Color Terms (Re: Cherokee term for 'china clay')

[Marino]

I haven't been following this discussion very closely, so maybe somebody 
has already pointed this out, but there is a closely similar process in 
Cree (and maybe other Algonquian languages?) - t palatalized to c occurs in 
diminutive word-formation; e.g. atim 'dog', acimosis 'puppy'.  This is also 
a feature of "compassionate" speech, when one is speaking to a sick child, 
or such.

Mary

At 01:04 PM 7/17/2006, you wrote:
>Dave wrote:
> > Biloxi seems to retain only one term for a bluish-green hue, I guess,
>thohi.  But what I find interesting is that its close cousin Ofo has two
>separate words for blue and green: ithohi for the former and itchohi for
>the latter.  I'm not sure if this implies that Ofo innovated separate words
>while Biloxi retained just the one, but that seems the most logical I
>think?  It seems more logical for a language to develop differing words for
>different colors to be more specific rather than two originally separate
>color terms having been collapsed into one in Biloxi.
>
>These two are originally just pronunciation variants of the same word,
>aren't they?  This looks exactly like the 'Grandmother speech' usage that
>John has described for Omaha, a 'baby talk' convention that is productive
>of new words.  The rule is simply to change all dental/alveolar stops to
>the corresponding palatal affricates to get a sort of diminutive.  So did
>Biloxi and Ofo have this rule too?
>
>For example, in Omaha, the basic word for 'good' is u'udaN.  In Dorsey, I
>believe this word is also used for 'beautiful'.  But in modern Omaha, our
>speakers have assured us that the word for 'beautiful' is u'udjaN, not
>u'udaN.  We just learned the other day in Macy, however, that u'udaN can
>actually be used in the 'good-looking' sense for young men: i.e.
>'handsome'.  Girls are u'udjaN, 'pretty'.
>
>I would understand the Ofo set described as:
>
>   ithohi - grue (standard term)  'blue'
>
>   itchohi - (cute widdle) gwue (the diminutive form)  'green'
>
>The thohi term might be the only one recorded for Biloxi, but if this sort
>of relationship was possible I think it would be hard to determine that
>they didn't use tchohi as an alternate if they really wanted to specify
>'green'.  We should also note that in the Ofo and Biloxi dictionaries,
>'green' is not necessarily strictly a color term.  It may also stand for
>'unripe'.
>
>Rory