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

I read the Berlin and Kay book from which this study is taken, and did a
major critique of it for my philology course. I have many reservations about
their conclusions. For instance, there are languages (Hawaiian is an
excellent example) that classify colour terms not only on the basis of
"wavelength" but also on the basis of the material, mood, or all sorts of
other criteria. Hawaiian has several terms which all translate 'black' but
which differ as to whether you are talking about the black of dyed cloth,
lava, or whatever. Welsh uses at least three words for the broad idea of
'green' (gwyrdd/ir/glas), one of which (glas) also means 'blue'. It also
uses 'llwyd' to mean certain sorts of brown as well as grey. Grey may also
be translated by glas... So who decides which one of these is the basic
term? Berlin and Kay used coloured plastic tiles for their survey. Maybe
some of their respondents gave replies based not only on wavelength but also
on the hardness of the material.
Mike
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----- Original Message -----
From: David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2005 6:36 PM
Subject: Re: Survey(?) of ConLangs' Calendars and Colors and Kinterms


> Daniel wrote:
> <<
> 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.)
>  >>
>
> You know, now that I'm taking typology, I've been wondering
> about this study specifically...  Did you read the article, or was
> the data just presented in class?  I'm wondering how balanced
> their sample was.
>
> Also, I think it's been brought up before, but doesn't Russian
> have two monomorphemic/psychologically basic words for
> blue: one light blue, the other dark blue?
>
> -David
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