Apr 30
Yuk Tepat - Basic Color Terms
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Yuk Tepat - Basic Color Terms
Graphic Analysis
Trying to work out all the stylistic elements of Tepatic glyphs.
These are distinct from glyph radicals, which are the smallest distinctive meaningful elements of the writing system, which are combined to spell words.
What you see here mostly don’t have any meaning, or any sound, they’re just shapes.
Glyphs as Pictures
Tepatic glyphs originated in pre-Tepatic Milim times as images, such as those found in Milim rock paintings. Presumably, all of the glyphs used in Yuk Tepat originated as pictures - either depictions of things, or iconic representations of concepts. Although many glyphs have been stylized to the point that their appearance does not immediately suggest their meaning, they still continue the image of something, and in that sense are “representational.”
Some cases are metonymic - a picture of a part stands in for the whole. For example, the glyph for nap ‘man’ was originally just a stylized penis, the most important part of a man.
Sometimes the image is less clear because of cultural ideas of representation. For example, “sun” was typically imagined as having curved rays radiating from it, in a swastika-like pattern, hence producing a “sun” glyph very different from an English-speakers idea of what “sun” should look like, perhaps with spiky “rays.” Stars were little crosses (or asterisks).
Some glyphs are more abstract - not really representational, but iconic - but still in a sense show what they mean. For example. thôy ‘be located.’ It shows a circle (object) on a horizontal line (some surface), with a pointer under the line, marking the location of the object.
Then there are some glyphs that as yet have no “etymology.” They are used phonetically or for spelling abstract words. Although it is presumed they were originally representations of some object or other, the connection has been obscured by the millennia, and we still don’t know what they might have represented. Possibly, they represented words in the Milim language which no longer exist in Yuk Tepat.
Summary of path verbs in Yuk Tepat. Because Yuk Tepat is a path-conflating verb-framing language & the typology of motion events is one of the features I like, though less famous than typological categories like word order or morphosyntactic alignment. (Though it may be a stretch to call "be located" a path verb, since there is no motion, although it shares properties with the other verbs.)
Negative Modifier
More about glyph modifiers.
Tepatic glyphs are composed of radicals (which I call mut ‘bases’). These can be combined or modified in many ways. There are a number of ‘operators’ - strokes which can be added to bases to modify their meaning. Kind of like diacritics for semantics, instead of phonetics.
Previously, I posted about two other kinds of operators:
The “pointer” operator: https://www.tumblr.com/yuk-tepat/792258161762582528/operator-glyphs
The directional operator: https://www.tumblr.com/yuk-tepat/792348755327352832/glyph-operators-ii
Now there’s the “negator” adornment. The negator looks like a little bow like the ones you see on charity campaigns (but it originated from a cursive little X). It creates new glyphs which mean the opposite, or the lack of, the meaning of their base.
Why climb the neighbor’s tree?
Ngût kwit i-x̬angqlup tu-chôl-pem sat i-kyat. suppose fruit of neighbor FUT fall enter yard of you.
Suk kyat tu-mok-um u-tyang-noy muk-un? Then, you FUT why PRED-climb steal tree-OTHER?
‘Why climb the neighbor’s tree, when the fruit falls in your yard?’
In one of their early conversations regarding statecraft, Tsyam argued that self-interests could be exploited by the kingdom to fortify itself. Lord Qom countered that acting purely in self-interest, it would be to the advantage of a prince to kill his father to gain power. Tsyam is said to have used the example of a man whose neighbor has a tree next to the wall. The fruit falls in his yard, and the neighbor has promised him that he can take any fallen fruit. In that case, he has merely to do nothing but wait in order to receive benefit. In such circumstances, what fool would jump the fence and climb the neighbor’s tree to pick fruit?
Unfortunately, some men, including princes, are fools.
Idiomatically, “climb the neighbor’s tree” has come to represent someone so stupid and greedy that even if they would get what they want anyway, they try to grab it anyway in a way that kills their chance.
It looks like I have more than 1000 followers now, and I assume most of you aren't bots, so in that case...
Doubled Glyphs
Edited 9/8/25
More about glyph building. I’ve discussed base glyphs (here), and various kinds of “operators,” such as the pointer, direction, negator and partitive operators.
Another process operating on base glyphs (radicals) is repetition. Some base glyphs are doubled, or quadrupled, to produce new glyphs with new meanings. The new glyphs usually have something to do with plurality or collectivity. In the past in Lexember there have been several examples of this already. For example:
qok ‘swarm’ and ngôl ‘herd’ (https://yuk-tepat.tumblr.com/post/672404030335696896/2021-lexember-29-30-qok-ng%C3%B4l)
yat ‘people’ (part of hyat ‘reply’) (https://yuk-tepat.tumblr.com/post/737470953462824960/2023-lexember-21-22)
lum ‘litter’ (https://www.tumblr.com/yuk-tepat/735999649379385344/10-13-ng%C3%B4w-lum-l%C3%BBn-k%C3%B4n)
kul ‘follow’ and klup ‘tracks’ (https://www.tumblr.com/yuk-tepat/736298401352810496/2023-lexember-9-klup).
This process is common enough in some terrestrial writing systems: behold Chinese 木, 林, 森.