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

Adam Walker wrote:

>--- Levi Tooker <lrtooker@...> wrote:
>
>
>>From what I remember, the criteria for the studies
>>done on color universals
>>excluded as basic color terms all loan words
>>("beige", "magenta"),
>>
>>
>
>This is what I remember from a semantics class.  Which
>would, of course, exclude orange and purple too.
>Orange is ultimately from Persian and purple is from
>Greek.
>
>
>
I don't believe that.  It menas that, historically, it wasn't a basic
colour term, but it is now.

>>morphologically complex words ("burnt umber",
>>"off-white"), and words which
>>are obviously derived from other lexical items
>>("gold", "violet"...although
>>"orange" seems to have been counted as a basic color
>>term).
>>
>>
>
>Which, would exclude the German türqis and the English
>aqua both of which are also borrowed.
>
>
>
Well, I consider those 'green', but still.

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