Linguistic structure and non-linguistic cognition: English and Russian blues compared

Abstract

Abstract The influence of linguistic structure on non-linguistic cognition was investigated by comparing Russian and English behaviour on tasks involving the blue region of colour space. Russians differentiate this region into sinji (“dark blue”) and goluboj (“light blue”); a number of behavioural differences were predicted if these are two basic categories. First, in choosing the most different colour from a triad of colours across the sinij-goluboj boundary, Russians were predicted to “stretch” distances between pairs of colours from different lexical categories and to “shrink” distances between pairs from the same category. Second, in judging the similarity between pairs of colours, Russians were predicted to maximise perceived similarity between pairs from the same category while minimising perceived similarity of pairs from contrasting categories. Third, asked to sort an array of blue colours into groups, Russians were expected to separate light and dark blues more often than English subjects for who...