Re: Quest for colours: what's basic then?

--On Thursday, April 22, 2004 2:07 AM +0200 Henrik Theiling
<theiling@...> wrote:

> 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.
I found this PDF file which explains the criteria more specifically:
http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/UG/course/lx500/handouts/LgUniv.2a.ColorsVowe
ls.pdf

"Basic color term.

a. Monolexemic (non-compositional). It's meaning is not predictable from
the meaning of its parts.
bluish, lemon-colored, salmon-colored, the color of rust on the car

b. Its signification is not included in that of any other color term.
crimson, scarlet (<red)

c. Its application is not restricted to a narrow class of objects.
blond

d. Psychologically salient. Appears early in lists of colors, has stable
reference across speakers and occasions of use, appears in the ideolect of
each speaker.
bluish, lemon-colored, salmon-colored, the color of rust on the car,
crimson, scarlet, blond

e. If something is doubtful (hasn't yet been eliminated):
--i. Same distribution as uncontroversial basic terms. reddish, greenish,
*aquaish
--ii. Shouldn't also be the name of an object. gold, silver, ash (note:
orange wasn't doubtful)
--iii. Shouldn't be a recent foreign loan word.
--iv. Shouldn't be morphologically complex. blue-green

> German 'Türkis' is a mineral but still represents a colour not
> describable by other colour terms + modification.  This must be a
> criterion, too.
If german 'Türkis' is anything like English 'turquoise', it ought to be
eliminated by criterion (d) as I'm sure many speakers do not know or are
unsure what 'turquoise' means and it certainly doesn't occur early in lists
of colors. And if criterion (d) doesn't do it, the fact that it's a
(relatively) recent French loan as well as the name of an object ought to.

> 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.
A quick Google image search of the word 'beige' illustrates how unstable
this term is across speakers. Apparently it can refer to a slightly
yellowish brown, a brownish gray and even a color approaching white with a
hint of tan.

> **Henrik
Levi Tooker
lrtooker@buffalo.edu

Replies