[TravLang] Color Terms (fwd)
Danny Wier
Taliesin the storyteller forwarded a message from Kenji Schwarz:
>One of the more interesting cross-linguistic "universals" that have
been
>discovered is in the distribution of color terms. Berlin and Kay wrote
a
>book on this, _Basic Color Terms_ (1968? '69?) which is worth a read in
>itself. Basically, they compared a large number of languages' basic
color
>terms -- i.e., those that aren't borrowed from a term for a specific
object
>or state, like "orange" (<fruit name) or "violet" (<flower name) or
>"amber", "saffron", "ebony" etc. -- and found that there's a definite
>sequence cross-linguistically.
>
>
> 1) white | black
>
> 2) red
>
> 3) green | yellow
>
> 4) blue
>
> 5) brown
>
> 6) purple | pink | orange | grey
>
>That is, if a given language has two color terms, they're "white" and
>"black". If it has three, they'll be "white", "black", and "red.
Four,
>and they'll be W, Bk, R and either "green" or "yellow". Five, you have
all
>of W, Bk, R, G, Y. Before you have terms for "blue", a language has
both
>"green" and "yellow". Etc.
My theory on why: black and white are of course the chromatic extremes,
referring to darkness and light. Red is blood and many other things,
and we all have blood. Green and yellow are closely related obviously;
these are typical plant/fruit colors. The easiest blue to find is in
the sky above us, and in most bodies of water. Brown of course is earth
and a good bit animal life, and skin color is various shades of brown,
and the other colors are "miscellaneous".
Of those last four, they seem to be "off whites" (except for the purple,
unless the purple happens to be a lavender, puce, mauve, fuchsia), or
just "off colors" (orange is "off-yellow", purple is "off-blue", pink is
"off-red", gray is "dark white" or "light black"). Whatever the case;
they're less common than the others.
Could this also have to do with either how children learn to recognize
colors, or how animals became able to see color as they evolved... any
thoughts?
(I reckon a maximum of twelve native words for colors -- common colors
as the case would be. I separate, as Russian does, blue into "dark
blue" and "light blue"; I like to add a greenish tint and have "cyan"
for the latter. Or could one go higher?)
Danny
Gustavo Eulalio
On: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 11:52:36 +0100
about: [TravLang] Color Terms (fwd)
taliesin the storyteller wrote:
=---------=---------=---------=---------=
> 1) white | black
>
> 2) red
>
> 3) green | yellow
>
> 4) blue
>
> 5) brown
>
> 6) purple | pink | orange | grey
>
> #1a: Gvegh? We know Vargr have "less acute" color vision than
> humans...
> #1b: Trokh? K'kree?
>
> Question #2: If it does, how far up the distribution does its basic color
> terms extend?
You know, light rages from infrared to ultraviolet. Let's take
the rainbow colors to see how things work: red, orange, yellow, green,
cyan, blue, violet.
Many animals see more than just this rage, and others see less.
But that doesn't mean they don't know the colors we do, it depends on
how their brains decodes the eyes' informations. If an animal perceives
only from orange to blue, his brain may interpret blue as violet and
orange as red, ans he'll "see" the same raange of colors we do.
The same may occur with better visions, only they see a wider
range of frequencies.
Maybe I'm wrong, and they only see part of the colors. Who
knows? Maybe it depends on their sun, does it irradiate all the range of
colors?
So, it depends on how you'll want them to see the world.
________
| ______| Gustavo Eulalio M. Cabral
| | ____
| | |__ | gu...@cgnet.com.br
| | __| | ICQ#: 7096421
|_| |____| http://www.cgnet.com.br/~guga/
BRAD COON
Nova has 13 basic color terms as well as 5 expressing
darkness/lightness and 4 more expressing color saturation.
When incorporated into a word, only the simple color
morphemes are used but when colors are seperate
stand alone statives (no adjectives in Nova), they
take the full suite.
The basic color terms are for these colors;
black, blue, brown, green, grey, olive green,
orange, pink, purple, red, violet, white, and
yellow.
The darkness/lightness terms are for;
dark, light, medium, very dark, very light.
And the saturations are;
grayish, moderate, strong, vivid.
I have experimented with doing the same sort of thing
for scent terms, my speakers have more sensitive noses,
but it has been more difficult.
*******************************************************
Brad Coon
CO...@CVAX.IPFW.INDIANA.EDU
http://www.ipfw.indiana.edu/east1/coon/web/index.htm
"Do'netyokit su do'sa'na'kit." (Live boldly but wisely.)
Nowan proverb
********************************************************
Cliff Crawford
On Thu, 22 Jan 1998, Danny Wier wrote:
> Could this also have to do with either how children learn to recognize
> colors, or how animals became able to see color as they evolved... any
> thoughts?
That's sort of what I was thinking...Humans have three types of
color-receptive cells in their retinas, and they're most strongly
receptive to purple, green, and yellow-green light respectively (tho they
actually respond to a wide range around those peaks). I don't quite see
how this might cause the linguistic color universals, tho.
--Cliff
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/cjc26/
Danny Wier
Cliff Crawford wrote:
I thought there were two types of "cones" (color receptors; the "rods"
are light-dark light sensors) myself, and green are yellow-green are
pretty close. There are two common types of color blindness. The more
common is when one has difficulty with differentiating between red and
green; the other is in having trouble with blue and yellow.
But if they are three types of cones, then I would see that the effect
would be like a video recorder, which captures three different colors of
light, except that the primary colors of light are red, blue (actually a
more "indigo" blue), and green. I wonder if the green (not the
yellow-green) is more toward blue -- like a "cyan" perhaps, and the
yellow-green receptor is more yellow-green. If that's so, then the
cones would work with something close to the three primary colors of
pigmentation -- magenta, yellow, and cyan. But the eye sees light; it
does not see pigmentation (which is anti-light).
That would definitely affect the human percetion of light and what
account for the basic colors and that would affect linguistic theory, as
well as conlangs and IAL's designed for fictitious or real humans.
If these three color receptors worked simply as on or off switches, we'd
see eight colors: black (000), white (111) and the six others in
between, primary and secondary colors. If the color receptors had a
middle (0.5) position, then that would yield a combination of
twenty-seven colors, including gray (all switches set at
half-on/half-off).
So are these colors that the cones of the human eye detects pretty much
the same for everybody, or do they vary from person to person (i.e. the
peak wavelength or frequency) and how do the three colors tend to be
distributed on the spectrum? Remember, light is made of waves, and
different pure light waves are like pure fundamental tones in music.
Combinations of these waves produce "chords" that produce new colors,
and some "notes" are stronger than others. Black is "silence"; white is
"white noise".
Something to think about not only in science, but in linguistic theory.
Danny