Re: Quest for colours: what's basic then?
| From: | Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, April 22, 2004, 0:07 |
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Hi!
Levi Tooker <lrtooker@...> writes:
>...
> >From what I remember, the criteria for the studies done on color universals
> excluded as basic color terms all loan words ("beige", "magenta"),
This can't be: 'orange', for example, it conceptually different from
any other color in German, but is clearly a loan. If 'basic colours'
describes distinguished concepts, it must not exclude loans, because
they might have extended not only the language, but also the continuum
of perception.
> morphologically complex words ("burnt umber", "off-white"),
Ok. That's intuitively clear and seems sensible.
> and words which are obviously derived from other lexical items
> ("gold", "violet"...
Hmm, 'gold' is really a surface property affecting the kind
of reflection but not the wavelength, so that is no color.
German 'Türkis' is a mineral but still represents a colour not
describable by other colour terms + modification. This must be a
criterion, too.
My problem was, for example, 'beige'. It clearly distinct from brown,
but one could imagine situations in which uncareful speakers refer to
it with 'brown'. I can also imagine such situations for 'orange' and
'red', though, so I cannot determine without a more formal definition
of 'basic color' whether 'beige' is a basic colour in German.
Talking to my girl friend, she claimed that 'violett' and 'lila' are
totally different, because 'lila' was 'violett' + white just like
orange is red + yellow. I did not know there was such a clear
distinction, though... She said it was taught at school. I found
that if it has to be taught, it is not a 'basic' distinction...
> to be) factored in as well. "Brown", "purple" and "blue" are used to
> refer to beige, magenta and cyan things more often than the words
> "beige", "magenta" and "cyan" are.
Ah, yes. 'red' cannot only hardly be imagined to be accidentally
referred to as 'violett'. That seems a sensible test, too.
Maybe counting basic colour terms is simply too vague to prove
anything...
**Henrik
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