nahuatl color terms

[Michael McCafferty]

I'm not where I can discuss this now. I'm in class. But let me say that 
I read the article years ago, and simply supplied the web address for 
it. I ain't defending it in any way.

:-)



Quoting Magnus Pharao Hansen <magnuspharao at gmail.com>:

> Dear Dr. McCafferty and listeros
>
> I see several problems with the hills articles and I don' think it makes for
> a very reliable reconstruction.
>
> Why is teskatik glossed as blue and taken for cognate with texohtli? As far
> as I know teskatl (obsidian mirror) are black. Why is matlaltik glossed as
> green? As far as I know it refers to the blueish purple color of a bruise
> and came to taken on the meaning of green in some dialects through the
> common mesoamerican metaphor of crude/bruised > crude/green. They don't
> justify the notion that ne:xtik is a basic colorterm in Nahuatl - they don't
> even mention Berlin & kays distinction between basic and non basic terms or
> the problems that pose for the study of colorterms in any language. Also
> reconstructing *po as grey based on nahuatl pochektik which is clearly
> derived from poktli "smoke" and is not justified as being cognate with the
> other UA terms seems highly questionable.
>
> I noticed one clear cognate though: "pa" the nahuatl root for "color" seems
> to have originally meant "red" vis a vis the cognates in Cora and Hopi. The
> relation of red as the prototypical "color" is well known throughout the
> worlds languages e.g. in spanish "colorado". If someone wnts to read the
> best analysis of colors in Nahuatl, and UA and mesoamerica go for McLaurys
> Mesoamerican Color Terms.
>
>
> Magnus
>
>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Michael McCafferty <mmccaffe at indiana.edu>
>> To: nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
>> Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 07:33:29 -0500
>> Subject: Re: [Nahuat-l] nahuatl colors
>> Here are the coordinates for the Hill's paper on PUA colors:
>>
>> http://www.jstor.org/stable/30029256?cookieSet=1
>>
>>
>> Michael
>>
>>
>>
>



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