Lockhart notes "that -axca labels an item as special to a given person or persons rather than others is clear, but that the concept had all the connotations of property in European languages is hard to demonstrate; indeed it is unlikely."
James Lockhart, The Nahuas after the Conquest: A Social and Cultural History of the Indians of Central Mexico, Sixteenth through Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), 153.
atle y(n)axcatzi(n) atle itlatquitzi = they do not have property (Sahagún, sixteenth century, Mexico City)
Susanne Klaus, Uprooted Christianity: The Preaching of the Christian Doctrine in Mexico, Based on Franciscan Sermons of the 16th Century Written in Nahuatl (Bonn: Bonner Amerikanistische Studien e. V. c/o Seminar für Völkerkunde, Universität Bonn, 1999), 243.
ca huel taxcatzin = it is really (or fully) our property
ca huel naxca = it is really my property
huel naxca y notlatqui = it is really my property, my possession
Rebecca Horn, Postconquest Coyoacan: Nahua-Spanish Relations in Central Mexico, 1519–1650 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 126.
axcatia = to make something someone's property; can also be used to "make something your own property, to appropriate"
Rebecca Horn's notecards from Nahuatl study sessions with James Lockhart in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
noaxca = my possessions
ymaxca = their possessions
yn tlalticpac naxca, or tlalticpac naxcan = my earthly goods,
my worldly possessions
naxca yn notlatqui = my thing, my possession
maxca yn motlatqui = your thing, your possession
maxcatia = to make it the possession of another; give
naxcatia = I make it the possession of another; give
Robert Haskett and Stephanie Wood's notes from Nahuatl sessions with James Lockhart and subsequent research.
ayac aquin quimaxcatiz = no one is to make it his property(?)
Techialoyan manuscript from San Juan Tolcayuca, state of Hidalgo; Kislak Collection, Library of Congress; f. 5r. Notes taken by Stephanie Wood.