Principal English Translation:
formerly; already; in the past; for a long time now
Alonso de Molina:
yeppa. de antes, o antes de agora. (aduerbio.)
Alonso de Molina, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana y mexicana y castellana, 1571, part 2, Nahuatl to Spanish, f. 35v. col. 2. Thanks to Joe Campbell for providing the transcription.
Frances Karttunen:
YĒPPA previously, some time ago / de antes, o antes de ahora (M) Of eleven attestations of this, only three have the vowel of the first syllable marked long. In the others it is unmarked, but the apparent relationship of YĒPPA and YĒHUA adds support for the vowel being long.
Frances Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 338–339.
Horacio Carochi / English:
yēppa -- Can refer to the oldness of something, e.g. Àmo quin āxcān nipēhua in ninococoa, ca yēppa nicocoxqui = I am not beginning now to be sick; being sick is a very old thing in me.
Horacio Carochi, S.J., Grammar of the Mexican Language with an Explanation of its Adverbs (1645), translated and edited with commentary by James Lockhart, UCLA Latin American Studies Volume 89 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 2001), 353.
Andrés de Olmos:
Yeppa, vel ycipa, antes, o el tiempo passado
Andrés de Olmos, Arte para aprender la lengua Mexicana, ed. Rémi Siméon, facsimile edition ed. Miguel León-Portilla (Guadalajara: Edmundo Aviña Levy, 1972), 186.
Lockhart’s Nahuatl as Written:
particle. formerly, before, always before; in Laso de la Vega, soon, expectedly, of negative occurrences. yēuh before, -pa. 242
James Lockhart, Nahuatl as Written: Lessons in Older Written Nahuatl, with Copious Examples and Texts (Stanford: Stanford University Press and UCLA Latin American Studies, 2001), 242.