opening makefile with error message.

[bpatton]

Fontifying region...(error No match 2 in highlight (2 font-lock-
variable-name-face))

I have a makefile that I originally created with gvim.  I've since
switched to GNU emacs.
I kept getting the error above, so I commented out every line in the
file.  Thinking I could uncomment a few lines at a time to find the
problem.
First line brought the problem
include makefile.definitions

I don't understand the error message