> = es prudente,
juicioso<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nitla. preparar, disponer, llevar un asunto
con habilidad<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> ihihmati. nin.
arreglarse, embellecerse (forma frecuentativa que le cambia el sentido)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">īxihmati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. nino. ser prudente, estar mejor (en las variantes modernas ha
evolucionado a ixmati)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nitē.
conocer a alguien<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nitla.
conocer, probar, experimentar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> / īxihmachiliā. nitē dar
a conocer a alg. <i>Aplic. īxihmati</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> | īxihmachtiā. ninotē,
niktē. dar a conocer. <i>Caus. īxihmati</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> | nitētla. notificar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> \ īxihmachtiliā. nitē.
dar a conocer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">*īxmachtiā</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. nitētla. hacer saber algo a alguien (<i>forma única de incorporación īxtli-machtiā</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">*īxtlamachtiā</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. nitē. instruir, educar, enseñar.
R. īx-tla-machtiā ≠ tlamachtiā (Véase más abajo el causativo de <i>īxtlamati</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
īxtlamachiliztli. razón, prudencia. Rel. a īxtlamati<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">temachiā</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. nino. tener confianza, esperar algo<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nitē.
confiar, esperar algo de alg.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nitla. esperar algo<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
<i>zenkah nitlatemachiā</i> = esperar
algo ansiosamente<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
<i>ahtleh niktemachiā</i> = no desear
nada, tener grandes riquezas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> temachiliztli.
estimación, consideración<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> tēmachitiliztli.
notificación, divulgación. R. machītiā<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> tēmatiliztli.
afecto, estimación. R. mati<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span lang="ES-MX">Por lo que tenemos:<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span lang="ES-MX"> mati/machiā tlamachtiā ihmati/īxihmati temachiā<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span lang="ES-MX"> sentir enriquecer ser prudente confiar<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJpzL4z9C-Elk99b6YE68OrjjV1oxRgzZdMnhv85pWahwH189aqNLFfxF22t8SndVHSFR5wkYxvW21qPe-_luNYnT-uUEeDgpSFId0nDhSks5OMgRTfjGXq0MjCja901bqC2jDrYzHLKw/s1600/Diagrama+de+derivaciones.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJpzL4z9C-Elk99b6YE68OrjjV1oxRgzZdMnhv85pWahwH189aqNLFfxF22t8SndVHSFR5wkYxvW21qPe-_luNYnT-uUEeDgpSFId0nDhSks5OMgRTfjGXq0MjCja901bqC2jDrYzHLKw/s640/Diagrama+de+derivaciones.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> En esta segunda parte,
algo más lexicológica, cuantificaremos y razonaremos los verbos de la siguiente
manera: los directamente compuesto con sustantivos que son 38, los derivados
verbales y adverbiales unidos por medio de la ligadura -kā- son 13, una forma
no reconocida y que da sentidos no del todo predecibles, <i>tlamati</i>, tiene 23 entradas; según Carochi-Paredes se usa mati con
verbos en pasivo para expresar la idea de “se piensa, se considera, siento que”,
son pocos los verbos encontrados con esta característica 8. En el análisis
también se incluye la terminación <i>machtiā</i>
(9 verbos) y el derivado <i>ihmati</i> (4 verbos)
que ya vimos se aleja del sentido de mati.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> En esencia los nuevos verbos obtenidos de
sustantivos tiene el sentido de “sentir algo como, considerar, estimar, tener
por…”, siendo los más fáciles de comprender los que se conjugan con <i>nino-</i> : </span><span lang="ES-MX"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(āchkāwtli - principal, superior) <b>āchkāwmati</b>. nitē. considerar como superior<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(ēllelli = pena, disgusto) <b>ēllelmati</b>.
nino. sentir disgusto <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <b>ēllelmachītiā</b>. nitē. hacer enfadar,
irritar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(iknōtl = pobre, huérfano) <b>iknōmati</b>.
nino. humillarse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
<b>iknōnemachītiā</b>. nitē.
humillar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(iknōpilli = huérfano, mérito) <b>iknōpilmati</b>.
nitla. agradecer con humildad<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(kehkelli = burla, broma) <b>kehkelmati</b>.
nino. considerar que se burlan de uno. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> (*kōā = comunal, colectivo) <b>kōāmati.</b>nitē. albergar, recibir con
hospitalidad<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(mawiztli = respeto) <b>mawizmati</b>.
nitē. apreciar, estimar <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> (nāwatīlli = orden, regla) <b>nāwatīlmati</b>. nino. recibir órdenes,
someterse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(nematiliztli = opinión)<b>nematilizmati</b>.
nitē. seguir la opinión de alguien, aceptar su criterio<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(pipil, pilli = niño) <b>pipilmati</b>.
nino. decir que se tiene menos edad<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> Únicamente dos verbos (un
tercero se verá al final junto con las formas irregulares) conservan el sentido
de “conocer”:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(chiko = de lado) <b>chikomati</b>.
nino. conocer mal // tētech nino. tener mala opinión de alguien<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(ilwikatlamatiliztli = astrología) <b>ilwikatlamatilizmati</b>. ni. conocer la astrología<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> Cuatro verbos tienen un
sentido cercano con palabras que denotan castigo:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(kuawitl = palo) <b>kuammati</b>.
nitla. sufrir, soportar con tristeza<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(tletl = fuego) <b>tlemati</b>.
nitla sufrir, soportar con pena, con tristeza<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> (chālchiwitl = jade) <b>chālchiwmati</b>.nitla. ser paciente,
soportar la adversidad<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(teōxiwitl = turquesa) <b>teōxiwmati</b>.
nitla. ser paciente, soportar con resignación<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> Se utiliza tahtli (padre)
y nāntli (madre)<i> </i>para expresar
“considerar, tener como sostén”. Además se puede comparar el sentido de la
composición con las palabras hombre (tlākatl) y mujer (ziwātl); “sentir a
alguien como hombre” se vuelve <i>obedecer</i>,
“sentir a alguien como mujer” se transforma en reconocer su calidad:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> (tahtli = padre) <b>tahmati</b>. nino. considerarse el sostén
del estado<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(nāntli = madre) <b>nāmmati</b>.
nitē. tener a alguien por sostén<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(tlākatl = hombre) <b>tlākamati</b>.
nitē. obedecer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
<b>tlākamachiltiā</b>. ninotē.
obedecer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> (ziwātl = mujer) <b>ziwāmati</b>. nitla. estar agradecido con
su esposa<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(tēntli = labio, orilla) <b>tēmmati</b>.
<b>tēmati</b>. nitla. ser descuidado,
perezoso<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(tētzāwitl = portento, augurio) <b>tētzāmmati</b>.
nitla. creer en los augurios<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(totokiliztli = ligereza, agilidad) <b>totokilizmati</b>. nino. querer salir, querer el despido<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(tlakōtl = vara) <b>tlakōmati</b>.
nitla. descuidar por pereza<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(tlazohtli = aprecio, cariño) <b>tlazohmati</b>.nitē.
dar gracias, reconocer un favor <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(wēyi = grande) <b>wēyimati</b>.
nitē. estimar, apreciar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(wel = bien) <b>welmati</b>.
nino. sentirse bien<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nitla.
estar contento de algo<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(xōchitl = flor) <b>xōchimati</b>.
nino. alegrarse mucho<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <b>xōchmati</b>. nino. tratarse bien (posiblemente la diferencia de
sentido no sea tan grande)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(xōkoyōtl = el hijo más joven)
<b>xōxōkoyōmati</b>. nitē. mimar,
halagar, acariciar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(yoliztli = vida) <b>yolizmati</b>.
ni. ser prudente<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(yōllohtli = corazón) <b>yōllohmati</b>.
nitē. adivinar las intenciones, comprender lo que quiere hacer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(zem = completo) <b>zemati</b>.nino.
ser orgulloso<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(teōtl = dios, divinidad) <b>teōmati</b>.
nitla. rezar, ocuparse de las cosas espirituales(Simeón así lo actualizó,
aunque Molina no lo tradujó por rezar). Launey en la práctica lo traduce
diferente: <i>Nikteōmati in Totēukyo</i>,
tengo a Nuestro Señor por Dios. (página 263, bajo la idea de “considerar”
“tener por”).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="ES-MX">El "adverbio" o
"adjetivo" con -</span><i><span lang="ES-MX">k</span></i><i><span lang="ES-MX">ā</span></i><span lang="ES-MX">- incorporado califica en
general al sujeto del verbo principal pero también en ocasiones al objeto:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(ahzikā = alcanzado) <b>ahzikāmati</b>.ni.nitla.
comprender (considerar alcanzado)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(ahwiākā = suave, oloroso) <b>ahwiākāmati</b>.
nik. <i>considerar</i> = encontrar bueno,
suave algo<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(etikā = pesado) <b>etikāmati</b>.
nik. <i>considerar</i> = creer, juzgar una
cosa pesada<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(iknōpillawēlīlōkā = ingratamente) <b>iknōpillawēlīlōkāmati</b>. nitē. <i>considerar</i>
= juzgar como ingrato<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(ixwikā = hartado) <b>ixwikāmati</b>.
nino. <i>considerarme</i> = comer
razonablemente<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(iztlakā = falsamente) <b>iztlakāmati</b>.
nitē. <i>considerar</i> = acusar en falso<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(nālkīzkā = salido de lado) <b>nālkīzkāmati</b>.
nitla. comprender, entender<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(tlawēlīlōkā = bribonamente) <b>tlawēlīlōkāmati</b>.
nitē. considerar bribón a alguien<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(tlazohkā = afectuoso, amoroso) <b>tlazohkāmati</b>.
nitē. <i>considerar</i> = agradecer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <b>tlazohkāmachiltiā</b>. ninotē. estar agradecido
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(wēyikā = en grande) <b>wēyikāmati</b>.
nitē. <i>considerar</i> = apreciar, estimar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(wēlikā = sabroso) <b>wēlikāmati</b>.
nitla. <i>considerar </i>= encontrar bueno
lo que se come<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">(zēkokā = separadamente ) <b>zēkokāmati</b>. nino. considerarse superior
a los demás, ser presuntuoso<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> Los compuestos con
tlamati se caracterizan por ser formas intransitivas, a excepción del derivado verbal de <i>kāwaliztli </i> que aparece con
/nik/ en el diccionario pero creo que es un error de Molina; en varios casos
encontramos que tienen una forma causativa en machtiā y por lo tanto transitiva
pero no se relaciona con “enseñar”, los verbos son:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">ahtlamati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. n. enorgullecerse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> (causativo) <b>ahtlamachtiā</b>. nitē. alabar, halagar a
alguien<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">chikotlamati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. ni. ser suspicaz<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">iknīwtlamati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. n. ser amigo, obrar como amigo<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">iknōtlamati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. n. entristecerse, afligirse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> (causativo)
<b>iknōtlamachtiā</b>. nitē. dar compasión,
provocarla<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">īxtlamati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. n. tener experiencia, ser prudente<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
(causativo) <b>īxtlamachtiā</b>.
nitla. hacer algo con prudencia<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">kāwaliztlamati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. nik. dejar sus bienes (en Molina aparece con el negativo; ahnik.
no querer ser privado de lo que posee defendiéndose)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">kuawtlamati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. ni. esculpir madera // nitla. imputar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
(causativo) <b>kuawtlamachtiā</b>.
nitē. acusar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">nēntlamati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. ni. preocuparse, estar afligido (aparece en los documentos también
como “netlamati”)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
(causativo) <b>nēntlamachtiā</b>.
nitē. afligir, atormentar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">pinawiztlamati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. ni. enrojecer, sentir vergüenza<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">telpōchtlamati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. ni. rejuvenecer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">tlahtlamati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. ni. ser bufón, hacer gestos (forma frecuentativa)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">wāllamati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. ni. frecuentar a menudo un lugar (wāl + tlamati)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">wellamati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. ni. estar contento (wel + tlamati)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
(causativo) <b>wellamachtiā</b>.
nitē. dar gusto, dar satisfacción<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">yoliwtlamati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. ni. ser prudente, discreto (*yōliw sólo aparece en pocos
compuestos, Simeón lo hace derivar del impersonal yōliwa pero estamos viendo
que los compuestos con tlamati son en su mayoría sustantivos o palabras que
suelen aparecer solas o en compuestos como: ah- (negación), chiko (de lado),
nēn (en vano), wel (bien), pienso que *yōliw (inspirado, atento, consuelo) es
de este tipo de partícula, tal vez un arcaísmo de iyōlik (despacio,
tranquilamente). Según <i>An Analytical Dictionary</i>
se compone de yōl unido a iw (iuh).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
(causativo) <b>yoliwtlamachtiā</b>.
nitē. certificar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">yōllohtlamati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. ni. conjeturar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">iwkātlamati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. ni. sorprenderse, asustarse, quedar espantado (en Molina aparece
como <i>iuhcan-tlamati</i>, al parecer es
una /n/ epéntica)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> Además de las formas
vistas con <i>īxihmati</i>, que se
consideraron como variantes primarias de <i>mati
</i>y que en realidad son la incorporación de īxtli (cara, rostro) con ihmati,
tenemos otros cuatro compuestos con este verbo:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">ōpōchihmati. n. nin. alegrarse mucho<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">temikīxihmati. ni. explicar los sueños<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">tlahtōlihmati. nino. hablar prudentemente<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">yāōihmati. nino. ser hábil en el arte de la guerra<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> Carochi explica una
composición de verbos que derivan del pasivo y que incorporan mati, se usa para
expresar una opinión, un parecer. Como ejemplo pone <i>telchiwa</i> que significa despreciar, el verbo conserva su propiedad transitiva o reflexiva;
su pasivo es <i>telchiwalo</i> y al entrar
en composición pierde la –o. El verbo obtenido de hecho no aparece en Molina o
Simeón, que es <b>telchiwalmati</b>:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <i>Niktelchiwalmati in nonāmik </i>= Me parece, que menosprecian a mi
esposa.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <i>Nikintelchiwalmati in tētēuktin</i> = Pienso, que desprecian a los
principales.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> Se puede usar la forma
reflexiva para expresar que uno es el objeto de la acción: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span lang="ES-MX">Ninotelchiwalmati </span></i><span lang="ES-MX">= pienso, que me desprecian. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> En Simeón encontramos
otros seis verbos y un causativo con esta característica, pero la traducción
que nos ofrece y el uso no concuerda del todo con lo que acabamos de ver, por
lo que hay que pensar en corregir el sentido y sobre todo usarlos con
propiedad.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> Así aparecen en el
diccionario:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">iknelīlmati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. nitē.nitla. expresar su reconocimiento (ikneliā = hacer el bien,
reconocer que se hace el bien)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nino.
ser agradecido<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">
iknelīlmachiltiā. nitē. dar las gracias por algo, reconocer un favor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">kekelōlmati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. nino. ser escarnecido, ridiculizado (kekeloā = ridiculizar,
burlarse)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">kokolīlmati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. nino. pensar que se es detestado (kokoliā = aborrecer)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">nekuiltonōlmati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. nitla. considerar como una riqueza, estimar, apreciar (nekuiltonoā
= enriquecer)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">panawīlmati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. ninotē. ser presuntuoso, individualista (panawiā = sobrepasar,
aventajar)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">xixikōlmati</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. nino. hacerse satirizar (xikoā =burlar)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> Ejemplos de correcto uso:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span lang="ES-MX">Tikimiknelīlmatih in
nowānyōlkeh</span></i><span lang="ES-MX"> = Nos parece, que agradecen a mis
parientes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span lang="ES-MX">Antēchkekelōlmatizkeh yeīka
iw tiknōmeh</span></i><span lang="ES-MX"> = Pensarán ustedes, que se burlarán de
nosotros porque somos pobres.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span lang="ES-MX">Ōnikkokolīlmah in ichtekki</span></i><span lang="ES-MX"> = Pensé, que era detestado el ladrón.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span lang="ES-MX">Tikinnekuiltonōlmatiya in
pōchtēkah</span></i><span lang="ES-MX"> = Pensabas, que apreciaban a los
comerciantes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span lang="ES-MX">Ninopanawīlmati ītech
tlaīxihmachiliztli in tlamatinimeh </span></i><span lang="ES-MX">= Me parece, que
aventajo a los sabios en conocimiento.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span lang="ES-MX">Nikxixikōlmati in
xōchicuīkapīkki ītlahtōl </span></i><span lang="ES-MX">= Pienso, que satirizan
las palabras del poeta.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> En este listado incluimos formas con la
terminación <i>machtiā</i>, que vimos que en
su mayoría son causativos, excepto nueve verbos en lo que sí significan
“enseñar”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">mazāmachtiā. ni. domar caballos, ciervos<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> mazāmamachtiā. ni.
adiestrar caballos (frec.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">mākkuawmachtiā. nitē. enseñar esgrima<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">nohnōtza(la)lizmachtiā. nitē. enseñar retórica (así aparece en
Simeón pero no lo tomó de Molina, lo más seguro es un error de transcripción,
la forma correcta sería “<i>tēnohnōtzalizmachtiā</i>”)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">ohmachtiā. nitē. indicar el camino<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">pākkāmachtiā. nitē. enseñar con gusto<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">yōlzewkākopamachtiā. nitē. enseñar con dulzura (yōlzewkāyōtl =
dulzura)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">yāōmachtiā. nino. ejercitarse en las armas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> nitē.
enseñar esgrima<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> yāōmāmachtiā. nitē.
enseñar belicosidad (frec.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> Por último tenemos formas
irregulares o que no derivan de mati. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX"> Mikiztemachiā</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">.
nitē. desear la muerte. Posiblemente derivado de <i>temachiā</i>, confiar.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX"> Tlahtlakōlmachiliā</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. nitē.saber, conocer los pecados ajenos. Es el aplicativo de <i>*tlahtlakōlmati</i> (tlahtlakōlli = pecado)
que no aparece, pero conserva el sentido de <i>conocer</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX"> Tōnallāntlamachtiā</span></b><span lang="ES-MX">. mo. despoblarse un país. Combinación de un locativo (Tōnallān
Lugar del Sol, tiempo de estío) con posiblemente <i>tlamachtiā</i>. Según Molina es una forma metafórica. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <b>Yōllamachiliā</b>. nik. considerar, examinar dentro de sí. También
forma aplicativa de un inexistente <i>*yōllamati</i>
(yōl-tlamati), con el sentido de yōl- como algo interno.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <b>Zentlamachtiā</b>. nitē. glorificar, enriquecer. Nitla. gozar. Este
verbo no es irregular, es una clara combinación de zen (entero, completamente)
y el ya visto <i>tlamachtiā</i>
(enriquecer).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> <b>Wālmati</b>. nitē. visitar, dirigirse a alguien, implorar. Tenemos el
prefijo direccional wāl- pero no con el sentido esperado de “ir a conocer,
conocer por allá”; en todo caso sería un sentido metafórico el de “visitar”
(más recomendable usar ziawketza o incluso tlahpaloā) y aún más dudosa la idea
de implorar, para la cual podemos usar chōkiztzahtzi o tlahtlawtiā.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<b><span lang="ES-MX">KA
YE IXKICH<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX"> </span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">ABREVIATURAS<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">* / Signo con dos usos, para formas irregulares y para
reconstrucciones teóricas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">alg. / alguien<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">aplic. / aplicativo<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">caus. / causativo<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">R. / Raíz<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">rel. / relacionado con<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">rev. / reverencial<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">frec. / frecuentativo<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
BIBLIOGRAFÍA MÍNIMA<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
* Andrews, Richard. <i>Introduction to classical náhuatl</i>. Austin, University of Texas
Press, 1975.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">* Carochi, Horacio. <i>Arte de la
Lengua mexicana</i>. Reproducción de la edición de 1645, UNAM, 1983.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
* Kartunnen, Frances. <i>An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl</i>. Austin, University of Texas Press,
1983.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">* Launey, Michel. <i>Introducción
a la Lengua y Literatura Náhuatl</i>. </span>UNAM, 1992.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
* Lockhart, James. <i>Nahuatl as Written</i>. Standford University Press. 2001.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
* Molina, Fray Alonso de. <i><span lang="ES-MX">Vocabulario en lengua castellana-mexicana,
mexicana-castellana</span></i><span lang="ES-MX">. Editorial Porrúa, Quinta
Edición 2004.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">* Simeón, Rēmi. <i>Diccionario de
la lengua Náhuatl</i>. Editorial Siglo XXI, 1988.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="ES-MX">* Swadesh, Mauricio y Madalena Sancho. <i>Los mil elementos del náhuatl clásico</i>. IIH-UNAM, 1966.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-70724628013062686522015-04-14T17:55:00.002-07:002015-04-26T14:40:14.555-07:00Tongues of Aztlan: The Nahua migrations and dialectology<br />
In my last post I showed the basic split between eastern and western Nahuatl dialects, and how different dialects could be classified as belonging to either of the two branches. In this post I summarize a talk I gave at the Mesoamerican conference at CalState L.A. this past saturday, in which I gave my interpretation of the history of migrations that brought the Nahuas to their current locations from their ancestral homeland.<br />
<br />
My narrative is based on three avenues of evidence:<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li><b>Linguistic evidence. </b>By analyzing how the structure of shared linguistic innovations between dialects reflect historical relationships and splits, give us a way to understand how ancestral dialect groups moved, split and moved again. </li>
<li><b>Ethnohistorical evidence.</b> By analyzing accounts told by the Nahuas about their own past we can find clues to how they themselves understood the relaiton between groups of speakers and their historical and geographic relations.</li>
<li><b>Archeological evidence.</b> By analyzing material culture in different locations we can trace population movements and cultural innovations or changes. </li>
</ol>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There are several different views of where the Nahuan languages originated:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.albany.edu/pdlma/Nawa.pdf" target="_blank">Terrence Kaufman 2001</a> thinks the proto-Nahuan language must have been spoken somewhere North of the Huasteca region in Tamaulipas or San Luis Potosi before entereing the basin of Mexico where according to his interpretation they the Western group split off. His main argument for this location is what he sees as loanwords in proto-Nahuan from Wastek/Huastec Mayan (<i>Teenek</i>) and the Otomanguean language Pame. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1024519712257#page-1" target="_blank">Christensen and Beekman 2003</a>, rather see the homeland in the Bajio region of Zacatecas, Jalisco, Aguacalientes and Queretaro. This view they base on the fact tha they have archeologically documented a large population movement out of this region into central Mexico starting in about 500AD. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Other, less well supported suggestions for the location of the ancestral Proto-Nahuan speech community include the coast of Nayarit and even Durango/Sonora/Chihuahua. I follow Christensen and Beekman, both because I disagree with Kaufman regarding the Teenek influence in proto-Nahuan which I find negligible, and also because my own investigations have found more commonalities between Nahuan and Cora (<i>Naayerite</i>) and Huichol (<i>Wixarika</i>), suggesting to me a more westerly origin in contact with these languages. My interpretation of contact in Nahuan prehistory is thus more consonant with Christensen and Beekman than with Kaufman's account. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This then, using the three kinds of evidence and the Bajio as a place of origin, provides us with the following narrative: </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
Late Classic (500-600AD):</h3>
<div>
By the late classic Speakers of Eastern Nahuatl are entering Mesoamerica from the Bajio, drawn by the metropolis of Teotihuacan. They settle in a broad area across the central highlands from the Huastec region to Guererro. Possibly the Huastec and Guerrero branches already split from the other Eastern languages - or mor likely they formed a dialect continuum, which was only subsequently broken apart.</div>
<div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKnlDKWcdHFMLgSGtT_C5KXJU_s-Cm6GY_DxG8-jy-dQs70qb_4W5dgg6_7UrDq5pLsM4PzEx4OYD8SZdKU4Chqy1sKjx6S88wsi74QM8z8nYu8tldW0gikj3VW3HhOO_M5gzYn1xXjsw/s1600/Late+classic.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKnlDKWcdHFMLgSGtT_C5KXJU_s-Cm6GY_DxG8-jy-dQs70qb_4W5dgg6_7UrDq5pLsM4PzEx4OYD8SZdKU4Chqy1sKjx6S88wsi74QM8z8nYu8tldW0gikj3VW3HhOO_M5gzYn1xXjsw/s1600/Late+classic.JPG" height="425" width="640" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
Epiclassic (600-800AD):</h3>
<div>
Then at the fall of Teotihuacan around 600AD the demographic weight of Central Mexico shifts towards the new centers of Cholula/Cacaxtla, and Xochicalco. Here Eastern Nahuas come into contact with Maya speakers - Maya influence in the Cholula region in this period is well documented. Perhaps, including the ancestors of the Teenek Maya people, if we assume that they had not yet arrived in their current location (this is in contrast to Kaufman's view of Huastecs arriving in their current position much earlier than that, but consonant with <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=f5j_BwAAQBAJ&dq=Robertson+Huastec+migrations&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s" target="_blank">Robertson and Houston's</a> argument for a much later Huastec migration). Cholula is one of the centers from which the religion based around the worship of Quetzalcoatl spreads, southeast in to the Maya region and west into the highlands.</div>
<div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwRjspmOnuNRMwDsYkEuhbOzqWoBB-GgKus54059NFCYQ7SUxyVm-gJ1EDgBYtlwWPQalFEUX2OHC76y9P4Xw4xqI9dyhQxkNrMPM45JLjMJu_v07ZKBJeFJejLuiHOUXDEGK5-ZZgiWo/s1600/epiclassic+rise+of+cholula.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwRjspmOnuNRMwDsYkEuhbOzqWoBB-GgKus54059NFCYQ7SUxyVm-gJ1EDgBYtlwWPQalFEUX2OHC76y9P4Xw4xqI9dyhQxkNrMPM45JLjMJu_v07ZKBJeFJejLuiHOUXDEGK5-ZZgiWo/s1600/epiclassic+rise+of+cholula.JPG" height="426" width="640" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
Early Post-Classic (800-1000)</h3>
<div>
In this period Western Nahuas, who had stayed behind in contact with Naayerite, Wixarika and Otomi people move into Central Mexico settling at the site of Tula, Hidalgo. Previous scholars such as Una Canger 1988 and Terrence Kaufman have seen Tula as a center of dispersal of Eastern Nahuatl. I disagree, since I consider this date to be much too late, and because there are no Eastern varities spoken in the area of Tula, only Western ones and Otomi. Kaufman consider the Otomies to be a later intrusion in the area - I know of no convincing evidence for this. Rather I think that clearly the Western Nahuas were closely aligned with Otomies (e.g. the Acolhua of Texcoco were multiethnic Otomi-Nahuas even in the14th century), and probably Tula, was composed of both Otomi and Nahua populations. The many important calques between Otomi and Nahua described by <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1024519712257#page-1" target="_blank">David Wright Carr</a>, date to this period, and I believe a number of loans in both directions as well.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGqf5sgnY886E1zmMHn3A2UWTN7qGQA9lkJI7XNxQ-MQtccGjpLmkidV-FaKRFTruGvcJwk-iiyjp72kDXGJot9Hu2k6w35VljnmqZBjVpCqq7hCF7xQ-7pyuJDQjyP4nRXYZ6agDoYys/s1600/early+post+classic+rise+of+tula.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGqf5sgnY886E1zmMHn3A2UWTN7qGQA9lkJI7XNxQ-MQtccGjpLmkidV-FaKRFTruGvcJwk-iiyjp72kDXGJot9Hu2k6w35VljnmqZBjVpCqq7hCF7xQ-7pyuJDQjyP4nRXYZ6agDoYys/s1600/early+post+classic+rise+of+tula.JPG" height="432" width="640" /></a></div>
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<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Then after settling in Tula, the Western Nahuas who use /ahmo/ as their only negation word, move into the Central Mexico Valley and arrive in Cholula. Here they rout the Eastern Nahuas and Mayas who live there, and make them flee towards the gulf coast, towards the province of Olman-Xicallanco. This event is suggested by the account in the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca which tells us about the invasion of Tolteca-Chichimeca who rout the Olmeca-Xoiclanca from Cholula. It is also supported by the work of <a href="http://www.mimuseo.org/CeramicsChronologyCholula%5B1%5D.1996.pdf" target="_blank">Geoffrey McCafferty</a> whose excavations at Cholula have demonstrated warfare and a change in the material culture of the site around the time of the entry of the Eastern Nahuas (his Olmeca-Xicallanca) in the 7th century and at the time of the entry of the Western Nahuas (his Tolteca-Chichimeca) in the 9th century. My argument here is that the Olmeca-Xicallanca only came into existence when they left Cholula, for Olman-Xicallanco - that is they were named after the destination where they went after leaving Cholula, and not for their origin before arriving there. The arrival of the Western Nahuas split the Eastern Nahuas into three groups - the Isthmian group who settled the gulf coast of southern Veracruz and well into Tabasco, and the North-Eastern Huastec-Nahuas who settled in the Sierra Huasteca. The Sierra de Puebla varieties also split off at this time. The Isthmian and Sierra de Puebla groups subsequently changed /tl/ to /t/, developed new grammatical strategies for negation, and began dropping their /y/s wordinitially before /e/. Perhaps the fact that one of the Eastern group of Nahuas the Isthmians, changed their /tl/ to /t/ is due to Maya influence, since there is no /tl/ sound in Mayan, and Maya speakers must have found it hard to pronounce. The Isthmian Nahuas, also seem to have had the closest ties to the Chontal Mayas in the Tabasco region where both languages are still spoken in close contact.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Another group of Western Nahuas split from the central group going into Mexico state, backtracking towards the pacific coast and north into Michoacan, Colima, Jalisco, Nayarit and Durango. They became the Western Peiphery. They are characterized by a frequent if sporadic change of /tl/ to /l/, and the use of -lo for the plural subject, and a number of other innovations. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicPRjiBSy5Q9LnfUuIvASwZESlpnp7JCiEskG87FyJ2mZb0MpIMVO3d5-SaPVQF_i5CMMvsNE66DfYRk8ZHnHquFnIe2NUBKH-qV-0m_xdoYhATmgc1JvsEQJGczVc5CKwt6ZLfKv0tbs/s1600/nonoalca+arrive+in+cholula.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicPRjiBSy5Q9LnfUuIvASwZESlpnp7JCiEskG87FyJ2mZb0MpIMVO3d5-SaPVQF_i5CMMvsNE66DfYRk8ZHnHquFnIe2NUBKH-qV-0m_xdoYhATmgc1JvsEQJGczVc5CKwt6ZLfKv0tbs/s1600/nonoalca+arrive+in+cholula.JPG" height="430" width="640" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
Postclassic: 1000-1500AD</h3>
<div>
The Postclassic period sees the continued dominance of Western Nahuas centered in the Mexico Valley, the rise of Azcapotzalco, and later the triple alliance. During this period Western features extend into most of the historically Eastern varieties, creating a zone of diffusion in the central Nahua speaking area (from the sierra Zongolica across Southern Puebla into Morelos and Central Guerrero) where Western and Eastern traits mingle freely. With the rise of Tenochtitlan, Western influence reaches its maximum extent and, except for Pipil which has by then reached in El Salvador and Guatemala, no Eastern varieties escape being influenced by Western Nahuatl.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpYXwvqASLjYmH_9cuCcanlq1v3WgIpwiimrnPNunwlNYkjboCAyeqOwM9Hhb8H2vwgYZdXpVt5dnqs9jTJxkAdK-FRgAxzju9Q75WCt7k4jzFNfLcSiy2ycezv6Y_aNY4PUeDhdeEbcQ/s1600/aztec+horizon.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpYXwvqASLjYmH_9cuCcanlq1v3WgIpwiimrnPNunwlNYkjboCAyeqOwM9Hhb8H2vwgYZdXpVt5dnqs9jTJxkAdK-FRgAxzju9Q75WCt7k4jzFNfLcSiy2ycezv6Y_aNY4PUeDhdeEbcQ/s1600/aztec+horizon.JPG" height="436" width="640" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
Conclusions:</h3>
<div>
This narrative leads us to the current distribution with clearly demarcated Western and Eastern peripheries, and a large central diffusion area marked by dialect mixture and koineization (as suggested by <a href="http://www.historicas.unam.mx/publicaciones/revistas/nahuatl/pdf/ecn42/873.pdf" target="_blank">Canger 2011</a>). My narrative builds on and is largely consonant with most other studies, and mostly differ in the timing and in the identification of Tula as the center of the Western dispersal and Cholula as the center of Eastern dispersal. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Bibliography:<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">Canger, U. (1988). Nahuatl dialectology: A survey and some suggestions.</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">International Journal of American Linguistics</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">, 28-72.</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">Canger, U. (2011). El nauatl urbano de Tlatelolco/Tenochtitlan, resultado de convergencia entre dialectos: Con un esbozo brevísimo de la historia de los dialectos. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">Estudios de cultura Náhuatl</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">42</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">, 243-258.</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">Canger, U., & Dakin, K. (1985). An inconspicuous basic split in Nahuatl.</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">International journal of American linguistics</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">, 358-361.</span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">Kaufman, T. (2001). The history of the Nawa language group from the earliest times to the sixteenth century: Some initial results. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">Paper posted online at http://www. albany. edu/anthro/maldp/Nawa. pdf. University of Pittsburgh</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">Kaufman, T., & Justeson, J. (2009). Historical linguistics and pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">Ancient Mesoamerica</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">20</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">(02), 221-231.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">Robertson, J., & Houston, S. (2015). The Huastec Problem. in </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">Faust, K. A., & Richter, K. N. (Eds.). (2015). </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">The Huasteca: Culture, History, and Interregional Exchange</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">. University of Oklahoma Press.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">McCafferty, G. G. (1996). Reinterpreting the great pyramid of Cholula, Mexico.</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">Ancient Mesoamerica</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">7</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">(01), 1-17.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">McCafferty, G. G. (1996). The ceramics and chronology of Cholula, Mexico.</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">Ancient Mesoamerica</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">7</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">(02), 299-323.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">Carr, D. C. W. (2008). La Sociedad Prehispánica en las Lenguas Náhuatl y Otomí◊. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">Acta Universitaria</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">18</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16.1200008392334px;">(Esp), 15-23.</span><br />
<br />
<br />Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-48230151755171141372015-03-26T14:35:00.003-07:002015-03-26T14:46:59.581-07:00Eastern and Western Nahuatl Dialects<br />
As noted in previous blogs, I am working on analyzing and understanding Nahuan dialectology, dialectology of course being the study of patterns of regional variation.<br />
<br />
The way this works is that one looks at the linguistic traits that vary between how Nahuatl is spoken in different regions, and then classify the dialect of each region into the varieties that they are most similar to. Classification can be based simply on superficial similarity, grouping everything similar together, or it can be based on historical development, where you classify dialects together that seem to share a single origin because they display shared innovations.<br />
<br />
Another way is to classify by region. Here the tricky part is that the number of possible regions is almost infinite. One could potentially classify each of the many thousand local communities where the 1,5 million Nahuatl speakers live each as a separate dialect. Because every local community has certain ways of speaking that set them off from their neighbors. Dialect areas then are areas regions where certain traits a more frequent than in other regions, with the caveat that not every dialect in the area necessarily has all of the features characteristic of the area were it is spoken, and some dialects in other regions may have them too.<br />
<br />
In the literature on Nahuatl dialectology the basic division is both regional and historical. It divides all the Nahuan languages into two basic groups: The Eastern and the Western dialects. This grouping was first proposed by Una Canger and Karen Dakin in 1985. They had realized that some dialects systematically had the vowel /i/ in certain words where other dialects had /e/. They also noted that all of the words where this correspondence was found corresponded to words that had oeiginally had the vowel *u in Proto-Uto-Aztecan (PUA). The words they focused on were <i>tesi/tisi</i> "to grind" (from PUA *tusu), <i>sentli/sintli</i> "corn" (from PUA *sunu), <i>iste/isti</i> "fingernail" (from PUA *sutu) and <i>ihte/ihti</i> "stomach" (which Daking and Canger reconstruct as coming from PUA *<i>patu</i>, I am personally a little dubious of this form). The i forms were generally found in the dialects in the extreme eastern range of the area where Nahuatl is spoken, and the e forms were generally found in the western extreme.<br />
<br />
Later Dakin (2000) and Canger (1988) each added some new traits to each of the two areas. Canger noted that in the Western area, the prefix o- is used to mark the past tense, and in the Eastern area it is absent, and that Eastern dialects tend to put the adverb ok after the predicate it modifies whereas in the West it precedes it. Dakin noted that the Western dialects tend to have ye- in a number of forms where the Eastern dialects have e- (e.g. <i>yetl/etl</i> (bean), <i>yestli/estli </i>(blood), <i>yeyi/eyi</i> (three) and <i>yepatl/epatl</i> "skunk"). Dakin saw that each of these words originally began with *p in PUA, and she surmised that the *p had changed into /y/ in the West but had disappeared entirely in the East.<br />
<br />
In a <a href="https://www.academia.edu/7509986/The_East-West_split_in_Nahuan_Dialectology_Reviewing_the_Evidence_and_Consolidating_the_Grouping" target="_blank">recent paper of my own</a> I argue that the two dialect areas also differ in the way that they negate sentences. Western dialects all use the adverb ahmo or ammo as the negator in all sentences. But in Eastern Nahuatl other words are used, either instead of ahmo or in addition to ammo. For example in the Huasteca region the negator is the prefix <i>ax</i>-, in the Puebla Highlands it is <i>kanah</i>, in Guerrero it is ka, and in the isthmus it is <i>aya</i>', <i>ate</i>, the prefix <i>ah</i>- or in Tabasco the word <i>até </i>and in El Salvador <i>nite</i>, <i>inte </i>ot <i>tesu. </i>In many Eastern varieties there are more than one negator and the use depends on the mood of the clause, one may be used for imperatives, subjunctives and conditionals and another for realis/indicative sentences for example.<br />
<br />
The map below shows the locations of Eastern (<span style="color: red;">red</span>) and Western (<span style="color: blue;">blue</span>) dialects. It also includes the extinct Pochutec language which seems to have split from proto-Nahuan before the split between Eastern and Western varieties. I have colored the varieties of Central Guerrero <span style="color: purple;">purple</span>, that is because they seem to me to be conservative sharing few of the innovations of the other areas, and possibly have split also very early perhaps before the East-West split. (Note also that the varieties in Chiapas went extinct in the early 20th century, and that there are very few speakers in Jalisco).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv-rs9rttjuPYNRu_itHkKq60FZZVpyzFLuw8NAke7uKKahWnWxc1Y-mXhY75G08FKQFGxqrUZbZmjmi26T93C4KkizuK0AADOSX13cheGoeg8LfN_rUMU8X2Sk9emLQ1kT5FklebJ9As/s1600/Nahuatl+east+west+current+locations+copy.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv-rs9rttjuPYNRu_itHkKq60FZZVpyzFLuw8NAke7uKKahWnWxc1Y-mXhY75G08FKQFGxqrUZbZmjmi26T93C4KkizuK0AADOSX13cheGoeg8LfN_rUMU8X2Sk9emLQ1kT5FklebJ9As/s1600/Nahuatl+east+west+current+locations+copy.png" height="348" width="640" /></a></div>
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<h4>
"Classical" and Central Nahuatl are mixed dialects!</h4>
So what about "Classical Nahuatl". Well first of all I don't think that is a very good name for the colonial Nahuatl that we know from so many sources. I think it is better to call it colonial Nahuatl. The best known variety of colonial Nahuatl is the one from Mexico City, based on the dialect of Tetzcoco. Canger (<a href="http://www.historicas.unam.mx/publicaciones/revistas/nahuatl/pdf/ecn42/873.pdf" target="_blank">2011</a>) has argued very convincingly that this dialect which she calls Urban Nauatl, was a mixture of Eastern and Western varieties, that arose as people form different dialect areas mingled in the great city of Tenochtitlan.<br />
<br />
Definitely many of the Central varieties seem to have traits from both Eastern and Wstern branches, and it is sometimes difficult to classify them. This is probably because the Eastern varieties must have been in the area longest and Western dialects then arrived later imposing their prestige language on the earlier speakers of Eastern Nahuatl. This would mean that many of the Central dialects (e.g. in Puebla, Morelos, Zongolica) are Western dialects with an Eastern substrate.<br />
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<br />
<h4>
Works cited:</h4>
*Canger, Una. 1988. “<a href="http://alanrking.info/CAN-dialectology.php" target="_blank">Nahuatl Dialectology: A Survey and Some Suggestions</a>” International Journal of
American Linguistics 54:28-73.<br />
*Canger, Una. 1988b [1978]. Subgrupos de los dialectos Nahuas. In Smoke and Mist, Mesoamerican
Studies in memory of Thelma Sullivan. Kathryn Josserand & Karen Dakin (eds.) B.A.R.
International Series 402.<br />
*Canger, Una. 2011. "<a href="http://www.historicas.unam.mx/publicaciones/revistas/nahuatl/pdf/ecn42/873.pdf" target="_blank">El nauatl urbano de Tlatelolco/Tenochtitlan, resultado de convergencia entredialectos, con un esbozo brevísimo de la historia de los dialectos</a>". Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl
(Mexico: UNAM): 243–258.<br />
*Canger, Una and Karen Dakin. 1985. <a href="http://alanrking.info/DAK-inconspicuous.php" target="_blank">An inconspicuous basic split in Nahuatl.</a> International Journal of
American Linguistics 51: 358–361.<br />
*Dakin, Karen. 2000. Proto-Uto-Aztecan *p and the e/ye isogloss in Nahuatl Dialectology. In UtoAztecan:
Structural, Temporal, and Geographic Perspectives. Eugene Casad & Thomas Willett
(eds.) Hermosillo, Mexico: University of Sonora. pp. 213-19Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2535926528061546990.post-23281515312179283712015-02-20T13:35:00.000-08:002015-03-26T16:45:59.935-07:00Tabasco Nawat: A *not* extinct Nahuan variety<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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According to <span lang="da-DK">T</span>he
<a href="https://www.ethnologue.com/language/nhc" target="_blank">Ethnologue</a>, the world's largest catalogue of languages and dialects,
the Nahuatl language of Tabasco is extinct - it no longer has any
living speakers. [UPDATE: <i>As of today 2/22/2015, two days after I posted this blog, Ethnologue has updated their listing of Tabasco Nahuatl, no longer categorizing it as extinct, and noting a population of 30</i>.]</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmkxVWKCmAhb2KBa2_sSdKolkGGZW9AXHbP7QyaI76aoRvLtvNb3W2q1hjxJX7wwCr_0kB5R3HUgf-a2tcOaR3BptCur9h4R1jae2yNNqA1Ub1MBJ1EiJ5xAScESVrKKG7AbXU9smDgiQ/s1600/Comalcalco.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmkxVWKCmAhb2KBa2_sSdKolkGGZW9AXHbP7QyaI76aoRvLtvNb3W2q1hjxJX7wwCr_0kB5R3HUgf-a2tcOaR3BptCur9h4R1jae2yNNqA1Ub1MBJ1EiJ5xAScESVrKKG7AbXU9smDgiQ/s1600/Comalcalco.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Maya ruins of Comalcalco.<br />
Twenty minutes from where Nawat is still spoken.<br />
Maya and Nawat has long coexisted in Tabasco, and also Ayapa Zoque<br />
is spoken within a ten minute drive. <br />
Fermin's neighbor in fact speaks Chontal Maya.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This is something that would probably
concern <span lang="da-DK">Fermín</span> Cruz <span lang="da-DK">Á</span>lvarez
and some 30-40 of his neighbors and family members in his community
in the municipality of Comalcalco, Tabasco, since this is the
language they grew up speaking. It is also the language that <span lang="da-DK">Fermín</span>
has spent his free time trying to promote the past 7 years. He has
been teaching the language to youths and adults, and with the help of
several linguists he wrote and published a small dictionary through
CDI (<span lang="da-DK">Comisión</span> del Desarrollo de los
Pueblos <span lang="da-DK">Indígenas</span>).
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
So the Tabasco Nahuatl
language is not extinct. It does have native speakers, although there
are very few of them, and the language is in imminent risk of
disappearing unless someone assists Fermín and the community. His
efforts to revive his language are hampered by the fact that he has
to work, cultivating cacao, black pepper and fish to sustain his
family, and that he receives little or no remuneration for his work.
</div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-nlyvUdfPnjF1oMuvRHnW7OJE2OvcwYYdpUZsvwqTaHsyBzuryJqapDRMYWDsqBuWXXhec4AILDiDQL0JI412Bx1YGGAfu5Wb4oBdtq4TNfOp6YkeRCdMXABsPYVJBHcB6NnRYCPsGZ4/s1600/P1040053.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-nlyvUdfPnjF1oMuvRHnW7OJE2OvcwYYdpUZsvwqTaHsyBzuryJqapDRMYWDsqBuWXXhec4AILDiDQL0JI412Bx1YGGAfu5Wb4oBdtq4TNfOp6YkeRCdMXABsPYVJBHcB6NnRYCPsGZ4/s1600/P1040053.JPG" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fermin Cruz with his daughter, <br />
who already knows the numbers<br />
up to ten in Tabasco Nawat</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I visited Fermin in the summer of 2014, and the rest of this blog post
is dedicated to giving a brief sketch of Tabasco Nawat, and to argue
that this is an imminently interesting and important variety of Nawat
that really deserves support and recognition. And if you read all the way to the end, you will get a chance to listen to what the language sounds like and read a small sample text of Fermin telling about how to make cacao.<br />
<br /></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>Some Background:</b></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Nahua people have a long
history in the south-east of Mexico. It probably arrived in Tabasco
sometime before 800 AD, as Nahua speakers migrated south from Central
Mexico along the gulf coast, through Chiapas, and Guatemala and into
Central America. At the time of the Spanish invasion, Nahuan
languages were spoken all along the gulf coast of Veracruz and into
Tabasco, where the language coexisted with Mixe-Zoquean and Mayan
languages. The municipality of Comalcalco, Tabasco is the location
of an important classical period Mayan archaeological site, also
named Comalcalco, which was probably built by the Chontal maya people
who still inhabit the area. The Ayapa Zoque language, which has
become famous because of a media hyped story about two of its last
fluent speakers, is spoken less than <span lang="en-US">fifteen</span>
minutes from Fermín<span lang="en-US">'s house by car. Tabasco has
always been an important area in Mesoamerica – it was here that the
Olmec culture flourished in the pre-classic period, and in the
classic and post-classic periods it was an important site of trade,
because of the abundance of Cacao and other tropical luxury goods.
Comalcalco is itself a Nahuatl name, meaning “In the house of
comales”, the </span><span lang="en-US"><i>comal</i></span><span lang="en-US">
being the round ceramic griddle used by many Mesoamericans for baking
tortillas on. </span>
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b>Tabasco Nawat:</b></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="en-US">The
small family of Nahuan languages has two main branches: The Western
branch includes most of the dialects spoken in the Center of Mexico
and on the Pacfific coast in Michoacan and in Durango, and
historically in Jalisco, Zacatecas and Colima. The Eastern branch
includes the Huastecan dialects spoken in north-eastern Mexico, and
the dialects of central Puebla, and Southern Veracruz, as well as the
Pipil Nawat language spoken in El Salvador – and many varieties
that are no longer spoken such as those of Chiapas and Guatemala. The
Tabasco variety belongs to the Eastern branch. Some of the
characteristics of the Eastern branch is that they use the pronouns
neha/naha ”I”, teha/taha “you” and yeha/yaha “he/she”.
They also do not use the word “ahmo” as the only negation word,
and most Eastern varieties do not use ahmo at all (Pharao Hansen
2014). And they are also characterized by having the vowel /i/ in a
number of words where Western Nahuan has /e/ (Canger & Dakin
1985), and by only using the plural morpheme -</span><span lang="en-US"><i>meh</i></span><span lang="en-US">
or -</span><span lang="en-US"><i>met</i></span><span lang="en-US">
and not the of the morpheme -</span><span lang="en-US"><i>tin</i></span><span lang="en-US">
which is used in most Western varieties. Tabasco Nawat, along with
the Nahuan languages of Central Puebla, Southern Veracruz, and the
Pipil Nawat language of El Salvador also do not use the tl-sound
which is such a famous characteristic of the so-called Classical
Nahuatl language and most of the Nahuan languages spoken in the
Center of Mexico, but instead have changed all their previous tl's to
t. That is why I write </span><span lang="en-US"><b>Tabasco Nawat</b></span><span lang="en-US">
and not </span><strike><span lang="en-US">Tabasco Nawatl</span></strike><span lang="en-US">.
This is not a feature shared by all the Eastern varieties, as for
example Huastecan Nahuatl still has the /tl/ sound. </span>
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="en-US">In
terms of phonology, apart from the lack of /tl/ another interesting
feature is that Tabasco Nawat has five vowel qualities /i, e, a, o,
u/. Most other Nahuan languages have only four vowel qualities, as
they do not have the vowel /u/ or if they have /u/ then they don't
have o. But Tabasco Nawat has both. This is because it has not
changed all its o's to /u/, but only some of them following a rule
that I have not yet been able to fully work out. It seems that
particularly long /o:/'s have become /u/. The language has not
changed its final stop consonants /t/ and /k/ to glottal stops as has
happened in the nearby Nahuan languages of southern Veracruz, and it
has /h/ where “Classical Nahuatl” has the saltillo. It also
voices the velar stop /k/ to /g/ both between vowels and even
frequently at the beginning of words. Tabasco Nawat also has the
sound /f/ corresponding to the consonant cluster /hw/ in other
dialects. For example the word “feather” which in some other
dialects is /</span><span lang="en-US"><i>ihwitl</i></span><span lang="en-US">/
in Tabasco Nawat is /</span><span lang="en-US"><i>ifit</i></span><span lang="en-US">/
(this is not uncommon in other varieties either, and is found both in
Morelos and Zongolica).</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="en-US">Interestingly
Tabasco Nawat also has a morphophonological process that turns /w/
into /n/ whenever it appears at the end of a word. For example the
past tense of the verb /</span><span lang="en-US"><i>chowa</i></span><span lang="en-US">/
“to do” is [</span><span lang="en-US"><i>ogichin</i></span><span lang="en-US">]
“he did it” (also note that the vowel varies, the /w/ having
colored the /i/ to [o], but since the n does not color the preceding
vowel the past form retains the vowel /i/. This strongly suggests
that the rule turning /w#/ to /n#/ is old, or at least older than the
change of /i/ to /o/). And when nouns take the possessive suffix that
is /w/ in most other dialects here it is /-n/, for example “my
wife” is /</span><span lang="en-US"><i>no-soa-n</i></span><span lang="en-US">/,
and “my name” is /</span><span lang="en-US"><i>no-tu:ga-n</i></span><span lang="en-US">/.
This morpho-phonological rule is shared with the dialects of Morelos
and (some of) the dialects of the Zongolica region in Veracruz. It is
kind of weird that this would be shared between these two areas, that
are otherwise both linguistically and geographically quite far
removed, and changing /w/ to /n/ is not so common in the languages of
the world that one would expect it to appear independently (changes
such as the voicing of [k] to [g] and the fusion of [hw] to [f] are
much more common changes, and very likely to occur independently of
each other in different varieties).</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
But
the really interesting differences between Tabasco Nawat and other
varieties are in the grammar of the language – both in the areas of
morphology and syntax.
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span lang="en-US">One
really interesting aspect, is how plural subjects are marked. In most
Nahuan languages plural subjects are marked on verbs using a suffix
/-h/ or /</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span lang="en-US">Ɂ</span></span><span lang="en-US">/.
But this is not the case in Tabasco Nawat. Here plural subject is unmarked for the third person, but marked with -lo for the first person, e.g. ti-k-pia-lo "we are guarding it", but ti-k-pia "you are guarding it". </span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The language also doesnt have a future tense with the suffix -s as in most other varieties, rather future is constructed with the suffix -<i>tiin </i>which in other varieties means "to be going to do X". <span lang="en-US">Negation is expressed with the word <i>at</i></span><i>é. </i>And the progressive present is expressed periphrastically with the verb <i>nemi </i>which is also used as a general copula.</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Below are some examples of phrases in Tabasco Nawat demonstrating most of these interesting features:</div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>chinechtemoli
in nokwach porkeh nimopatatiin</i></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">find
me my clothes because I am going to change</span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>niyah
nitamatiin chinechtemoli notegun iwan se morral</i></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">I
am going fishing find me my fishing rod and a morral</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>nehpa
nemi one tagat yun nigittak yalla</i></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">there is the man I saw
yesterday</span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>one
tagat yun wallahka yahkiya </i></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">the man who came has already left</span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>nigan
nemi takwali yun mokwatiin </i></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">here is the food that were going to
eat</span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>iwa:n
one tagat yun yahkiya mokwepatiin </i></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">the man who has left will come
back</span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>ka
niga tigochitigiweh</i></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">where will we sleep?</span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Nigan
gan tigochiskiah</i></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">this is where we were going to sleep</span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>onehpa
gan mottak one taagat</i></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">this is where we saw that man</span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>nigan
gan tigochkeh yallah</i></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">this is where we slept yesterday</span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>yallah
tichuugakkeh iwan ami nemilo welia</i></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">yesterday we cried, but today we are well</span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>até
tun kichin</i></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">he
didnt do anything</span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>tikpialo</i></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">we're
taking care of it</span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>iiyomexti
nemi chuuga</i></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">the
two of them are crying</span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>geeski
yahwan nemiya?</i></span></div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div lang="da-DK" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">how
many people were there?</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<h3 style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: large;">How Cacao is Made</span></h3>
<div>
<div style="color: #666666; font-family: 'PT Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFbs6Hod6wvLwYlqzoYDrdemJW-JhY2DUv8mwJcIw0osK_8G9HWE-TmEVEyp34yNVOetDyfgaspT5s7D4svQ9n7t_HPyXW8uhzRoJe6S2L4P-d40v_7TcayP8vIi0-IuNxtmtH3uc42h0/s1600/P1040041.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFbs6Hod6wvLwYlqzoYDrdemJW-JhY2DUv8mwJcIw0osK_8G9HWE-TmEVEyp34yNVOetDyfgaspT5s7D4svQ9n7t_HPyXW8uhzRoJe6S2L4P-d40v_7TcayP8vIi0-IuNxtmtH3uc42h0/s1600/P1040041.JPG" height="320" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Cacao pod rotting on the tree: <br />
Fermin and many other Cacao producers <br />
are plagued by pests, such as disease and squirrels.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Fermin Cruz Alvarez, produces cacao as do many people in Tabasco, and here is a small text in which he explains in Nawat how it is done. The recording can be heard here: <a href="https://soundcloud.com/magnusph/gagawat-tabasco-nawat" target="_blank">gagawat.mp3</a><br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>Bueno pues nah nechittago nin noknin
nigan nugal, ge wallah pan dinamarca iiwan negi tahtani tunu tikmati
pan noaltepet pal nologar. Iiwan pos ne ginegi ma nigili lo que gen
motuga gagawat, gen mochowa producir, gen mowaatza, iiwan cuando nemi,
genon mochowa. </i>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Well, I, this friend has come to see me
here in my house, he comes from Denmark and wants to ask what we know
here in my community, in my place. And well he wants me to tell him
how we plant cacao and how it is made to produce, and how it is dried
and when it is there how we do with it.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>Bueno pues gagawat cuando motuuga,
primero motuuga kwawit, kwachipili wan tzopankilit iwan ya despues de
ume o eyi xiwit cuando wefeya kwawit, motuuga gagawat, gagawat cuando
peewa taagi de eyi xiwit nawi xiwit peewa xuchowi iwan ya despues
giisa ixuchigagawat op unpewa giisa imasorka iwan opun peewa tagit ya
despues gichowa itaagilo. </i>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Well then, cacao, when it is planted,
first the tree is planted, the kwachipili and tzopankilit, and then
after two or three years when the tree grows, the cacao is planted.
Then when the cacao begins giving fruit at three or four years it
starts flowering and then afterwards the cacao bloom comes out, and
the cob starts coming out and it begins to give fruit, and then it
makes its fruit.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>Bueno gagawat despues de seligagawat
wehkaawa eyi meztli cuando wehweiya despues yoksi, despues de yoksi
motegi, motegit gagawat cuando yoksika, despues motapana iiwan luego
mowaatza, mowaatza pan toonatin, iiwan luego ya de wahki pos
monaamaga. </i>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Well, the cacao, then the tender cacao
lasts three months and when it grows then it ripens, after it is
ripe it is cut, the cacao is cut when it has ripened, then it is
cracked open and then it dries, it dries in the sun, and then after
it is dry, well it is sold.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>Mowaatza an despues monaamaga,
despues de monaamaga, despues gigoowa, tataxtawilia a veces. A wehka
teemagaya miyak gagawat, ahorita ne ain tiempo ke nemi, nemi
enfermedad pal [onemoliasis]. An ya despues giiski motohtzin </i>
<br />
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It is dried and then it is sold, after
it is sold, they buy it, sometimes they pay it. Long ago it gave a
lot of cacao, but now in these times that are here, there is disease
[?]. And then afterwards the squirrel came out.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>Motohtzin gigwa gagawat, gigwa
seligagawat, despues yoksi entero […] produccion de gagawat porke
tami gigwa, iiwan aparte de aparte de enfermedad tamik migi, iiwan
gigwa motohtzin, yiga yo gagawat até nemi, ate teemaga: Ume plaga nemi
de enfermedad pal gogolisti iiwan aparte pal motohtzin gitamiya.</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
The squirrel eats the cacao, it eats
the tender cacao, after it ripens the production of cacao [is lost],
because it finishes eating it. So apart it finishes dying from the
disease, and then the squirrels ear it. Now the cacao isnt there, it
doesnt give anything, there are two pests, the disease and then apart
the squirrels finishes it off. </div>
Magnus Pharao Hansenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15904103274303918066noreply@blogger.com13