Grammar of the Mexican Language, with an Explanation of Its Adverbs, and: Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples and Texts (review)

To those who work with Nahuatl, James Lockhart is well known both for his translations of colonial documents in that language and as the mentor for a number of younger historians who, under Lockhart, learned to read documents written in Nahuatl and to value their use as well as that of similar sources in other indigenous languages as tools for understanding the societies and cultures in which they were produced. The two books under review are more the result of Lockhart's vocation as a Nahuatl teacher than as a historian. As a method, he has long used other, earlier editions of Carochi's Grammar, along with a series of lessons he has developed, the latter the basis for Nahuatl as Written. Due to this, a large portion of the material that Lockhart has included in the notes to his edition of Carochi is not philological in nature but, rather, his own pedagogical comments to the reader intended to supplement the information in Nahuatl as Written. The result is that Lockhart's explanatory additions are split between the two books. For that reason, the first part of this review will be limited to the Grammar and Lockhart's strictly philological editing of it, while the second part will consider Nahuatl as Written and the more didactic notes from the Grammar.

The first book is an edited translation of one of the best colonial grammars of the language, that of Horacio Carochi, first published in 1645. The edition enriches existing Nahuatl sources for several reasons. It makes Carochi's work accessible in English for the first time, and as a side benefit, on facing pages it provides an excellent edition of the original Spanish version. The book is very clearly reproduced, and Lockhart has taken much care to provide a faithful original.

During the last several years, there has been a more positive reappraisal of the contributions of the early colonial grammarians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, initially dismissed by structural linguists as distorted and inadequate because they were too influenced by Latin and Greek grammars, and Carochi's grammar has come to be highly praised. It gives a very perceptive description of the language that the colonial Nahuatl used in the area of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, and Lockhart (xi) notes especially Carochi's treatment of particles and adverbs. The grammar is valued also for a number of other reasons, not the least of which are the precise insights expressed by Carochi about the details of the structure of the language, and many of his observations are repeated in subsequent colonial grammars as well as, Lockhart points out, in the work of modern scholars, especially beginning with Andrews (1975), Launey (1979), Canger et al. (1976), Karttunen (1983), and others. In some cases, Carochi may have drawn his own description from grammars that preceded his, but even so, the phrasing reflects a deep appreciation for particular aspects of the language. For example, Carochi notes the fact that only animate nouns are pluralized and adds:

Nor do nouns for inanimate things have plurals; if there are any which do they are rare, and perhaps it was because they thought they were animate, like the heavens, the stars, etc. When these nouns for inanimate things refer metaphorically to persons, they too have a plural, as if it should be said that the saints are torches or lights.

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Carochi also notes differences between male and female speech:

Second, note that...