An exploration of malayalam basic and nonbasic color terms during a color naming task and in naturalistic narratives

Abstract

AbstractLanguages show variations in their basic color terms [Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press; 1969]. Evidence for languages that have or lack basic color terms mainly comes from standardized naming tasks [The World Color Survey. Stanford, CA: CSLI; 2010]. In this article, we take a somewhat different perspective on the issue of color naming in languages. Starting from a language, Malayalam, with a limited number of basic color terms, and thus with a mixed color naming system, we ask how language users behave when they are asked to produce spontaneous narratives in a communicative setting in which color is manipulated systematically. Do narrators behave as predicted by naming task results and grammars, or do they behave (systematically) differently? In this article, we explore how two different color naming settings affect the expression of colors that have basic color terms in contrast with nonbasic terms. For this purpose, a color naming task was administered to validate basic and nonbasic color terms in Malayalam. The result showed that Malayalam has six colors considered simple color terms (e.g., chuvappu ‘red’) and five complex color terms (e.g., tavittu‐niram brown “color of rice bran”). This result was used to develop eight short stories in two color term conditions. The color terms extracted out from “naturalistic narratives” were more varied than those that were predicted by the color naming task. In the Malayalam primary color condition, respondents often used complex constructions rather than simple color terms only [e.g., chuvappu niram(ulla)]. In the secondary color condition, respondents, as expected, used more complex constructions, but they also avoided complex constructions in interesting ways. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 42, 193–202, 2017