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<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>Owen:</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>You just opened up a big can of worms. People have been
arguing about this for over two centuries and they're still at it. I've been
looking hard at this question for the last decade or so, and I'll briefly
summarize what I've come up with.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>Part of the problem are our European semantic categories of
"writing" and "visual arts". Central Mexican pictorial writing is right on the
blurry border, and ancient Mesoamericans didn't really distinguish between the
two concepts, as the early colonial vocabularies reveal. The old (and today
largely discarded) concept of the "evolution" of writing systems, in which
alphabetic writing is supposedly more advanced and "civilized" than "primitive"
picture writing, is another problem. Overzealous defenders of the relative
sophistication of Mesoamerican civilization have tended to exaggerate the
phonographic nature of central Mexican picture writing, in order to claim a
higher rung on the evolutionary ladder for the natives of this
region.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><FONT size=2><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT
face=Arial color=#0000ff>Central Mexican pictorial writing, in general, is
essentially semasiographic, which means that most of the painted or carved signs
represent ideas, which can be expressed in any of the many languages spoken by
people who participated in the plurilinguistic culture of this region. (By
"central Mexico" I mean most of Mesoamerica, excluding much of western
Mexico, whose participation in this graphic system was minimal, and the Maya
region, where a different graphic tradition emerged.) Another problem is
that people tend to simplistically equate linguistic groups with "cultures",
when in reality language is but one of many overlapping aspects, with
blurry borders, that constitute culture. This rich and complex system of
visual communication, while essentially semasiographic, also lends itself
to homophonic (or quasi-homophonic) word play, like rebus writing, in
which a pictorial sign representing one thing is used to express
something else, exploiting the fact that both ideas are associated with
identical or similar sounds. A classic example is the representation of teeth,
in association with some other sign (for example a stylized representation of a
mountain), to express the Nahua postposition -tlan ("next
to/near/with/under/in/inside", usually preceded by the ligature -ti-) or the
locative suffix -tla:n ("with/in/between/next to/place of"). This is possible
because in Nahuatl the word for "tooth" or "teeth" is tlantli, whose absolutive
suffix -tli is detachable. Similar homophonic word play has been found in
pre-Hispanic historical manuscripts from the Mixteca region, and there are
possible examples from early colonial Otomi manuscripts (see articles on my web
site, the link to which is at the end of this
message).</FONT></SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>Thus the Nahua, the Mixtecs, the Otomi and other linguistic
communities that participated in the central Mexican cultural system painted and
carved the same signs and understood each other through the same pictorial
language, whose roots go back to Olmec times (ca. 1200-600 B.C.) Occasionally
they employed the homophonic principle to create glottographs, which can be
subdivided into logographs (expressing morphemes or words, as in the example
given in the preceding paragraph) and phonographs (expressing syllables or
phonemes). The pre-Hispanic texts from central Mexico have fewer glottographs
than some of the colonial period texts; this may be due to the influence of
European phonographic (i.e. alphabetic) writing in the latter. During the early
colonial period some native scribes produced purely semasiographic manusripts,
while others developed a style that includes an abundance of logographic and
phonographic signs, particularly in the Texcoco region.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>I'm using Geoffrey Sampson's terminology here because the
words usually used by Mesoamericanists can be somewhat vague and ambiguous,
having been the source of quite a bit of misunderstanding and fruitless
discussion.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>This said, yes, there have been many attempts at producing
pictorial dictionaries based on Nahua codices. Some of the more notable are:
José Ignacio Borunda (18th century); José Fernando Ramírez Álvarez (mid-19th
century), whose card file was used after his death by Manuel Orozco y Berra
(late 19th century); Robert H. Barlow and Byron McAfee (study published in
1949), and Joaquín Galarza, in several studies (ca. 1980-2000). Galarza's
disciples continue with his method; among them are Marc Thouvenot, Luz María
Mohar Betancourt, etc. Several digital editions are forthcoming. See also the
studies published in the 1992 edition of the Codex Mendoza, edited by Berdan and
Anawalt.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>Saludos,</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2>David Wright</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=421053719-02092007><FONT face=Arial
color=#0000ff size=2><A
href="http://www.paginasprodigy.com/dcwright/">http://www.paginasprodigy.com/dcwright/</A></FONT></SPAN></DIV><BR>
<DIV class=OutlookMessageHeader lang=es dir=ltr align=left>
<HR tabIndex=-1>
<FONT face=Tahoma size=2><B>De:</B> nahuatl-bounces@lists.famsi.org
[mailto:nahuatl-bounces@lists.famsi.org] <B>En nombre de </B>Owen
Thomas<BR><B>Enviado el:</B> Viernes, 31 de Agosto de 2007 07:08
p.m.<BR><B>Para:</B> nahuatl@lists.famsi.org<BR><B>Asunto:</B> [Nahuat-l]
Morphemes, Graphemes<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>Listeros,<BR><BR>I understand part of the Linguistics according to
Andrews. My question: since the original memory system for Nahuatl was graphic
has anyone attempted to index, or produce a lexicon, based on graphic elements
in Nahua codices? <BR><BR>Success in deciphering the remains of Mayan carving
leads me to wonder if the Verbal and Nominal complexes could be understood from
a graphic approach. Sahagun concentrated on a sort of lexical approach by
use of phonemes. Has any graphic lexeme survived or is anyone attempting
to create such a lexicon? <BR clear=all><BR>-- <BR>We are
connected<BR><BR>Owen </BODY></HTML>