nahuatl colors

[Michael Swanton]

Hi Magnus,

I do not
believe B&K state that BCTs cannot be derived from any other word. Rather
they say that BCTs must be monolexemic and therefore not predictable from the meanings
of their parts. Under this criterion they exclude “lemon-colored” as a BTC, but
not “orange”.

Regards,

Mike



--- On Tue, 11/10/09, Magnus Pharao Hansen <magnuspharao at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Magnus Pharao Hansen <magnuspharao at gmail.com>
Subject: [Nahuat-l] nahuatl colors
To: nahuatl at lists.famsi.org
Date: Tuesday, November 10, 2009, 1:16 PM

Hi Listeros

Just wanted to chip in on the color topic, albeit a little belatedly. I have worked with color terminology studies in the past and done a small pilot survey in Hueyapan. I thought it would be worth it to mention that in fact the most interesting thing about Nahuatlo colourterminology is that according to the criteria of Paul Kay and Brent Berlin in their "Basic Color Terms" Nahuatl could be one of the only languages in the world not to have any true color terms! According to Berlin and Kay all languages have between two and eleven basic color terms, in a predictable order, i.e. if it has three it has black, white and red, if it has five it has those three plus yellow and either green or blue etc.  What's interesting is that among the criteria is that a basic color term is not derived from anyother word - the term must be exclusively related to color. That means that e.g. "lemon" for lemon green is not a basic color term, but a secondary one. As you have
 probably noticed in Nahuatl all colorterms could be argued to be secondary (arguably not kostik and kapotstik, which are probably derived, but from words we don't know). The fact that Nahuatl doesn't have any roots (other than kapots- and kos- if we accept them) specficially and exclusively referring to color properties makes it a very special language.


Oh and btw. one of my consultants from Hueyapan who is always good at making up folketymologies did translate kamohpaltik as "no está mojado". In Hueyapan the purple color is called simply kamohtik.

Magnus Pharao Hansen


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