Abstract
The aim of this study was to describe the basic colour terms (BCTs) of Arabic and, in particular, clarify the relationship among the three Arabic terms for blue: azrock, samawee, and khuhlie that suggested a BCTs in Arabic language in Al-rasheed et al. (2013). Data were collected from adult native Arabic speakers (30 male and 27 female) age between 18 and 34 years old, with a mean age of 21.67 years (SD = 2.98). All were under and postgraduate students at King Saud University. Participants task was to group the 320 colours by similarity. Based on this result, Arabic probably has eleven basic colour terms and these correspond with Berlin and Kay’s eleven universal categories. The terms are that ahmar “red”, akhdar “green”, asfer, “yellow”, azrock “blue”, asswed “black”, abiyadh “white”, banafsagee “purple”, boartoogaalee “orange”, bonee “brown”, wardee “pink” and rassasee. In addition, the terms of particular interest—samawee (“light blue”) had the next highest claim to being basic and may deserve further investigating.
Highlights
This paper reports a study of the “basic colour terms” (BCTs) of Arabic conducted within the framework of Berlin & Kay’s (1969) theory of universal colour categories
Stimuli Stimuli were the original A4 grid used for the world colour survey (WCS) which consisted of a series of 320 coloured rectangles (7 × 5 mm) formed in a rectangular grid shape
A name for each of the 320 Munsell chips in the WCS colour chart was obtained for each participant
Summary
This paper reports a study of the “basic colour terms” (BCTs) of Arabic conducted within the framework of Berlin & Kay’s (1969) theory of universal colour categories. Previous work by Al-rasheed, Al-mohimeed & Davies, 2013 had suggested that Arabic might have more than one BCT for the blue region—azrock “blue”, samawee “light blue” and khuhlie “dark-blue”—and a subsidiary aim was to investigate this possibility. The essence of Berlin and Kay’s (1969) theory is that, languages vary in the numbers of basic terms. How to cite this paper: Al-rasheed, A. Further Evidence for Arabic Basic Colour Categories.
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