The Use of Semantic Determinatives in Nahuatl Writing

Abstract

is article systematically presents arguments in favor of the existence of semantic determinatives in Nahuatl writing, something that has already been proposed by several research-ers, including Joseph Marius Alexis Aubin when he made his original outline of how this writing system worked. Semantic determinatives were used as a mechanism to allow easy discrimination of items on a list, which was necessary due to the variable reading order of the Nahuatl script. After a description of how this scriptural element was used by other writing systems of the world, including the Maya, evidence of its use in the Nahuatl script is presented. Finally, a comparison is made between determinatives and noun classifiers, used in several languages in the world, to conclude that although several linguists see classifiers and determinatives as equivalent elements for semantic denotation, they are actually differ-ent since one works on the linguistic level and the other on the scriptural level

This article systematically presents arguments in favor of the existence of semantic determinatives in Nahuatl writing, something that has already been proposed by several researchers, including Joseph Marius Alexis Aubin when he made his original outline of how this writing system worked. Semantic determinatives were used as a mechanism to allow easy discrimination of items on a list, which was necessary due to the variable reading order of the Nahuatl script. After a description of how this scriptural element was used by other writing systems of the world, including the Maya, evidence of its use in the Nahuatl script is presented. Finally, a comparison is made between determinatives and noun classifiers, used in several languages in the world, to conclude that although several linguists see classifiers and determinatives as equivalent elements for semantic denotation, they are actually different since one works on the linguistic level and the other on the scriptural level.