Re: NATLANG: Colours

Ray Brown scripsit:

> But this has nothing to do with the so-called 'universals' of
> color-naming.
>  I don't recall them off-hand but I seem to remember they're along the
> lines of: if a language has only two color-words, it will distinguish this
> group & that group; if it has three it will distinguish X, Y, X; if it has
> 4, it will distinguish W, X, Y, z..etc.
Exactly.  And rather than asking "Where are the boundaries of X", we ask
"Which of these samples is the best example of X?"  When we do that,
we find that:

	languages with 2 basic color words have "white" and "black";
	languages with 3 basic color words have also "red";
	languages with 4 basic color words have also either "green" or "yellow"
	languages with 5 basic color terms have both "green" and "yellow"
	languages with 6 basic color terms have also "blue"
	languages with 7 basic color terms have also "brown"

When I say that a language has a word for "white", I mean that the
best example of the color named by that term is white.
This is much more reliable than judgments about color boundaries, which
vary between individuals.

The major deviation from these rules is that some languages don't
discriminate between blue and green.  Russian has two words for "blue"
(corresponding psychologically to the English distinction between
"red" and "pink").

--
John Cowan  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com  jcowan@reutershealth.com
In might the Feanorians / that swore the unforgotten oath
brought war into Arvernien / with burning and with broken troth.
and Elwing from her fastness dim / then cast her in the waters wide,
but like a mew was swiftly borne, / uplifted o'er the roaring tide.
        --the Earendillinwe

Replies