Conventions of Polite Speech in Nahuatl

Resumen

In this article I will first describe honorific morphology in Nahuatl. Then I will discuss the principles of indirection and inversion in polite Nahuatl direct address. And finally I will suggest how polite inversion may be behind two splits, one morphological and the other lexical, which have led to ambiguities and thence to strategies of disambiguation.