Re: Futurese: Colours

En réponse à Javier BF <uaxuctum@...>:

>
>
> >Yellow is also more significant than other colors because our eyes
> are
> more
> >sensitive to wavelengths of light in that general range.
>
> The experiments to determine which wavelengths our
> eyes are more sensitive to, with speakers of which
> languages were made? And which colours were more
> present in their daily life or were important for
> their culture? I have doubts that such experiments
> have ever been made outside Western countries or
> countries where Western culture has had considerable
> influence. Had any such experiment ever been made
> with Amazonian Indians, Australian Aborigines or
> Eskimos, the results would most probably differ
> from those you may get from Westerners.
>
The experiments referred to are experiments on the actual physical response of
the retina to colour stimuli (before treatment by the neural cortex) rather
than experiments on the subjective perception of colours by a subject (those
experiments exist too, and were done with people from many different origins,
including those you cited. I remember a link to something about them had been
given on the list something like a year ago). Physically speaking, a normal eye
(not one suffering from colour-blindedness) has a sensitivity curve with a
maximum around yellow. And this is really the physiological response of the eye
before treatment by the cortex, and thus cannot depend on the native language
of the person. Of course, everyone has a slightly different curve, but the
maximum is always around the same place.

> It's the same as if they take a bunch of English
> speakers and made with them an experiment to see
> which phonetic our ears are more sensitive to.
Our ears have a sensitivity curve which is nearly universal. It's how our
cortex treats the information it gets which depends on the native language. Our
language doesn't modify the ear itself. Here again, except for pathological
cases, everyone has about the same sensitivity curve. The subjective
perception, on the other hand, is really language-dependent, that's true.

> Obviously, the ears of an English speaker have been
> "tuned" to be more sensitive to certain sound features
> than others: those that are relevant for English
> phonology, while became "deaf" to those that aren't.
Our ear isn't the problem here. It's our cortex which is "deaf": it just
doesn't treat information that it usually doesn't find relevant. That's why
this "tuning" you're talking about is modifiable. An English speaker,
completely immerged in a !Xu speaking neighbourhood, will after a while (which
can range from a few weeks to a few years depending on the person) be able to
recognise all the different kinds of clicks the language used, while it at
first was probably hardly able to hear them.

> But if you then take a bunch of Japanese the results
> of your experiment will be completely different.
> Similarly, our eyes have been "tuned" to be more
> sensitive to the colour differences and categorizations
> that are relevant for our language, while became
> "blind" to those that aren't.
>
Our eyes are identical cross-linguistically and cross-culturally. Or else the
phenomenon you describe of your own "retuning" of your own eyes would be
impossible.

It stays true, nevertheless, that eyes have a physical sensitivity curve which
is maximum around the yellow, and minimal around cold hues. Physically, the eye
(and that's true for anyone without pathological problems) is able to
differentiate more hues around yellow than around cyan. It's the cortex which
treats the information in such a way that it may even inverse the tendency. It
doesn't change the physical universal truth.

I come from a school which has an extremely good laboratory working
specifically on those things, so you can trust me when I say this. My sources
are my physiology classes :))) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.