Re: More stuff on colours

Hallo!

On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 19:56:10 -0400,
Trebor Jung <treborjung@...> wrote:

> Here's an idea I've been toying around with for a bit:
>
> The Kosi language has only five colours, equivalent to English 'white',
> 'black', 'red', 'blue', and 'green'. The lack of other colours could be
> explained by some sort of defect in the eyes. (The colours wouldn't even be
> independent lexical items: the word for 'red', for example, would be a
> compound meaning something like 'blood-coloured', a feature which IIRC
> Pirahã has).
>
> Is this system plausible? (I know next to nothing about such things...)
If they have words for `red' and `green', they are likely also to
have a word for `yellow'.  And what regards eye defects: No, anyone
who can see red and green can also see yellow, since it is red+green.

Greetings,

Jörg.

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