Multi-dialectical Vocabulary  Nahuatl Morphemes 



A Message from R. Joe Campbell: 
  Nocnihuan, I assume that many people who "do" Nahuatl for an extended period 
  of time, mainly those who peek in the window from outside, do one or more of 
  the following: 
    wondered about the nature of the "building blocks" of the language (e.g., is 
    the basic morpheme "mimiloa" or "mimilli"?, what is the stem morpheme of 
    "tepitztic"?, etc.); 
    if "xicohtli" and "ohtli" are examples of absolutive nouns that end in 
    '-htli' (i.e., nouns whose stems end in /h/), what are all the others?; 
    how close was Swadesh with his "Los mil elementos..."?


  In the early 1970's I started keeping a checklist of the morphemes of Nahuatl 
  (as seen through the eyes of Fray Alonso de Molina). The first 300-400 
  morphemes were easy to identify, but the later ones were later for a reason -- 
  they were harder to resolve. I think that by early 1985 my best estimate of 
  the list stood at 1339. 
  Since a colleague of mine, Mary Clayton (also my wife), started her work on 
  the anonymous Trilingual Dictionary almost ten years ago, we have maintained 
  the morpheme index jointly. For some time we have wanted to be able to share 
  it with other people -- perhaps deriving some benefit from their difference in 
  point of view, but two factors made that impossible:
    too many private notes embedded in the data; and
    our additions had spoiled the regularity of the format, making it impossible 
    to extract information.


  However, my Nahuatl class at the University of Chicago this summer provided me 
  with the motivation to bite the bullet and do the programming and detailed 
  editing necessary to do simple extractions on the database. I am sending you 
  two provisional indexes (some information has temporarily fallen through the 
  cracks and is safely lodged there).
  The first one is an *inverse* sort, allowing quick perusal of morphemes with 
  similar endings. 
  The second one is a simple alphabetical sort. 
  The third one is a list of "cf's" [probable compound morphemes]. A recent 
  message on similarities in morpheme lists sent me back to the drawing board -- 
  I realized that some agreements with my colleague Tezozomoc's and other lists 
  might not show through because I had neglected to include notations in the 
  list on "cf's". cf's are apparent relationships between items on the list 
  where, for one reason or another (usually caution, in some cases, excessive 
  caution), no formal claim is being made about the relationship *yet*. Items 
  such as "a:calli" and "a:ltepe:tl" (obvious compounds of "a:tl") are separated 
  on the morpheme list for practical reasons. Their occurrence in words is so 
  frequent that indexing words under "a:tl", "calli", and "tepe:tl" would make a 
  less useful index for the user. 
  It goes without saying that suggestions and construction criticism are 
  welcome. On second thought, I guess it didn't... Xipahpaquican, Joe





        Inverse Sort 
        Alphabetical Listing 
        Probable Compounds 




  The owner of this page is J. F. Schwaller 



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