Attributives

We have already had occasion to see (Lesson 12) that in Nahuatl there are not any adjectives properly speaking, just nouns derived from verb forms that tend to be translated by adjectives in languages such as English. Conversely, the capacity to modify nouns does not constitute a specific category of words in Nahuatl, because a noun can be modified by an “adjective,” another noun, a locative, or (as we will see later) any verbal form. In English, an adjective that directly modifies a noun is placed in front of it (e.g., ‘the big dog…’). We will call any Nahuatl form that modifies a noun in this way an attributive. Here we will deal with nouns with an adjectival sense in English (12.2), quasi-adjectives derived from verbs (12.4–6), possessive nouns (11.7), and locatives used adjectivally.

The attributive can precede or follow its noun. The order is (determiner)-attributive-noun or (determiner)-noun-attributive (“determiner” means a form like in or inin, inon, or cē, ōme, miyac etc.). This order is obviously much freer than in English; it is difficult to give general principles for the placement of attributives, and the most that can be said is that the following forms always appear before their noun:

• cualli, yēctli ‘good’: cualli tlācatl ‘good person’

• quantifiers, including huēyi

• huēhuê ‘old’: in huēhuê Motēuczōma ‘Moctezuma the Elder’

• locatives: in Caxtillān tlaīlli ‘wine (drink from Castile)’, in huècapan tlālli ‘the high country, uplands’; in nechca tetl ‘the stone (located) there’; in ilhuicac āhuiyacāyōtl ‘the fragrance in heaven, heavenly fragrance’