Re: Colors in Czirehlat

    We spent two whole weeks on color in cognitive science.  It might help to
reprint this chart they showed us:

    Uhhh...on second thought, I didn't write it down.  :(  They refused to
give hand-outs in that class.  Thus far, one tree hasn't come to thank
personally.  Anyway, I'm going to try to reproduce this chart by memory.  I
have the beginning down; it's the hedges that get fuzzy.  Anyway, this chart
follows the development of color terms in natural languages:

Stage 1.) There are two color terms: Warm (white, red, yellow, orange, pink,
yellowish brown), Cool (black, blue, green, purple, gray, blackish brown).

Stage 2.) Red splits off, so there are the Warm colors minus red, the Cool
colors and red. (3 terms.)

Stage 3.) A green/blue term (often called "grue") splits off, so there's
Warm, Cool, Red and Grue (4 terms).

Stage 4A.) Yellow splits off, leaving five terms: Warm, Cool, Red, Grue and
Yellow. (5 terms)

Stage 4B.) If yellow does not split off, white splits off, leaving White,
Warm, Cool, Red and Grue.  (5 terms)

Stage 5.) The member from (4) that did not split off, now splits off.  (6
terms)

Stage 6A.) Black splits off: White, Black, Red, Yellow, Grue and what's left
of Warm and Cool.  (7 terms)

Stage 6B.) If black doesn't split off, blue and green split up, leaving:
White, Red, Blue, Yellow, Green, warm and cool.  (7 terms.)

Stage 7.) If black hasn't split yet, it splits; if blue and green haven't
split yet, they split.  (8 terms.)

Stage 8.) Reassessment: Pink is thrown in with red or white.  Gray is thrown
in with black.  Orange is thrown in either with red or yellow.  Purple is
thrown in with blue.  Brown is attached to either yellow or black.  Now the
warm and cool terms no longer exist, but rather, other basic terms take on
greater depth.  (6 terms)

Stage 9) [From here on it's fuzzy.]  Usually brown separates first, so it's
its own term, so we have: Black, white, red, yellow, blue, green and brown.
(7 terms)

Stage 10) Gray is usually the next to go, so it becomes its own term.  (8
terms)

Stage 11) Either orange or pink is the next most likely candidate; usually
orange. (9 terms)

Stage 12) Whichever one didn't become its own term from 11, becomes one now.
(10 terms)

Stage 13) And finally (and this I remember), purple, oddly enough, is usually
the very last one to separate.  (11 terms)  [They say our word came from the
dye used that came from a "purpur" fish, or something.]

    So, if realistic is what you're looking for, this is what's normal in
color term development in natural languages.  A system with red, green, blue
and yellow is highly unlikely.  It could be very likely with black and white,
though, provided the "warm" and "cool" distinctions were disambiguated, the
extraneous terms being attached to one of the six.
    And, of course, there are exceptions.  There's a language that had a word
for warm colors, cool colors, red and pink.  Why pink?  Because there was a
particular type of shell that was pink that was used for currency, and the
name for "pink" came from none other than that shell.  There are also a lot
of variants to the diagram.  What I typed up is the most likely.  That "Grue"
term, however, is sometimes kept all the way up to stage 9, 10 or 11.  I also
know of a particular case in which there's 9 color terms: every term except
white and pink are referred to with the same term, and red and orange
another.  Now, they can distinguish these colors, but they still use the same
term.

    <<But I'm finding it hard to perceive purple as either a variety of red
or blue.>>

    There are a lot of people who see purple as a variety of blue.  I've
found if you get a large group of English speakers together, they'd be hard
pressed to decide on whether something is blue or purple (this happens a lot
with my friends and I when we watch Laker games on TV.  We all know they're
supposed to be purple, and in person they actually are, but those things
really look blue).

<<The other question is whether I should add to the basic colors. There
aren't many commonly occurring saturated colors that the existing scheme
doesn't cover adequately, but "sky blue" as distinct from deeper shades of
blue could be a useful one.>>

    If you want to make the language look like a real language, the answer is
no, you shouldn't add basic color terms; there are just the eleven.  But it's
the latter part of this statement that interests me.  You know,
super-saturated blue is NOT "basic blue", or focal blue.  Focal blue IS sky
blue, or what we English speakers call sky blue.  Somehow, in English, all
our basic linguistic color terms refer to colors that are darker than the
actual, scientifically tested focal colors.  This is true of blue, green,
purple, orange, pink and brown, for sure.  Black and white, definitely not
(you've either got black or white), gray probably not, red and yellow I'm not
sure.  But the first six I listed I'm sure about.  Oh, and what they mean by
"focal color" is that scientists found that, given these colors, only the,
for instance, blue receptors were firing for focal blue, no other receptors.
For basic blue in English, there are black receptors firing, and a little bit
of red.  In other words, the focal colors are colors that can't be like any
other color, they're just that color.
    So, the specific ones you mentioned--sky blue, pale green, tan--are
actually the focal colors, not the blue, green and brown English speakers
grow up with.  That is, assuming you're a native English speaker.  :)  If
not, so sorry.

-David

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