Re: Color Terms

On Tue, 27 Jul 1999 22:02:43 -0600, Ed Heil <edheil@...> wrote:

>Well, the human "basic color term" foci seem to be located at places
>in the spectrum where firing for red, green, or blue cone cells
>maximizes, minimizes, or where different combinations of those three
>maximize or minimize.  So if your aliens had more than three types of
>cone cell (or the equivalent), or if those cells had different curves
>of receptivity along the spectrum, they would engender a different
>bodily experience of "basic" colors and thus a different array basic
>color terms -- an entirely likely situation!
In fact, the basic color words in Zireen languages (not counting black,
white, and shades of gray) are yellow, turquoise, indigo, and =
ultraviolet.

--
languages of Kolagia---> =
+---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/languages.html>---
      Thryomanes        /"If all Printers were determin'd not to print =
any
   (Herman Miller)     / thing till they were sure it would offend no =
body,
   moc.oi @ rellimh <-/  there would be very little printed." -Ben =
Franklin