Synchronic variability and diachronic change in basic color terms

In this chapter, I determine Iron Ossetic1's basic color terms and the place of the Iron Ossetic2 system in the evolutionary sequence of the development of basic color terms. I examine the semantics and use of basic and non-basic color terms, morphological and lexical color modifiers, the main patterns used to describe color in modern Ossetic as well as connotations of color terms. I conclude by comparing the peculiarities of the Ossetic color system with the systems of some other Iranian languages. This study is based on the methodology proposed by A. Majid, F. Jordan, and M. Dunn (2011). The Ossetic material is taken from the field data collected in North Ossetia, Russia, and data from the Ossetic corpora3.

The article is written in the tradition of Brent Berlin and Paul Kay’s theory of basic color terms. According to this theory there is a universal inventory of eleven basic color categories from which the basic color terms of any given language are always drawn. The number of basic color terms varies from 2 to 11 and in a language having a fully developed color system there are eleven basic color terms: white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange and gray . The studies about basic color terms in sign languages show that lexicalization of basic color terms in sign languages follows the same pattern found in spoken languages. The current study is the first close study on the color terminology in Estonian Sign Language. The survey was carried out in summer 2005 and consisted of three tasks, following Davies and Corbett’s field method: the list task, the City University color vision test and the color-naming task. Fifty ESL users from different parts of Estonia were interviewed for the study. The collected data shows that the BCT hierarchy is clearly displayed in Estonian Sign Language and it may be concluded that Estonian Sign Language is a Stage VII language and has nine basic color terms: black , white , red , yellow , green , blue , gray , brown and pink / purple .

The goal of the paper is to analyze Yakut color terms from an etymological perspective. In all, fifty-one color terms have been collected from different Yakut dictionaries and electronic sources. The terms show a heterogeneous picture: the basic color terms are of Common Turkic origin (e.g. küöx ‘blue’, qara ‘black’, kïhïl ‘red’) representing the archaic features, some basic color terms are absent in other Modern Turkic languages due to internal developments involving special Turkic or specifically Yakut suffixes (e.g. saharxay ‘yellow’, kïtarxay ‘red’). The largest group of Yakut color terms includes Mongolic loanwords, most of which are connected to the colors of animals (especially horses), which prove the Mongolic influence on the Yakut lifestyle. Another part of the paper considers the special suffixes in Yakut forming adjectives designating shades of colors, which have a mixed, i.e. Turkic and Mongolic origin. The paper tries to shed light on the way color terms may play in determining the place of the Yakut language among the Turkic languages.

A colour-term elicitation task was used to estimate basic colour terms (BCTs) in three Spanish dialects. In Castilian (spoken in Spain) and Mexican, eleven BCTs were identified, compared to twelve in Uruguayan, including celeste “sky blue”. The six primary BCTs and three derived BCTs appeared identical in all three dialects; however, terms for “brown” and “purple” revealed dialectal variation. An Extremes naming task was used to estimate the equivalence relation between BCT counterparts in the three dialects. A Boundary delimitation task was employed to demarcate boundaries of the basic colour categories in a*b*-plane of CIELAB. The task enabled mapping the denotata of the Uruguayan-specific BCT celeste. Results are discussed in the framework of the debate of universal versus language-specific factors.

According to Berlin and Kay, there is a set of 11 universal basic color terms: White, Black, Red, Green, Yellow, Blue, Brown, Purple, Pink, Orange, and Gray. To approve this, a world survey (WCS) was begun to gather data on color categorization through the world, although, despite many languages, Persian language has not been studied so far. We report a study of color naming in Iran. A study was carried out in six major cities including: Tehran, Isfahan, Mashhad, Yazd, Rasht, and Shiraz to investigate the color naming for Persian language and also the effect of local culture. The main purpose of this study was to describe the basic color terms of Persian language and to verify Berlin and Kay's theory. In total, 200 subjects were studied from all the six cities. Our results showed that there were the same basic color terms (as Berlin and Kay's theory) in Persian language overall including:“ (White) ”,“ (Black) ”, “ (Red) ”, “ (Green) ”, “ (Yellow) ”, “ (Blue) ”, “ (Brown) ”, “ (Purple) ”, “ (Pink) ”, “ (Orange), ” and “ (Gray) ”. However, this was not valid for all the cities when they were investigated individually. There were 10 basic terms in Mashhad and Shiraz while the other cities had 11 basic terms. Also, the set of the used terms would differ by the city. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 40, 352–360, 2015

Russian reduplicated constructions with colour terms have never previously been an object of a comprehensive corpus study. Nevertheless, they present considerable interest for a researcher because comparative ability of colour terms to be reduplicated reflects their semantic and pragmatic differences, whereas semantics and pragmatics of reduplication construction are revealed in the properties of colour terms that can fill its slots. Thus, the goal of the paper is to study semantic and pragmatic properties of Russian colour terms and Russian syntactic reduplication construction by analyzing their co-occurrence. We apply corpus methods to the data from the Russian National Corpus, RuTenTen Corpus on Sketch Engine and RuSkell corpus. We analyze absolute corpus frequencies and collocation patterns of Russian non-reduplicated colour terms, as well as their relative frequencies and collocation patterns in the construction of syntactic reduplication with a hyphen ( belyj-belyj ‘white-white, very white, spotlessly white’). Drawing on this data, we establish that absolute frequencies of non-reduplicated colour terms in Russian reflect both Anna Wierzbicka’s “universals of visual semantics”, as well as certain language and culture-specific tendencies, as evidenced by the prominence of goluboj ‘light blue’ and ryzhij ‘carroty-red’ in Russian. We also argue that the Russian reduplication construction with a hyphen ( belyj-belyj ‘white-white) is semantically and prosodically different from the construction of repetition with a comma ( belyj , belyj ‘white, white’). The former has the meaning of high degree, and thus attracts only gradable colour terms, such as belyj ‘white’, chernyj ‘black’, sinij ‘medium to dark blue’, and other basic colour terms. There are additional factors that influence colour term reduplication. Collocation patterns suggest that colour terms that co-occur with the names of culturally and cognitively salient objects, such as denotations of human appearance (face, hands, skin, eyes, hair) or landscape features (sea, sky, fire, grass) are more likely to be reduplicated. Moreover, aesthetic or emotional evaluation of such objects (‘blue-blue eyes’, ‘green-green grass’) is also a factor that is conducive to their occurrence in the construction of reduplication. Our findings establish the importance of corpus methods in the study of colour terms and reduplication, demonstrate that the use and interpretation of lexical and syntactic items hinges both on semantic and pragmatic factors, and add to the understanding of semantics and pragmatics of Russian colour terms and reduplication construction.

Basic perceptual abilities are universal, and most people can distinguish between millions of distinct shades. However, languages differ in the set of basic color terms (BCTs) they have. Despite numerous prior studies, the exact number of BCTs in Mandarin (Sino‐Tibetan) and Spanish (Indo‐European) is still debated. In Mandarin, this number varies from 6 to 11, whereas in Spanish there are about 11 or 12 BCTs. Additionally, differences between these two languages can be expected with regard to the differing usage of BCTs in reference to color, as well as the naming strategies used for specifying references. To clarify this, we recruited a group of Mainland Mandarin speakers and a group of Castilian Spanish speakers and assessed them in two related tasks: the list task, in which participants were asked to write down as many color names as they could recall; and the color‐naming task, in which they were asked to name color chips from the Munsell color chart that were presented randomly. Our results suggest that Mandarin has nine BCTs, while Spanish has 12 BCTs. Furthermore, we found that Mandarin speakers use more modified terms and compounds to achieve precise color reference, whereas Spanish speakers rely more on monomorphemic non‐basic terms. Finally, we observed that Mandarin speakers use some colors (gray, blue, and purple) less consistently; although, the color space is partitioned similarly by these two languages. Our results reinforce the view that there are universal constraints on color naming that are compatible with subtle cross‐cultural differences in how colors are used.

Previous research into metaphors containing colour terms has focused on the primary basic colour terms, yet examples can also be found with the secondary basic and non-basic colour terms. A case study of the colour terms purple and lavender is presented here. Situated within the Mapping Metaphor project, this analysis utilizes the unique data source, the Historical Thesaurus. In addition to thesaurus data, dictionaries were consulted to establish the etymologies of metaphorical phrases. Finally, corpus evidence was used to establish current usage of such phrases.

The object of this study is an analysis of the lexical means employed in the naming of colors, focusing especially on the form, function, and meaning of these color terms in the German language. Fashion magazines were used as source material for the research. The choice of magazines was determined by the high frequency of color terms. The basic color terms proved to be the most frequently exploited lexical means to describe one color, although it had been hypothetically assumed that there would be a quantitative preponderance of word formation structures, syntactic groups, and transferred designations. The decisive factor in the high frequency of basic color terms is their ability to function in a variety of ways. Not only as they describe a particular color of a garment, they are also increasingly used to express prediction and color trends, which is achieved by nominalization. But the goal has not always been a denotative correctness – rather the conveying of positive connotation.

The role of perception, language, and preference in the developmental acquisition of basic color terms

We explored sociolectic differences in color lexicon of Russian speakers. The study aim was twofold: (i) to investigate the influence of growing competence in individuals professionally working with color (henceforth: “color professionals”) on the pattern of color names and (ii) to compare color-naming patterns in groups of participants with different levels of professional competence (beginner, intermediate, and advanced). For intergroup comparison, we employed the following indices: (1) frequency of occurrence of recurring color terms; (2) number of words in color descriptors; (3) occurrences of basic color terms (BCTs), monolexemic nonBCTs, and polylexemic BCT-derivatives; and (4) the scope of objects used as color-term referents. An unconstrained color-naming method was used in an online experiment, with total 600 standardized color stimuli presented across respondents. Final dataset contained 48,687 responses of 1,737 native Russian speakers (1,204 females, 526 males), with different levels of color expertise and aged between 16 and 95 years. Results show that both color vocabulary and linguistic patterns of naming color change considerably with respondents increasing professional experience and expertise. Specifically, the growing color competence is reflected in advanced specificity of naming colors; prevalence of complex patterns of color descriptors that contain greater number of nonBCTs, along with BCTs; greater variety of modifiers and emotionally-laden linguistic components, and professionally-specific object referents, such as dyes, pigments and paint brand names.

We report a field study of the colour terms of the Bantu language Ndebele. The main purposes of the study were to describe the Ndebele colour term inventory, and to determine which colour terms were basic in order to test Berlin & Kay's theory of colour universals. A sample of school children and a sample of adults from Matabeleland performed a list task ('tell me as many colour terms as you know') in order to identify Ndebele colour terms and to establish the relative salience of the terms. The adults also took part in a low resolution colour mapping task which provided a preliminary estimate of the range of referents of each term. Our results show that Ndebele has four definite basic terms: terms for white, black, red and green with blue (grue). In addition, the children had a basic term for yellow, and as this term was taught formally in school, it may eventually become basic for the majority of the population. Both sets of basic terms are consistent with Berlin & Kay's theory.

In Basic color terms, Brent Berlin and Paul Kay propose that ‘there exist universally for humans eleven basic perceptual color categories, which serve as the psychophysical referents of the eleven or fewer basic color terms in any language’ (1991[1969]: 104). Later research has not invalidated this claim, although their evolutionary ‘encoding sequence’ has subsequently been modified (Fig. 25). The ‘perceptual’ and ‘psychophysical’ component of their theory has been investigated in relation to ethnographic and other materials, and synthesized by Kay and Chad McDaniel (1978: esp. 617 n. 4, 620 n. 5; see further Cole and Scribner 1974: 43–50; Tornay 1978; von Wattenwyl 1979).

The ancient Egyptian language possesses 4 basic color terms; painting uses 7 and later 9 polychrome colors. These sets correspond to Stages Ilia, V, and VII (incomplete) of the Berlin and Kay encoding sequence for language, and support the theory of 11 “basic perceptual color categories.” The categories are probably available only through progressive differentiation. The use of color in pictorial representation fits an “active” rather than a “response” model for this expansion. The separation of color use and color terminology has significant cognitive implications.

The aim of this paper is to present colour terms used by scientists in the field of astrophysics. We take into consideration both basic and non-basic colour terms – as understood by Berlin and Kay (1969). The research material, compiled in a corpus with AntConc, consists of abstracts published in selected astrophysical journals. The corpus size is 2,319,787 words. The most frequent basic colour term found in the abstracts is black (612 occurrences), followed by white (167), red (160), blue (111) and green (98). It appears that the frequent word combinations in which these and other colour words are used happen to be specialized terms whose formation involved metaphorical or metonymic processes, e.g. red giant, white dwarf, red planet, red noise and blue straggler.