queniuhquitic / queniuhcatic

[Galen Brokaw]

John,
This is an interesting question, precisely because it has implications
for the way Nahuatl conceives of color.
As you know, there are a lot of words that contain the component "iuhca"
or "iuhqui, which, as you suggest, is a nominalized form of the verb
ihui. This nominalized form would mean "the nature or manner of
something." Both Molina and the Florentine have attestations of words
like iuhcatiliztli, iuhcayotl, and iuhquiyotl, with meanings like
condition, material form, the form or manner of s.t., and inherent
quality. Interestingly, words like iuhcatiliztli, are nominalizations of
verbalized nouns that are themselves nominalizations of a verb. But this
is certainly not all that uncommon in Nahuatl. In any case, this would
make a lot of sense with the verbalizing "ti" meaning "to become" and
the preterite "c" making the construction mean "it became ..." So,
"iuhcatic" would mean something like "it became thus" or "it became in a
certain manner or of a certain nature or of a certain quality." Using
this construction to refer to color ("it became of a certain color")
would be consistent with the conceptualization of color as "having
become like some prototypically colored noun." This conceptualization is
evident in the morphology of color terms like "chichiltic" [red]
literally meaning "it became like a red pepper" and the other ones you
listed. In other words, there appears to be a very clear structural
parallel between "iuhcatic / iuhquitic" and color terms such as
chichiltic, where the prototypically colored noun would replace the
nominalized verb "iuhca" or "iuhqui." So the "quen" would merely make it
a question, meaning literally "How did it become?" or "What is the
manner in which it became?" which would be translatable as "What color
is it?"
I think that makes sense anyway.
Galen



idiez at MAC.COM wrote:
> Can anybody help on this one?
>        I have two Huastecan nahuatl versions of the question, What color
> is it?
> "queniuhquitic", "queniuhcatic"
>        The first two elements seem to be "quen" , "how", and "iuhqui" /
> "iuhca", "in this or that manner". The "-qui", "-ca", seem to be the
> traditional preterite ending which in this case seems to be working,
> also traditionally, as a ligature for the final "-tic". This "-tic"
> looks a lot like the verbalizing "-ti" and the nominalizing (or
> adjectivizing) "-c", which together form many nahuatl noun-adjectives,
> including many names for colors: xoxoctic (green), coztic (yellow),
> tzictic (blue), etc.  However, this adjectivizing of the Huastecan
> expression "queniuhqui", "How....?", would be a type of construction
> I've never seen before. Any ideas?
> John
>
> John Sullivan, Ph.D.
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