Re: OT: Reduplication enquiry
| From: | Peter Bleackley <peter.bleackley@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, September 10, 2003, 8:41 |
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At 22:35 09/09/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>Nik Taylor scripsit:
>
> > There's also a noun _chouchou_ "butterfly", which appears to have been a
> > reduplication, however, _chou_ is not a word (at least, not with any
> > related meaning)
>
>The word for butterfly in the world's languages is often a bit oddball,
>frequently quasi-imitative of the insect's movements, as in Schmetterling,
>butterfly, papillon. In Chinese, it's hu2die2, an old borrowing from
>Mongolian and one of the small number of ancient polysyllabic morphemes.
>
In Nahuatl, if I remember correctly, it's papalotl (I remeber this from a
house in Teotihuacan known, from its Quatzal and butterfly decorations, as
the House of Quetzal-Papalotl). Shall we start a linguistic butterfly
collection?
Pete
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