Re: Color Terms

On Fri, 17 Nov 2000, Sylvia Sotomayor wrote:

> I had a small epiphany regarding Kélen color terms. Currently in the lexicon,
> there are a number that have very similar meaning, as in:
> tiél    purple, lavender
> tásh    purple
>
> It occured to me that the Kélen have a rather complex color scheme where the
> name of the color changes according to what is being described. The way a Kélen
> person would describe it is that they have 4 different sets of color terms, 4
> being the sacred number of course. The 4 terms cover 4 domains and 9 colors. I
> will try to lay this out in a table format and hope that the tab settings in
> your browser/email-reader are the same:
[snip]
Neat idea!  And I suppose it isn't any worse than the multiplicity of
Crayola colors.  :-)

I haven't figured out color terms myself, still trying to figure out how
to revamp proto-conlang phonology.  But I doubt I'd've come up with
something that neat.

YHL