Re: NATLANG: Colours

>About traffic lights, I wondered yesterday when seeing
>at the same time, in the city, two different
>"Pedestrian: Go" signs, on two successive crossroads:
>the first one was clearly yellow-green, and the secund
>one blue-green. Probably two different manufacturers.
>Looking at those signs at once, I thougt "this is not
>the same colour", an also "I like that blue-green, but
>this yellow-green looks really ugly". Of course I
>supposed that in both cases, they should be understood
>as "green" signs, for cultural reasons, and also
>because the signs showed a pedestrian actually
>walking, not staying. So I crossed over in both cases
>(and wasn't killed). But there seems not to be any
>standard green for traffic lights.
Both lights had a GREEN percept component, which I bet
was the dominant component. Note that I say _percept_,
that is, the _non-linguistic_, visual sensation GREEN,
which is one of the six basic, irreductible percepts of
human vision (WHITE - BLACK, YELLOW / BLUE, RED / GREEN),
whose combinations make up all other visual perceptions
of trichromat humans. This basic percept is placed in
English as the central reference of the linguistic category
"green", which also includes as peripheral elements those
composite colour perceptions of GREEN+YELLOW and GREEN+BLUE
where the GREEN component is dominant, so both traffic
lights you mention would be described simply as "green"
if no further detail is needed. Anyway, even a greenish
blue, i.e. a BLUE+GREEN composite where BLUE is dominant
and thus what an English speaker would rather describe as
a kind of "blue", would serve for a "green" traffic light
without causing much trouble, since GREEN percept can still
be identified in the light. Even a purely BLUE light would
do, since what is essential in this context is that it is
a light of not red but a colour very 'far away' from it;
green is the opponent of red, blue is the opposite of red
as for temperature, so both may serve as antithesis of red.

I _think_ (I'm not positive about this) that adding some
yellow or blue to the green of traffic lights is meant
to help red/green colour blinds, because they will miss
most or all of the green percept component in a yellowgreen
or bluegreen, but will still perceive the yellow or blue
component and that should help them in differentiating
the red light from the green light. Or it could be mere
random variation without any intended practical purpose.


>I think the reason for which there are different words
>for "dark blue" and "light blue" in some languages
>clearly refer to human experience, in that case, the
>color of the sky, in the day # at dawn for ex. In
>French we say "bleu ciel" against "bleu sombre", or
>"bleu marine", for ex, which is less differenciated
>than in Russian. We also say "azur" for light blue,
>but that's more a poetical terminology, unlike in
>Spanish, were "azul" is standard.
In Spanish, "azul" refers to any blue, it is not
restricted to light blue like the English subcategory
"azure" or the Russian category "goluboj"; its central
reference is simply the basic BLUE percept. For "azure"
(BLUE+WHITE), we say "(azul) celeste" and "navy (blue)"
(BLACK+BLUE) is "azul marino"; both are classified as
mere varieties within the category "azul". The difference
between Spanish "celeste" or English "azure" and Russian
"goluboj" is that Russian has dissociated the composite
perceptions of BLUE+WHITE into an independent category
from those of BLUE(+BLACK) perceptions ("sinij"), while
in Spanish or English they are classified into merely
a subcategory within that of "azul" or "blue".


>I'm not sure it's
>the same distinction as between "red" and "pink",
>where "red" seems to me the main concept, "pink" a
>secundary one
Of course. The colour perceptions included in the
"pink" category are all composites of RED+WHITE(+BLUE),
a clearly less primary category than the one whose
center is pure RED.


>(which would be the main concept between
>"light blue" and "dark blue" ? Hard to say).
What's in common between BLUE+WHITE and BLUE+BLACK?
Well, obviously BLUE.

Cheers,
Javier

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