Basic Color Terms (1)

8/11/2019 Basic Color Terms (1)

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I. THEORITICAL BACKGROUND

1.1. Basic color terms

1.1.1. Focal color

A focal color is a shade of a certain color category that

represents the best example of this category.

(http://www.glottopedia.org/index.php/Focal_Colors )Different languages were believed to classify colours in

more or less random ways.

Focal colours are basically the same across languages:

They are determined not by language, but by the physiology

of colour perception.

Ex: hunghongluobo which translates as 'red turnip'.
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1.2. Implicational H ierarchy of basic color terms:

Focal colors across languages: their variation

follows a systematic pattern


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Non-implicational: All languages have two terms for white and black

Implicational:

Every language has at least two basic color terms: dark (black) andlight (white)

Languages with three color terms add red

Languages with four color terms add greenor yellow

Fifth color term: either greenor yellow

Sixth color term: blue

Seventh color term: brown

The rest: purple, pink, orangeor gray

A language: from two to eleven basic color terms.

The table is based on focal colours and tells us little about the actual

range of each colour term in a given language.


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The number of color terms in a given language

influences the range of colors:

Two color terms:

Ex: The Indonesian language Lani:

"white": light and warm colors, including red and

yellow.

"black": dark and cool colors, including green and blue.

Basic color terms: simple terms that speakers

easily recall and not cover colors that are within the

range of other color terms.


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1.2.1. Compar ison between color terms in

Vietnamese and English

According to Jamerson, K. A & Alvarado, N (2001):Difference between color naming and colorsequence in English and Vietnamese.

Subjects: All monolingual English and somebilingual Vietnamese and Monolingual Vietnameseparticipants in San Diego, USA.

Results: Differences in color naming between theEnglish and Vietnamese languages are thecategorization of orange, blue, and green.


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English Vietnamese

Blue & Green Two different categories A single category name

(xanh),

-> modify:xanh la cay, or

leaf green, compared to

xanh nuoc bien, or ocean

blue.

Orange A distinct category A modified term for

yellow

Vietnamese has 9 color terms: en, trng, , vng, xanh, nu,

hngv xm whereas English has 11 color terms: black, white, red,

green,yellow, blue, brown, orange, pink, purple/violet and gray/grey


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2. Color naming across languages

2.1. Hypothesis of basic color terms andcategorization

2.1.1. Hypothesis of basic color terms

A restricted universal inventory of suchcategories

A language adds Basic Colors Term (BCT) in a

constrained order, interpret as an evolutionarysequence.

(Berlin and Kay (1969)


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Changes of hypothesis on The Dani people:

Two-term systems contain:

+ Terms for dark and light shades regardless of hue

+ One term covering white, red and yellow and one

term covering black, green and blue, that is, a

category of white plus warmcolors versus one ofblack plus coolcolors.

Focused not only in white and black, but

sometimes at the foci of red or yellow, and ofgreen or blue.

(Rosch (Heider,1972a, 1972b)


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B&K conceived basic color categories: foci and extensions and

expressed the evolutionary sequence of hypothesis (2) as a

sequence of constraints on the successive encoding of foci.

Roschs finding: Composite categories have multiple foci-a

major reason for the reconception of the evolutionary sequence

in terms of successive divisions of the color space

(K&McD) modeled these successive divisions of the color

space as fuzzy partitions:

+ interpret individual color categories as fuzzy sets

+ define the notion of fuzzy partition in terms of a (standard) set

of fuzzy sets.


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2.2. Basic color categories

Type 1: the six fundamental categories (black,white, red, yellow, green, blue.)

Type 2: the composites: fuzzy unions of the

fundamentals (white/warmand black/coolaswell as several categories comprised by unionsof pairs of the six fundamentals.)

Type 3: derivedcategories defined in terms ofthe fuzzy intersections of the fundamentals:

Basic Color Terms (1)

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