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

From:Joe <joe@...>
Date:Friday, April 23, 2004, 5:42
Ray Brown wrote:

> On Thursday, April 22, 2004, at 07:10 AM, Joe wrote: > >> 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"), >>> > > Agreed - the first is French and the second takes its name from the site > of one of Napoleon's bloodier battles. > >>> 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. > > > True of orange, I have no doubt. There are AFAIK no standard Middle > English or Old English names that correspond to the color name 'orange'; > the name is taken from the name of the fruit whose name is certainly of > Arabic origin. I wasn't aware that the Arabs got the name from Persian, > but maybe they did.
Well, I meant that I didn't believe it was neccesary to exclude borrowings, because basic colour-ness can change with time.

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Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>