Basic Color Terms Research Articles

The modern Japanese color lexicon.

Despite numerous prior studies, important questions about the Japanese color lexicon persist, particularly about the number of Japanese basic color terms and their deployment across color space. Here, 57 native Japanese speakers provided monolexemic terms for 320 chromatic and 10 achromatic Munsell color samples. Through k-means cluster analysis we revealed 16 statistically distinct Japanese chromatic categories. These included eight chromatic basic color terms (aka/red, ki/yellow, midori/green, ao/blue, pink, orange, cha/brown, and murasaki/purple) plus eight additional terms: mizu ("water")/light blue, hada ("skin tone")/peach, kon ("indigo")/dark blue, matcha ("green tea")/yellow-green, enji/maroon, oudo ("sand or mud")/mustard, yamabuki ("globeflower")/gold, and cream. Of these additional terms, mizu was used by 98% of informants, and emerged as a strong candidate for a 12th Japanese basic color term. Japanese and American English color-naming systems were broadly similar, except for color categories in one language (mizu, kon, teal, lavender, magenta, lime) that had no equivalent in the other. Our analysis revealed two statistically distinct Japanese motifs (or color-naming systems), which differed mainly in the extension of mizu across our color palette. Comparison of the present data with an earlier study by Uchikawa & Boynton (1987) suggests that some changes in the Japanese color lexicon have occurred over the last 30 years.

A Cognitive Approach to the Metonymy and Metaphor-Based Study of “Black” in English

According to the contemporary theories, metonymy and metaphor are two major types of word meaning extension, which reveal how people perceive unfamiliar, abstract concepts via familiar, concrete one on the basis of bodily experience. Through the data of “black” from Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary (6th Edition), under the theories in cognitive linguistics, namely, the prototype theory, conceptual metaphor theory, metonymy theory, this paper takes the basic color term “black” in English as an example to analyze the cognitive semantic structure and summarizes the cause of it. This paper aims to strengthen the accuracy of words meaning and translation as well as the cross-cultural awareness and capacity.

Visualizing color term differences based on images from the web

Abstract Color terms are used to express light spectrum characteristics captured by human vision, and color naming across languages partition color spaces differently. Such partition differences have been surveyed through several empirical experiments that employ Munsell color chips. We propose a novel visualization method for color terms based on thousands of images collected from query results provided by an image search engines such as Google. A series of experiments was conducted using eight basic color terms in seven languages. Pixel values in the images are counted to form color histograms according to the color pallet used in the world color survey. The visualization results can be summarized as follows: (1) Japanese and Korean color terms have wider distributions in the color space than terms in other languages do and (2) color visualizations for color terms pink and brown are affected by their links to proper nouns. Highlights Color terms are visualized with 3D histograms on WCS pallet. Color frequencies are assembled automatically from internet images. Red, orange, and yellow have sharp peaks. French pink has several peaks. Pink and brown are affected by their links to proper nouns. English and French colors have smaller distributions than those of Japanese and Korean.

A similarity‐based cross‐language comparison of basicness and demarcation of “blue” terms

AbstractTo investigate linguistic and perceptual boundaries within the “blue” region of the color gamut, we analyzed sorting data from speakers of six languages who sorted color stimuli by similarity. Two of these languages, Russian and Italian, are thought to have a separate basic color term and category for “light blue,” distinguishing it from “blue,” and the third was English, which lacks this distinction. There has been less study of the possible basicness of “light blue” terms in the other three languages: Lithuanian and Estonian (both spoken in Baltic states) and Udmurt (a linguistic enclave in North Russia). Sorting data from each sample of speakers were analyzed with principal component analysis and multidimensional scaling, reducing them to a pattern of interstimulus similarities. In addition, color‐naming data were collected for five of the languages and confirmed that sorting responses were not simply a reflection of the words used by subjects to label the stimuli. A “clustering index” was created, quantifying the extent of light/dark blue separation and the strength of any category boundary between them; this was low for English‐language participants but high for Russian and Italian. Udmurt and Lithuanian values were also high, whereas Estonian responses were closer to English. Thus, when clustering of blue stimuli is used as an additional indicator of basicness, the results are compatible with earlier evidence that “light blue” is a separate basic color category in Russian and Italian, and further indicate that light blue terms are basic in Udmurt and Lithuanian, but not Estonian. It may be that “blue” categories are especially susceptible to splitting into two under the influence of linguistic contact. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 42, 362–377, 2017

Color in Reference Production: The Role of Color Similarity and Color Codability.

It has often been observed that color is a highly preferred attribute for use in distinguishing descriptions, that is, referring expressions produced with the purpose of identifying an object within a visual scene. However, most of these observations were based on visual displays containing only colors that were maximally different in hue and for which the language of experimentation possessed basic color terms. The experiments described in this paper investigate whether speakers' preference for color is reduced if the color of the target referent is similar to that of the distractors. Because colors that look similar are often also harder to distinguish linguistically, we also examine the impact of the codability of color values. As a third factor, we investigate the salience of available alternative attributes and its impact on the use of color. The results of our experiments show that, while speakers are indeed less likely to use color when the colors in a display are similar, this effect is mostly due to the difficulty in naming similar colors. Color use for color with a basic color term is affected only when the colors of target and distractors are very similar (yet still distinguishable). The salience of our alternative attribute size, manipulated by varying the difference in size between target and distractors, had no impact on the use of color.

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

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

The Acquisition of Basic Color Terms by Young Children Aged 2 to 5

The Acquisition of Basic Color Terms by Young Children Aged 2 to 5

Nazwy kolorów w języku arabskim oraz w języku polskim

This paper discusses ways of naming colors in Polish and Modern Standard Arabic. Assuming synchronic perspective, it reviews similarities and dissimilarities between word-formation systems of both languages. Part one deals with basic color terms and part two with non-basic color terms. It employs color-term classification offered by Berlin and Kay.

Biases and regularities of grapheme-colour associations in Japanese nonsynaesthetic population.

Associations between graphemes and colours in a nonsynaesthetic Japanese population were investigated. Participants chose the most suitable colour from 11 basic colour terms for each of 40 graphemes from the four categories of graphemes used in the Japanese language (kana characters, English alphabet letters, and Arabic and kanji numerals). This test was repeated after a three-week interval. In their responses, which were not as temporally consistent as those of grapheme-colour synaesthetes, participants showed biases and regularities that were comparable to those of synaesthetes reported in past studies. Although it has been believed that only synaesthetes, and not nonsynaesthetes, tended to associate graphemes with colours based on grapheme frequency, Berlin and Kay's colour typology, and colour word frequency, participants in this study tended in part to associate graphemes with colours based on the above factors. Moreover, participants that were nonsynaesthetes tended to associate different graphemes that shared sounds and/or meanings (e.g., Arabic and kanji numerals representing the same number) with the same colours, which was analogous to the findings in Japanese synaesthetes. These results support the view that grapheme-colour synaesthesia might have its origins in cross-modal association processes that are shared with the general population.

Visual Search in the Real World: Color Vision Deficiency Affects Peripheral Guidance, but Leaves Foveal Verification Largely Unaffected.

Background: People with color vision deficiencies report numerous limitations in daily life, restricting, for example, their access to some professions. However, they use basic color terms systematically and in a similar manner as people with normal color vision. We hypothesize that a possible explanation for this discrepancy between color perception and behavioral consequences might be found in the gaze behavior of people with color vision deficiency.Methods: A group of participants with color vision deficiencies and a control group performed several search tasks in a naturalistic setting on a lawn. All participants wore a mobile eye-tracking-driven camera with a high foveal image resolution (EyeSeeCam). Search performance as well as fixations of objects of different colors were examined.Results: Search performance was similar in both groups in a color-unrelated search task as well as in a search for yellow targets. While searching for red targets, participants with color vision deficiencies exhibited a strongly degraded performance. This was closely matched by the number of fixations on red objects shown by the two groups. Importantly, once they fixated a target, participants with color vision deficiencies exhibited only few identification errors.Conclusions: In contrast to controls, participants with color vision deficiencies are not able to enhance their search for red targets on a (green) lawn by an efficient guiding mechanism. The data indicate that the impaired guiding is the main influence on search performance, while foveal identification (verification) is largely unaffected by the color vision deficiency.

The Behaviour of Colour Terms in Jordanian Arabic: Lexical and Grammatical Evidence

The purpose of this paper is to provide grammatical and lexical evidence in support of primary color terms in Jordanian Arabic, henceforth, JA. The general framework is to investigate the behavior of basic color terms in some lexical or grammatical processes and to prove that their behavior supports the division proposed by Kay and McDanial (1978) between primary and derived color terms. The evidence is distilled from various sources including: the templates used for the two groups of color terms, the feminine templates utilized in each group; the plural templates used in each group; reduplication; the parts of speech derived from each color; the variety of color terms; and the frequency of each color in daily usage. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s4p44

Colour Terms in Advertisements

The present article focuses on the peculiarities of the usage of colour terminology in advertisements. We live in a colourful world and there are great many colour words to describe it. We also live in a world where advertisement has become an accompanying phenomenon of our everyday life. It is obvious that the language of advertising has its specific features and it seems worth trying to reveal the role and the meaning of the colours used in advertisements. Colour terms are known to be linguistic universals which have certain associations attached to each of them. We may suppose that the colours that are mostly used in the advertisements are the basic colour terms. The spheres where we expect to find wider usage of colour terms should be the ones connected with fashion industry.

A Linguistic Approach to Categorical Color Assignment for Data Visualization

When data categories have strong color associations, it is useful to use these semantically meaningful concept-color associations in data visualizations. In this paper, we explore how linguistic information about the terms defining the data can be used to generate semantically meaningful colors. To do this effectively, we need first to establish that a term has a strong semantic color association, then discover which color or colors express it. Using co-occurrence measures of color name frequencies from Google n-grams, we define a measure for colorability that describes how strongly associated a given term is to any of a set of basic color terms. We then show how this colorability score can be used with additional semantic analysis to rank and retrieve a representative color from Google Images. Alternatively, we use symbolic relationships defined by WordNet to select identity colors for categories such as countries or brands. To create visually distinct color palettes, we use k-means clustering to create visually distinct sets, iteratively reassigning terms with multiple basic color associations as needed. This can be additionally constrained to use colors only in a predefined palette.

Color Naming Experiment in Mongolian Language

There are numerous researches on color terms and names in many languages. In Mongolian language there are few doctoral theses on color naming. Cross cultural studies of color naming have demonstrated Semantic relevance in French and Mongolian color name Gerlee Sh. (2000); Comparisons of color naming across English and Mongolian Uranchimeg B. (2004); Semantic comparison between Russian and Mongolian idioms Enhdelger O. (1996); across symbolism Dulam S. (2007) and few others. Also a few articles on color naming by some Mongolian scholars are Tsevel, Ya. (1947), Baldan, L. (1979), Bazarragchaa, M. (1997) and others. Color naming studies are not sufficiently studied in Modern Mongolian. Our research is considered to be the first intended research on color naming in Modern Mongolian, because it is one part of Ph.D dissertation on color naming. There are two color naming categories in Mongolian, basic color terms and non- basic color terms. There are seven basic color terms in Mongolian. This paper aims to consider how Mongolian color names are derived from basic colors by using psycholinguistics associative experiment. It maintains the students and researchers to acquire the specific understanding of the differences and similarities of color naming in Mongolian and English languages from the psycho-linguistic aspect.

Why some colors appear more memorable than others: A model combining categories and particulars in color working memory.

Categorization with basic color terms is an intuitive and universal aspect of color perception. Yet research on visual working memory capacity has largely assumed that only continuous estimates within color space are relevant to memory. As a result, the influence of color categories on working memory remains unknown. We propose a dual content model of color representation in which color matches to objects that are either present (perception) or absent (memory) integrate category representations along with estimates of specific values on a continuous scale ("particulars"). We develop and test the model through 4 experiments. In a first experiment pair, participants reproduce a color target, both with and without a delay, using a recently influential estimation paradigm. In a second experiment pair, we use standard methods in color perception to identify boundary and focal colors in the stimulus set. The main results are that responses drawn from working memory are significantly biased away from category boundaries and toward category centers. Importantly, the same pattern of results is present without a memory delay. The proposed dual content model parsimoniously explains these results, and it should replace prevailing single content models in studies of visual working memory. More broadly, the model and the results demonstrate how the main consequence of visual working memory maintenance is the amplification of category related biases and stimulus-specific variability that originate in perception.

Color naming in Italian language

AbstractThe present study investigated Italian basic color terms (BCTs). It is an extension of our previous work that explored Italian basic color categories (BCCs) using a constrained color‐naming method, with 11 Italian BCTs allowed, including blu for naming the BLUE area. Since a latter outcome indicated a categorization bias, here monolexemic color‐naming method was employed, enabling also use of azzurro, deeply entrenched Italian term that designates light blue. In Experiment 1, colors (N = 367), sampling the Munsell Mercator projection, were presented on a CRT; color names and reaction times of vocalization onset were recorded. Naming consistency and consensus were estimated. Consistency was obtained for 12 CTs, including the two blue terms; consensus was found for 11 CTs, excluding rosso “red.” For each consensus category, color with the shortest response time was considered focal. In Experiment 2, consensus stimuli (N = 72) were presented; on each trial, observers indicated the focal color (“best example”) in an array of colors comprising a consensus category. For each of the 12 Italian CCs, centroid was calculated and focal color (two measures) estimated. Compared to English color terms, two outcomes are specific to Italian color naming: (i) naming of the RED‐PURPLE area is highly refined, with consistent use of emergent non‐BCTs; (ii) azzurro and blu both perform as BCTs dividing the BLUE area along the lightness dimension. The findings are considered in the framework of the weak relativity hypothesis. Historico‐linguistic, environmental, and pragmatic communication factors are discussed that conceivably have driven the extension of the BCT inventory in Italian. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 41, 402–415, 2016

Augmenting basic colour terms in english

AbstractIn an unconstrained colour naming experiment conducted over the web, 330 participants named 600 colour samples in English. The 30 most frequent monolexemic colour terms were analyzed with regards to frequency, consensus among genders, response times, consistency of use, denotative volume in the Munsell and OSA colour spaces and inter‐experimental agreement. Each of these measures served for ranking colour term salience; rankings were then combined to give a composite index of basicness. The results support the extension of English inventory from the 11 basic colour terms of Berlin and Kay to 13 terms by the addition of lilac and turquoise. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 41, 32–42, 2016

From Yellow to Blue — or Not?

In Indo-European languages, the reflexes of PIE root *ĝhel- are typically used as colour terms for ‘yellow’ or to denote yellow objects like gold. In Slavic languages there are no less than three different reflexes (e.g. Russian желтый, зеленый and голубой). While the original root is traditionally thought to have had the primary meaning ‘yellow’, there is nothing unusual in the fact that the root often acquires the meaning ‘green’, as PIE was almost certainly a language where green and yellow were not distinguished on the level of basic color terms. The fact that some reflexes expanded into the blue part of the spectrum, although it has a parallel in another PIE root (Lat. flauus ‘yellow’ vs PGmc *blēwa- ‘blue’), seems rather interesting. A similar semantic transition of *ĝhel- can be seen in Celtic languages (e.g. OIr gel and glas). But while in Celtic there could have been two reflexes of the same root, one of which stayed in place and the other drifted away as Proto-Celtic evolved into a Stage IV language, the Balto-Slavic word cannot be so easily explained away: both голубой and its Baltic cognates (Lith. gelumbe ‘blue cloth’, OPruss. golimban ‘blue’), unlike the words for ‘green’, ‘yellow’ and ‘gold’ in the same languages, have retained the unpalatalized *gh-. While by no means a borrowing from Lat. columba, the Balto-Slavic lexeme does share the word-formation with columba and Grk. κóλυμβος ‘little grebe’ – the words that are traditionally connected with the cluster of Lat. calidus ‘with spots’, Grk. κηλίς, OIr caile ‘a spot’, OInd. kāla- ‘(blue-)black’ etc. Here a different version is proposed: neither are columba and κóλυμβος connected with the aforementioned ‘black spots’ cluster, nor is голубой connected with PIE *ĝhel-; they represent a separate and possibly non-Indo-European group of cognates.

Variability and systematic differences in normal, protan, and deutan color naming.

The congenital color vision deficient (CVD) generally demonstrates difficulties in color naming tasks. In our study we investigated color naming properties and uncertainties of a relatively large group of red–green CVDs using quasi monochromatic stimuli and seven basic color terms. The results show a large variability in color naming for the CVD when contrasted to normal color vision and similar alterations when comparing protans to deutans. Statistically significant differences were found in specific wavelength ranges between the tested groups. In general, protans and deutans have shown better color naming ability than expected, which suggests the use of non-chromatic visual cues.

A Corpus-Linguistic Analysis of the Meanings and Uses of the Basic Color Terms and Their Derivatives in a Korean Written Corpus

A Corpus-Linguistic Analysis of the Meanings and Uses of the Basic Color Terms and Their Derivatives in a Korean Written Corpus