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Vol. 41, no. 3 (Fall 1999)

Contents

Abstracts

Color and Texture in the Maya Language of Yucatan

Victoria R. Bricker
Tulane University

Abstract. The Maya language of Yucatan has only five basic color terms (?�ek' 'black', cak 'red, pink, orange, rust colored', k'�an 'yellow, orange', sak 'white', and y�?a 'green'), but they appear in seventy-five compound stems that discriminate semantically among variables other than hue, including brightness, saturation, relative size and discreteness, opacity, and texture. A number of these stems are concerned with texture, as are many of the affect stems in this language, suggesting a semantic relationship between them. The same relationship between color compounds and affects is documented for Tzotzil, another Mayan language, for which there are almost one thousand color compounds.

Worora Gender Metaphors and Australian Prehistory

Mark Clendon
University of Adelaide

Abstract. The gender semantics of Worora (a non-Pama-Nyungan language of the Kimberley region of northern Australia) is examined, and linguistic and cultural explanations are sought for the categories observed. An opposition is uncovered in the nonhuman macrogender between intensions that refer underlyingly to the earth, on the one hand, and to the sky, on the other. The formal and functional properties of the system are then compared with those of Nunggubuyu, a non-Pama-Nyungan language of eastern Arnhem Land. On the basis of this comparison, a historical explanation is suggested to account for the typological similarities observed.

Some Special Morphological Characteristics of the White Mountain Dialect of Apachean

Philip J. Greenfeld
San Diego State University

Abstract. Morphological differences between White Mountain Apache and the other Apachean languages include both divergences in the phonological shape of morphemes due to regular sound change and the existence of morphemes unique to White Mountain Apache. This article briefly reviews some lexical differences between White Mountain Apache and Navajo and then examines differences in stem form, clitics, conjunctions, interrogatives, independent pronouns, and prefixes. The primary focus of the comparison is Navajo, but some attention is paid to other Apachean and Northern Athabaskan languages. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of Apachean dialects as ethnic boundary markers.

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