The Phonology of -ɩya and -owa

Verbs in Tetelcingo Aztec

(Mösiehuali, or Tetelcingo Nahuatl)

by David Tuggy
(1979, ms)

History of the document
Table of contents

For optimal viewing of this page, use a good Unicode font.

History of the document

This manuscript was an attempt to document a large part of what I had learned about the way the verbal and phonological systems of Mösiehuali came together. It was brought to its current state (apart from some notes and comments scribbled in later) in 1979, while I was in my first year of study in the linguistics department at UC San Diego. (It was begun before I went to UCSD, perhaps in 1977 or 1978.)

The title is a bit of a misnomer: it might have better been The Phonology of the Tetelcingo Aztec Verb, or something of the sort. The -iya and -owa verbs are the extremely common Class IIIɩ and IIIo, respectively, along with the very much smaller Class IIɩya and Class IIowa. But in order to have the proper basis from which to thoroughly discuss the analyses of those verbs it was necessary to give very extensive, almost exhaustive, coverage of all the other major verb classes as well. Only irregular verbs (and not all of them, by any means) are omitted from the discussion, and, almost by definition, their alternations tend to be non-phonologically motivated, or, at least, unrelated to those of the other verbs.

This was about the last major writing project I ever undertook without the aid of a computer. (I shudder at the thought, and at the remembrance.) There are many roughnesses in the presentation which can be blamed on that fact. Others, of course, must be blamed even more directly on the author. The breezy, stream-of-consciousness type of writing may be offensive to some—my own feeling is that reorganizing the presentation might have made the material a good deal more accessible. The difficulties caused by the physical state of the manuscript, with its yellowed, faded and dog-eared paper, patchy typing, hand-added iotas and turned-c's and other occasional characters, overstruck asterisks for haceks (wedges), scribbled notes and corrections, whiteout liberally applied and overwritten, and pages pasted together from three or four pieces of paper, are considerable. Page 1 was missing entirely. Publishing scans from such a manuscript is indeed electronic publishing at its roughest and crudest.

I have hesitated to edit and update this manuscript, however, for several reasons. The biggest one, which must be blamed for most of the inconveniences of this mode of publication, is simply the great deal of work it would take, and of time which I do not have available, to digitize the manuscript. The same reason holds me back from any revision of it. But beyond that, I have forgotten far too much of what I once knew about Mösiehuali, so much so that much of the value of the manuscript, for me and for others, would be compromised by my now making changes. I can no longer speak with the same authenticity and authority about the language as I could then. And, as C. S. Lewis says (in the preface to The Weight of Glory), “There comes a time (and it need not always be a long one) when a composition belongs so definitely to the past that the author himself cannot alter it much without the feeling that he is producing a kind of forgery.” Since my laziness and disinclination to produce such a forgery have coincided, and given the low demand I expect for this early masterpiece, I have only scanned what I had in my file.

To ensure downloadability, I have reduced the resolution of the scans, which also reduces their readability significantly. If anyone wants the high-resolution versions, please write me at david_tuggy@sil.org and we will see what we can work out.

With these caveats and apologies, I offer the manuscript for those who are really interested because:

It contains a lot of very beautiful Mösiehuali data available nowhere else if one is not to go do fieldwork on the language. Even if one were to do so, some of the data have probably changed significantly in the generation since these were gathered.
It is a more complete description and discussion of the Mösiehuali verb classes, the reasons for their classification, and the complications entailed by the process, than has been published elsewhere. I personally expect most will find it more comprehensible than Brewer (1969), for instance.
It was a serious attempt to apply a good and useful version of Generative phonology (Rich Rhodes’ mid-1970’s version) exhaustively to a complex syntactico-phonological system, and the ultimate failure of that theoretical model to neatly contain the data is grist for further phonological theorizing. Any phonological theory will either have to (1) account more neatly for what fit at best messily in this account, or (2) make the messiness seem more natural. (My own thinking has developed mostly in the direction of #2.)
The manuscript is referenced in a few of my publications, and it might be useful to some in that connection.

—David Tuggy
June, 2003

Table of Contents The headings are only numbered in the text: the titles date from 2003, not 1979.
Contents
1. Class I verbs	.................................................	1
1.1 Class Ia verbs; Deactivation	................................................	1
1.2 tl-Delateralization	................................................	2
1.3 Palatalization	................................................	2
1.4 Class Iɩ verbs; Honorific Tensing	................................................	3, 4
2. Class IIa verbs	................................................	5
2.1 Palatalization updated	................................................	5
2.2 Preterite Stem Formation (PSF)	................................................	5
2.3 Final Resonant Deletion (FRD)	................................................	6
2.4 Spirantization	................................................	6
2.5 Nasal Assimilation	................................................	7
2.6 Dissimilation	................................................	7
2.7 p-Velarization	................................................	8
2.8 k^w-Delabialization	................................................	8
2.9 y-Assibilation	................................................	9
2.10 Strong Contraction	................................................	9
2.11 Squishing	................................................	9, 10
Summary chart of rules	................................................	11
3. Class IIɩ verbs	................................................	12
3.1 Previous rules on schedule	................................................	12
3.2 Nasal Assimilation again	................................................	12
3.3 Dissimilation again	................................................	12, 13
3.4 The verb stem matɩ; (Honorific) Tensing again	................................................	14, 15
3.5 The verb stem ayɩ	................................................	16
4. Class IIIɩ and Class IIIo	................................................	16
4.1 o-Changing I and II	................................................	17
4.2 -a ‘present’	................................................	18
4.3 ɩy/ɩh/ɩ/i and ow/oh/o/u(ō)	................................................	18
4.3.1 A basic final consonant?	................................................	18
4.3.2 Spirantization and y-Assibilation again	................................................	19, 20
4.3.3 Squishing revisited; Contraction	................................................	21
4.3.4 Contracting versus Spirantizing	................................................	22
4.4 The honorific forms	................................................	23
4.4.1 ‘He hon’: Contraction?	................................................	23
4.4.2 ‘You hon’: Semivowel Deletion	................................................	23
4.4.3 Metathesis? Probably not	................................................	24
4.4.4 What’s really happening: there’s a y there	................................................	25
4.4.4.1 Two pretend solutions	................................................	26
4.4.4.2 It’s not part of -a ‘present’	................................................	27
4.4.4.3 Deactivation revised	................................................	27, 28
5. Class IIowa	................................................	29
5.1 The verb stem powa	................................................	29
5.2 u-Laxing	................................................	30
6. Classes Iu and Ii	................................................	31
6.1 The applicative forms	................................................	32
6.2 Final Vowel Laxing?	................................................	32
6.3 Better: final semivowels	................................................	33, 34
6.4 -lo ‘honorific’	................................................	35
7. Summary, chart of rules	................................................	36
8. Class IV shoots holes in the analysis	................................................	37
8.1 Reminiscences of Class III	................................................	37
8.1.1 Problems with the analysis	................................................	38
8.1.2 More problems	................................................	38
8.1.2.1 -a ‘present’ on these verbs? Too abstract	................................................	39
8.1.2.2 Brute force	................................................	40
8.2 The honorific forms	................................................	41
8.3 ya ‘go’ and wāla ‘come’	................................................	42
9. Miscellaneous	................................................	43
9.1 Subjunctive Laxing	................................................	43
9.2 Idiosyncratic alternations	................................................	43
(Extraneous notes?)	................................................	44
Footnotes	................................................
1-2	................................................	i
2-4 (including feature matrices)	................................................	ii
(Feature matrix #2)	................................................	ii-b
4-5	................................................	iii
5-7	................................................	iv
7-10	................................................	v
10-11	................................................	vi
11-14	................................................	vii
14-17	................................................	viii
17-21	................................................	ix
21-27	................................................	x
28-32	................................................	xi
33	................................................	xii
34-35	................................................	xiii
36-38	................................................	xiv
39-40	................................................	xv
40-41	................................................	xvi
41-43	................................................	xvii
44-48	................................................	xviii
48a-52	................................................	xix
53-57	................................................	xx
58-61	................................................	xxi
61-62	................................................	xxii
63-65	................................................	xxiii
65-68	................................................	xxiv
68-69	................................................	xxv
69-74	................................................	xxvi
Extra: note 72	................................................	xxvi-b
75-77	................................................	xxvii
77-82	................................................	xxviii
83-86	................................................	xxix
87-91	................................................	xxx
91-93	................................................	xxxi
94-97	................................................	xxxii
98-100	................................................	xxxiii
100-101	................................................	xxxiv
102-104	................................................	xxxv
105-108	................................................	xxxvi
109	................................................	xxxvii
109-110	................................................	xxxviii
Extra notes 1 (old page xxvi, notes 106-107)	................................................	a
Extra notes 2 (old page xxvii, notes 108-109)	................................................	b

Appendices
Suffix order	................................................	A1
Rules in order	................................................	A2
Verb charts:	Ia, Iɩ, Iu	A3a
	Ii; IIa	A3b
	IIa	A4a
	IIɩ	A4b
	IIɩ, II-owa	A5a
	IIIo	A5b
	IIIo, IIIɩ	A6a
	IV	A6b
Verb paradigms:	................................................	A7a, b, c, d
More paradigms:	................................................	A8a, b

© 2003 David Tuggy
Derechos reservados. Puede reproducirse para fines no lucrativos siempre que no se altere en forma alguna.
All rights reserved. May be reproduced for nonprofit use so long as it is not modified in any way.

Return to the Mösiehuali main page
Return to David Tuggy's main page

The Phonology of -ɩya and -owa Verbs in Tetelcingo Aztec

(Mösiehuali, or Tetelcingo Nahuatl)

by David Tuggy (1979, ms)

History of the document

The Phonology of -ɩya and -owa

Verbs in Tetelcingo Aztec

by David Tuggy
(1979, ms)