[Nahuat-l] (no subject)

[Martin Mangei]

Dear Joe and Galen,

After my holidy, there is a lot to answer. So I have picked out some of your statements and marked my comments with ****, as Joe did.


The group of people who don't understand how Andrews arrived at his conclusions is very large.
Most of us can remember the pressure to present *evidence* for linguistic descriptions; an elegant answer to a problem was not highly prized

****Two of the main problems I see with him are, that he often seems to confuse “looks like x” with “IS x” (for example, inelegantly forcing perfective meaning into simple progressive forms like qui-CHIUH-ti-cah) and that he (often) ignores the difference between diachronic and synchronic facts, for example when he analyses -ltia as ‘nonactive -l‘ plus ‘causative -tia‘. Of course the ltia-forms have no additional nonactive/passive meaning, but just causative meaning. Therefore, I don’t think that his analysis is appropriate, synchronically -ltia should be analysed as an allomorph of other causative markers, without any internal analysis.
But as there are other languages, in which causative forms seem to be historically related to passive/nonactive morphology, it’s probably reasonable to assume a historical connection between nonactive and causative forms – as proposed in this discussion.
The problem is, how passive/nonactive and causative morphology could be related, but Joe’s observation is an interesting hint.


So one might argue that you would not expect patientive nouns to have the specific object prefixes that occur in the causative form. However, it seems to me that in the context of a 
verbalized patientive noun, there would be no reason not to reincorporate specific object prefixes.

****I agree: Assuming that ltia-causatives are reanalysed noun+ti-a verbs, there is no reason why tla- could not be replaced by the (so called) specific object prefixes, as soon as such verbs were reanalysed as ‘normal’ transitive (causative) verbs.


I assume that one of the reasons for positing the two different forms is that in many cases the ostensibly patientive noun is not attested in other contexts. But even if many of these ostensibly patientive nouns are not attested outside of the verbal causative form, couldn't the 
formation of an otherwise unattested patientive noun be motivated by the "noun + ti-a" structure, in which the 'noun' is often an attested patientive form?

**** I don’t know, whether we can/should reconstruct (speculatively) EVERY patientive noun we need to rescue the theory. But I don’t think we have to: As we are (or would be) dealing with a verb formation resulting from reanalysis, comparable developments in other languages teach us, that we are more or less ‘forced’ (exaggerating only a LITTLE bit) to assume analogical transfer of that derivation to other verbs as well. As soon as -ltia is analysed as a causative marker, it can be used with (more or less) every verb  (possibly restricted by some morphological or other constraints). Of course such an interpretation makes sense and is realistic only, if there is a considerable number of ‘regular’ cases (Pat.N.-ti-a reanalysed as ‘Verb-(l)tia causative’) and not TOO many analogical cases...


It seems to me that claiming that causatives are derived by a process of deleting -o, -hua, -ohua, or -hualo is not a unified process.  Maybe someone can help us out.

**** I have a theory in mind, that (probably? perhaps?) could resolve that problem. I hope I can incorporate it into my dissertation… – if it will be realized at all.


"cua" does not have a patientive noun "cualli" which refers generically to food.  Although Andrews considers "cualli" and "xochicualli" to be derived from "cua", I think that, although this might be true historically, it is not relevant in describing the stage of Nahuatl that we call "classical".

**** If we assume that the -ltia causative does not only look like the Pat.N.+ti-a forms, but that it is (historically) the same form, it would have taken some time for this form to be reanalysed and to be transferred analogically to other verbs, that were not concerned at first. As matters stand in Classical Nahuatl, all this must have happened before that stage (e.g. chihualtia does not mean ‘provide s.o. with something made/a made thing/a thing’ but ‘cause/make s.o. make/do s.th.’ – apart from the fact, that the pat.n. would be TLAchihualli or tlachiuhtli in Classical Nahuatl). That means, reanalysis would have taken place BEFORE Classical Nahuatl, and the forms and pat.nouns affected by that process were not the forms and pat.nouns of ‘Classical’ Nahuatl but those of an older stage of the language.
But of  course, this doesn’t tell anything about the etymology of ‘cualli”.
And in the end, everything depends on our interpretation of the (historical and synchronic) relationship 'Pat.N.+ti-a'  :  'Verb+ltia'.


Best regards,
Martin.

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