Re: Survey(?) of ConLangs' Calendars and Colors and Kinterms

On 01.11.2005, at 16:28, Carsten Becker wrote:

> I've once had a PDF, though, where they said that there are
> certain tendencies which colours a language has independend
> terms for when it has specific basic colours. I just can't
> find it ATM, because it's on some CD. It's also curious that
> some languages lump green and blue into one group.
Since this was just mentioned in my linguistics classes, I've
got some material here that says that (according to Berlin & Kay
who examined 98 languages), there are 11 basic color terms and
their distribution is the following:

I: white and black (none of the 98 languages didn't have these)
II: I + red
IIIa/b: II + yellow or green
IV: II + yellow and green
V: IV + blue
VI: V + brown
VII: VI + any of these: purple, pink, orange, grey (no language
had more than 11 basic (monomorphemic?) color terms).

(That's a total of 22 possibilities, whereas there would be 2048
possibilities to pick any of these 11 basic color terms.)

As for "lumping green and blue into one group", those who only
have one term for both green and blue, still agree on a "typical"
hue of this color, which would then be what we (who have seperate
terms) would perceive as some kind of green.

> > What set of monomorphemic color terms does your conlang
> > and/or conculture include?
>
>  macárya - black     tuvo - red
>  maca - white        piha - yellow
>  camaya - gray       leno - blue
>                      dano - green
>
>  aruno - brown       avirang - golden
>  canto - turquoise   idian - silver
>  velato - orange     sarvo - copper
>
> Beige would be "light orange" or something. I haven't
> thought very much about the colours yet. Or should I kick
> out turqoise and put in beige instead?
Berlin & Kay would suggest you purple and pink ;-)

Greetings from Potsdam, Germany
Daniel "Asserbo" Quernheim

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