[Aztlan] Calcos? Calque?

[Galen Brokaw]

Pancho,
There is a fundamental difference between defining a word and 
translating it. I'm not sure exactly why you need or want to come up 
with Nahuatl equivalents for the English terms you list, but no Nahuatl 
term is going to be a transparent translation of any of those terms, 
because Nahuatl culture has not conceptualized semiotic phenomena in the 
same way as Western philosophy and linguistics. Ultimately, the 
definition of words are conventional (i.e., determined and perpetuated 
through dialogic communicative interactions). So the morphology of a 
term or phrase does not necessarily have to exhaustively describe the 
concept you wish to convey. In fact, if there is any desire for 
linguistic economy, it is often better that it not do so in order to 
avoid overly unwieldy terms. In other words, it can be conceptually 
metonymic. You just have to convince other people to use it in the same 
way.
Nahuatl usage does include some rather long and complex constructions, 
so technically you certainly could formulate a Nahuatl word that conveys 
a lot more descriptive detail. And this might even be a more authentic 
way of creating a neologism, but I don't think there is any way to make 
it completely transparent.
It seems to me that most of the terms you have formulated (with the 
minor revisions that I suggested) would work fine. You would just have 
to define the terms prior to using them.
I would also just say that as a linguistic exercise, I think that 
formulating these types of neologisms can be interesting; but for a 
research project on mesoamerican writing, I'm not sure what purpose such 
translations would serve. To introduce such neologisms in that context 
might run the risk of giving people the impression that these were 
organic Nahuatl concepts.
At the most general level, there are two theoretical approaches to 
Mesoamerican writing. One would attempt to understand the writing 
systems using indigenous concepts. The other approach relies on Western 
theories of language, writing, and semiotics. (Of course, there are 
different theoretical approaches within the more general category of 
Western theory, and maybe within the indigenous perspective as well.) 
There are those who will advocate a strictly indigenous perspective, 
because according to this view imposing Western concepts effects a sort 
of violence on indigenous culture. I see value in both approaches. It 
seems to me that they are different sorts of projects. But I think it is 
important not to ascribe any sort of inherent conceptual paradigm to the 
object of study itself. I'm not sure if that is what you are attempting 
to do, but I thought I would just include this cautionary note, for 
whatever it is worth.

Best,
Galen







David Becraft wrote:
> Mr. Brokaw,
> 
> Thank you for your help!  The calques I suggested; do they make sense in 
> contrast to the Greek terms?  Are there other words that could be used 
> to further define these concepts of writing?  Any other suggestions 
> besides what I presented as calques?
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Pancho Becraft
> 
> 
>> From: Galen Brokaw <brokaw at buffalo.edu>
>> To: David Becraft <david_becraft at hotmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Aztlan] Calcos? Calque?
>> Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 18:17:35 -0400
>>
>> David,
>> I would just point out a couple of things. First, all of the English 
>> words you have listed are nouns, but most of the Nahuatl definitions 
>> are verbs. The noun form of the verb "cuiloa" which refers to writing 
>> is "tlacuilolli." Just converting the "cuiloa" portion of your terms 
>> into "cuilolli" would probably solve this problem. See other comments 
>> below.
>>
>>
>>> Any suggestions?
>>>
>>> Semasiography--------------------------------------------------------Nezcayoticuiloa 
>>>
>>
>> I don't think you need the "ti" in there. I think it should just be 
>> "nezcayocuilolli."
>>
>>>
>>> Glottography-----------------------------------------------------------Nenepilcuiloa 
>>>
>>
>> Nenepilcuilolli
>>
>>>
>>> Logography------------------------------------------------------------Tlatolcuiloa 
>>>
>>
>> The difficulty here is that "tlahtolli" is a more general term meaning 
>> "speech," but that often has the meaning "word" in translation. Other 
>> terms that are often translated as "word" are "camatl" and "tentli," 
>> which literally mean "mouth" and "lip" respectively; but again, they 
>> are also more general. Even when they specified adding "cen" on the 
>> beginning, which means "one" as in "cencamatl," it doesn't necessarily 
>> mean "one word." It can mean "one statement." It seems to me that the 
>> closest you could come to conveying the actual meaning of 
>> "logography," you would have to use some sort of modifier such as 
>> "nenecni," "iyoca," or "noncua" (or even better "nononcua"), which all 
>> convey the idea of something like "separately." Another possibility of 
>> which I'm not exactly sure is to use "xelihui" in there somewhere, 
>> which means "to split."
>> Of course, these are neologisms anyway, so you can always just decide 
>> on a term like "tlahtolcuilolli" this and define its use as "logography."
>>
>>>
>>> Phonography----------------------------------------------------------Caquizcuiloa 
>>>
>>
>> caquizcuilolli
>>
>>>
>>> Syllable-----------------------------------------------------------------Tlatolcotonqui 
>>>
>>
>> same issues as with tlahtolcuilolli. You might also use just 
>> "tlatoltontli." There are other possibilities that might better convey 
>> the notion of "a piece of a word/speech"; but there is no getting 
>> around the conceptual barrier.
>>
>>>
>>> Sign 
>>> (phoneme)-------------------------------------------------------Nezcayotl 
>>>
>>
>> Nezcayotl works as sign, but as I'm sure you know, "sign" is not the 
>> same as "phoneme."
>>
>>
>>> Graphic 
>>> Sign----------------------------------------------------------Nezcayocuiloa 
>>>
>>
>> Technically, I think you might want to use "tlacuilolnezcayotl."
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Tlashtlawi,
>>>
>>> David Becraft
>>> Anthropology
>>> Southern Oregon University
>>> Ashland, Oregon
>>>
>>> becraftd at students.sou.edu
>>>
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>>
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