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

IMO, colour names exist only by referring to everyday
environment. For ex, oranges weren't known in Europe
some centuries ago. When people discovered them, that
looked at their color, decided that there wasn't any
word dedicated to that special color, so they just
forged the adjective "orange", meaning "the color of
an orange" (oranges were also called "Chinese apples",
which clearly indicates that they were not
aborigenes). People who haven't seen a orange (or
other things having this colour) in their life don't
need the concept of an "orange" color. The same for
"olive". From an absolute point of view (not
considering the environment), there is absolutely no
reason why such or such part of the spectrum should
have a special name. But we primarily think of colours
like "the same color as such thing has", even if there
can be higher level of abstraction later.

"Blue" is probably important for every human being
because every human being happens to look at the sky.
The problem is: why is it in some languages confused
with green ? Green is very common (nearly) everywhere
because of the vegetation. It looks very difficult to
call the color of mid-day sky by the same name as the
colour of grass, and I don't think that there are
whole populations suffering from a vision default.
Maybe it is just a default-colour: what is neither
red, neither yellow, neither white or black, is some
kind of vague color ranging from azure to boiled
spinach, and it applies to the sky at different
moments of the day, as well as to the sea and to
plants ? Maybe also people noticed that the color of
the sky changed, so when you said "the color of the
sky", it already naturally referred to a wide range of
nuances - which is not the case for a (ripe) orange.
(That's just a ad hoc and a priori theory, of course,
one should make detailed inquiries about natives to
confirm or infirm it).

There is an interesting experiment to do about red
cabbage: when you look at it at the grocer's it seems
to have a very specific color, but when you cook it
and you throw away the water, the color of this water
varies very much according to its degree of dilution.
At the end, it's nearly "azure" (a very beautiful
color). So what's the color of red cabbage ?

--- Levi Tooker <lrtooker@...> wrote:
> --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
>
[snip]

=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


	
		
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