Nahuatl On-Line, and a question

[Galen Brokaw]

I'm working under the assumption that the "chihchil" in "chihchiltic" is
actually a reduplicated "chilli". Concerning the origin of the word, it seems
to me that if Nahuatl speakers were conscious enough of the way they were
constructing words using this "-tic", then they may have changed their word
for colors as needed to maintain a direct relationship to their environment.
So, it doesn't seem too unlikely that they had a different word or even
multiple words for red before settling down as an agricultural society.
>>From a grammatical point of view, it seems to me that "chilli" would have to
come first because the "-tic" is a suffix ("ti" + past tense marker "c") added
to nouns to form adjectives. Here are some other examples:

acaltic = acalli (atl+calli=canoe) + ti + c = grooved
amatic=amatl (paper) + ti + c = papery
caxtic=caxitl (plate) + ti + c = concave
neltic=nelli (truth) + ti + c = true
nuectic=nuectli (honey) + ti + c = sweet
paltic= p/atl (water) + ti + c = watery, runny ["atl" originally began with
/p/. It seems that other Uto-Aztecan languages conserved the /p/ in their
words for water.]

I think that the "ti" makes the noun a verb meaning "to become", which then
takes the past tense "c". So, literally the prase would be something like "it
became red / like a chilli". But it functions similar to an adjective.

Galen