Color Lexicon Research Articles

The colonisation of the colour pink: variation and change in Māori’s colour lexicon

Abstract All languages exhibit basic colour terms that manifest how distinct linguistic systems categorise colour. Māori, the language of the indigenous people of New Zealand, demonstrates an instructive case where drastic innovations in colour terminology took place in response to environmental and cultural influences. We demonstrate how and when Māori accrued new colour terms to replace existing ones in its immediate ancestor, Proto-Eastern-Polynesian, and eventually coined new colour terms through borrowing from native words for nature to match the English colour categories that did not previously exist in Māori – except for the colour pink. While contemporary Māori is at the same stage as English (Stage VII) in Berlin and Kay’s colour term hierarchy, the evidence is that Māori was at Stage IV pre-colonisation, possessing only five native colour categories. The evolution of Māori’s colour categories thus illuminates how colonisation may impact the basic vocabulary of a language, both in the Māori settling a new land in the 13th century and in their subsequent language contact with English colonisers in the 19th century.

Semantic variation and semantic change in the color lexicon

Abstract Color terms show a remarkable variation in their possible lexicalization patterns across different languages. In the literature, the interest has been especially to describe the color lexicon of a certain language and to determine whether it may abide or not by Berlin and Kay’s universal evolutionary sequence, e.g., whether a certain color denomination may be considered as a basic color term, or whether a certain color category is lexicalized by more than one basic color term, by which criteria, etc. It has not been established, however, which are the most common lexical sources of basic color terms on a comparative basis, and which semantic changes are more common in this semantic field. On the basis of data drawn from 70 ancient and modern Indo-European languages, we aim at answering precisely these research questions concerning the origin and the development of basic color terms. We discuss the various lexical sources of the basic color terms for white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, gray, orange, pink, and purple, and we show the most important semantic changes leading to these color meanings. We also discuss to which extent these terms are likely to be inherited or borrowed. All this aims at being a contribution to the study of diachronic semantics.

The Italian colour lexicon in Tuscany: elicited lists, cognitive salience, and semantic maps of colour terms

We investigated the Tuscan Italian colour inventory, with the aim of establishing the cognitive salience of the basic colour terms (BCTs) and most frequent non-BCTs. Native speakers from Tuscany (N = 89) completed a colour-term elicitation task lasting for 5 min. In total, 337 unique terms were elicited, with an average list length of 30.06. The frequency of each term, its mean list position and cognitive salience index (S) were calculated. The CTs with the highest S (ranked 1–13) included 10 counterparts of the Berlin and Kay BCTs listed in their 1969 seminal work and three basic ‘blue’ terms, blu, azzurro, celeste, estimated for Tuscan respondents by Del Viva et al. in 2022. S-index and Zipf-function (the terms’ “popularity”) indicated that fucsia (rank 14) is conceivably an emerging BCT in (Tuscan) Italian. Other cognitively salient non-BCTs are lilla, magenta, ocra and beige. The terms’ 3D semantic map (conceptual closeness), assessed using multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis, revealed that in the lists, closely associated CTs were arranged along three competing criteria: the term’s salience gradient; word length; and clustering of fully chromatic concepts with those defined primarily by lightness or desaturation. We also consider salient Italian non-BCTs as indicators of the ongoing process of lexical refinement in certain areas of the colour space. In conclusion, measures of elicitation productivity, as well as the augmented BCT inventory, including the Tuscan ‘triple blues’, and abundant hyponyms and derived forms all indicate (Tuscan) Italian speakers’ “cultural competence” in the colour domain and the need to communicate nuanced information about colour shades.

Ultraviolet light affects the color vocabulary: evidence from 834 languages.

It has been suggested that people living in regions with a high incidence of ultraviolet light, particularly in the B band (UV-B), suffer a phototoxic effect during their lifetime. This effect, known as lens brunescence, negatively impacts the perception of visible light in the "blue" part of the spectrum, which, in turn, reduces the probability that the lexicon of languages spoken in such regions contains a word specifically denoting "blue." This hypothesis has been recently tested using a database of 142 unique populations/languages using advanced statistical methods, finding strong support. Here, this database is extended to 834 unique populations/languages in many more language families (155 vs. 32) and with a much better geographical spread, ensuring a much better representativity of the present-day linguistic diversity. Applying similar statistical methods, supplemented with novel piecewise and latent variable Structural Equation Models and phylogenetic methods made possible by the much denser sampling of large language families, found strong support for the original hypothesis, namely that there is a negative linear effect of UV-B incidence on the probability that a language has a specific word for "blue." Such extensions are essential steps in the scientific process and, in this particular case, help increase our confidence in the proposal that the environment (here, UV-B incidence) affects language (here, the color lexicon) through its individual-level physiological effects (lifetime exposure and lens brunescence) amplified by the repeated use and transmission of language across generations.

Names of colour in V.Nabokov’s bilingual worldview (based on the original and self-translated texts of the novel Lolita)

The article is devoted to the current problem of studying bilingual authors’ idiolects in colour aspect. This research aims to identify the features of Vladimir Nabokov’s lingua-colour worldview associated with the use of English and Russian in self-translation. Lists of colouremes of the original and translated Lolita are made; their part-of-speech facet is analyzed; dominant coloronyms are identified and compared; structural peculiarities of the selected colours in both lists are studied. The novelty of the work lies in the creation of English and Russian lexicons and frequency dictionaries of representatives of Nabokov’s color worldview, which gives objective data about the linguistic personality basing on idiolect. Along with quantitative method, the work uses the method of systematic scientific description, via which the multidimensional systematization of empirical material is conducted and the comparative method implemented in observation, comparison and interpretation techniques for the received language data. The article notes both common and specific features in the two color lexicons. With a comparable number of English and Russian colouremes, the translation language is more coloristic. Part-of-speech differences of colours are noted. In complete lists chromatic designations predominate, they are more frequent in Russian. Among the dominants achromatic colors outweigh, English achromatisms prevail. Numerous hapaxes and complex coloremes, rarely equivalent, contribute to the palette diversity. The main causes of inconsistencies are identified. The author comes to the conclusion that the ways of lexicalizing the color perceptions of the bilingual writer-translator are modified when switching to the target language that indicates differences in Nabokov’s worldview.

Color technology is not necessary for rich and efficient color language

The evolution of basic color terms in language is claimed to be stimulated by technological development, involving technological control of color or exposure to artificially colored objects. Accordingly, technologically “simple” non-industrialized societies are expected to have poor lexicalization of color, i.e., only rudimentary lexica of 2, 3 or 4 basic color terms, with unnamed gaps in the color space. While it may indeed be the case that technology stimulates lexical growth of color terms, it is sometimes considered a sine qua non for color salience and lexicalization. We provide novel evidence that this overlooks the role of the natural environment, and people's engagement with the environment, in the evolution of color vocabulary. We introduce the Maniq—nomadic hunter-gatherers with no color technology, but who have a basic color lexicon of 6 or 7 terms, thus of the same order as large languages like Vietnamese and Hausa, and who routinely talk about color. We examine color language in Maniq and compare it to available data in other languages to demonstrate it has remarkably high consensual color term usage, on a par with English, and high coding efficiency. This shows colors can matter even for non-industrialized societies, suggesting technology is not necessary for color language. Instead, factors such as perceptual prominence of color in natural environments, its practical usefulness across communicative contexts, and symbolic importance can all stimulate elaboration of color language.

I termini di colore nelle aree bianco, nero e grigio nella storia dell’italiano

"Colour Terms in the WHITE, BLACK and GRAY Areas in the History of the Italian Language. The present article is part of several studies that the authors have dedicated to the history of Italian colour terms. The Introduction illustrates some of the theses of Berlin, Kay (1969), with particular reference to the distinction between basic and non-basic terms. § 2 is dedicated to the Latin colour terms in the WHITE, BLACK and GRAY areas and their reflexes in the Romance languages. In § 3 the resources used for the research are presented. In §§ 3.1. (From Old Italian to the 19th century) and 3.2. (From the end of the 19th century to today’s Italian) the historical evolution and contemporary use of basic terms and other non-transparent colour terms are analyzed, also focusing on their figurative meanings and on the fixed collocations in which they occur. § 3.3. deals briefly with the terms formed by means of various morphological and syntactic devices that are most frequently used in Italian for the enrichment of the colour lexicon. Keywords: semantics, word-formation, colour terms, Italian "

Augmenting a colour lexicon

Languages differ markedly in the number of colour terms in their lexicons. The Himba, for example, a remote culture in Namibia, were reported in 2005 to have only a 5-colour term language. We re-examined their colour naming using a novel computer-based method drawing colours from across the gamut rather than only from the saturated shell of colour space that is the norm in cross-cultural colour research. Measuring confidence in communication, the Himba now have seven terms, or more properly categories, that are independent of other colour terms. Thus, we report the first augmentation of major terms, namely green and brown, to a colour lexicon in any language. A critical examination of supervised and unsupervised machine-learning approaches across the two datasets collected at different periods shows that perceptual mechanisms can, at most, only to some extent explain colour category formation and that cultural factors, such as linguistic similarity are the critical driving force for augmenting colour terms and effective colour communication.

An Anthropological Linguistic Study: Cultural Factors of the Color Lexicon Formation in the Madurese Language

Language as a signifier of cultural identity can be seen from the use of its lexicon, one of which is the color lexicon. This study aimed to examine the cultural factors of the formation of the color lexicon in the Madurese language using an anthropological linguistic approach. This research was qualitative descriptive with ethnographic methods and ethnoscience analysis models in order to find cultural themes. The results showed that the color lexicon in the Sumenep dialect of Madurese language was formed due to four cultural factors, including 1) the closeness of the Madurese community to nature, (2) the livelihoods of the Madurese community, (3) the Islamic spirituality of the Madurese community, and (4) the traditions of the Madurese community. These four factors prove that humans tend to borrow or refer to objects that areoften found around them to describe a specific color.

KLASIFIKASI WARNA DALAM BAHASA MADURA DIALEK SUMENEP: ANALISIS BERLIN DAN KAY

The goal of this research is classifying the basic and non-basic colors of Sumenep Madurese dialect. This research is descriptive qualitative in which the data were analyzed using the universal color theory of Berlin and Kay (1969) and also an ethnolinguistic approach. As a result, the Sumenep Madurese dialect has six basic color names, namely potѐ 'white', celleng 'black', mѐra 'red', bhiru 'green', konѐng 'yellow', and cokklat 'brown', and also three color names classified in non-basic colors, namely bhiru 'biru', bungo 'purple', and bu-abu 'gray'. The color vocabularies in Sumenep Madurese dialect are in the form of lingual unit of word, such as the naming of basic colors because they are monolexemic, and lingual unit of phrase, such as derived colors from the basic or non-basic colors. The implicational hierarchy of basic colors in the Sumenep Madurese dialect is different from the implicational hierarchy of basic colors in Berlin and Kay's theory which was the result of 80 world language studies. The environment and the different habits of speech communities influence this difference. In brief, language as a cultural product affects the formation of the color lexicon.

Environment and culture shape both the colour lexicon and the genetics of colour perception

Many languages express ‘blue’ and ‘green’ under an umbrella term ‘grue’. To explain this variation, it has been suggested that changes in eye physiology, due to UV-light incidence, can lead to abnormalities in blue-green color perception which causes the color lexicon to adapt. Here, we apply advanced statistics on a set of 142 populations to model how different factors shape the presence of a specific term for blue. In addition, we examined if the ontogenetic effect of UV-light on color perception generates a negative selection pressure against inherited abnormal red-green perception. We found the presence of a specific term for blue was influenced by UV incidence as well as several additional factors, including cultural complexity. Moreover, there was evidence that UV incidence was negatively related to abnormal red-green color perception. These results demonstrate that variation in languages can only be understood in the context of their cultural, biological, and physical environments.

Lexical Color Categories.

Color is a continuous variable, and humans can distinguish more than a million colors, yet world color lexicons contain no more than a dozen basic color terms. It has been understood for 160 years that the number of color terms in a lexicon varies greatly across languages, yet the lexical color categories defined by these terms are similar worldwide. Starting with the seminal study by Berlin and Kay, this review considers how and why this is so. Evidence from psychological, linguistic, and computational studies has advanced our understanding of how color categories came into being, how they contribute to our shared understanding of color, and how the resultant categories influence color perception and cognition. A key insight from the last 50 years of research is how human perception and the need for communication within a society worked together to create color lexicons that are somewhat diverse, yet show striking regularities worldwide.

Stability and change in the colour lexicon of the Japonic languages

Abstract Previous work on colour lexicons focussed on universal patterns in their structure and evolution. We collected new colour naming data in Japanese and three under-described Ryukyuan languages (Amami, Miyako and Yaeyama) to investigate semantic variation and change in the colour lexicon of related languages in a modern context. We found several new colour terms (e.g., midori and guriin for ‘green’) in the lexicon of Ryukyuan speakers, apparently resulting from contact with Standard Japanese and English. A comparison of our data with historical data suggests that modern Ryukyuan colour systems are closer to modern Japanese than they are to their historic pasts. However, we also found that modern-day Ryukyuan languages are more similar to each other than they are to Japanese. These findings show the scope of semantic changes that can occur through outside influence and highlight the need for fresh empirical data in the study of semantics in related languages.

Colour and gender: language nuances

It is a deeply rooted belief that women possess a richer colour vocabulary than men (Rich, 1977). According to Lakoff, certain adjectives denoting colour (e.g. mauve) would never be naturally chosen by men unless they were «imitating a woman sarcastically, or a homosexual, or an interior decorator» (1973, p. 49). Are these affirmations adjusted to our present reality? Nowadays, colour is present in almost every economic sector. Consequently, a proficient use of colour vocabulary is expected from professionals, regardless of their gender. Hence, if the differences in colour vocabulary are learnt and highly dependent on the user’s necessities and expectations, then said differences after globalisation and exposure to the Internet should not be so striking. With this objective in mind, this study analyses colour elicitation performed by university students. Both their descriptive capacity and colour lexicon availability are measured depending on students’ colour terms usage. Furthermore, potential reasons for variation are provided.

Silky entanglements in Chinese color‐naming and its diachronic change: A new materialism perspective

AbstractThis work seeks to explore the silk‐shaped Chinese color lexicon from the Bronze Age to the present, drawing upon a new materialism perspective that recognizes the force of matter and challenges the privileged position of humans in the historical progress. Rejecting the dichotomy of material and immaterial—established by structuralism and empiricism—this approach explores the complex interactions between language, matter (silk), environment, climate, social transformation, ideology, and culture by assessing Chinese color‐naming and its semantic changes. The article traced the diachronic changes of 13 terms and found that the materiality of silk and its color attribute was generally entangled in one character in the Bronze Age, conforming with the object‐attribute entangled word‐creation habits and general cognitive patterns in Chinese. The natural environment and economic transformation led to the predominance of silk‐color entangled terms than other object‐color entangled terms to denote colors. The strict association between identity and color in the hierarchical ideology caused improvements in dyeing techniques, which enhanced human color cognition and expanded the silk‐color entangled lexicon. After the fourth century AD, the introduction of cotton reduced the social and cultural influence of silk. This, along with the internal adjustment in the language system, reduced the significance of silk in the semantics of silk‐color entangled terms. It is believed that silk‐color entangled terms may go through six stages or stop at any of them: from silk‐color entanglement to silk‐color differentiation, and then to the shedding of silk meaning. According to the stages that they have went through, silk‐color entangled terms and object‐color entangled terms are classified into three types: semantic color terms, pragmatic color terms, and occasional pragmatic color terms. This study indicates that the current color lexicon was co‐shaped due to the interaction and dynamic assemblage of multiple material and non‐material factors.

The implication of the lexicon contrastive analysis of colors in Persian & English in perception and translation of colors

Color is all around but it is not everywhere treated in the same way. The terms people use to describe colors give another means of exploring the relationship between different languages and cultures. One field we can see the manifestation of this relationship is translation because we sometimes cannot directly translate color words from one language to another without introducing subtle changes in meaning, or the perception of the same colors in different languages may be different due to different cultures (Wardhaugh, 2006). This study aims at investigating the contrastive comparison of color lexicons- in terms of number and variety as well as their perception- in Persian and English and its effect on translation; moreover, by utilizing this cross-cultural study of color perception, want to investigate whether or not this research is in harmony with previous research –specifically the Weak Version of Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis advocating that language influences perception. The findings of this study are the result of a long process of investigating many English and Persian dictionaries, art and graphic books, personal interviews with artists, and some tasks for translators and even native speakers of both languages. After finding the specific types and lexicons of colors, we found some colors with no equivalent in the other language. Therefore, those color terms were the stimulus for our tasks. We provided some tasks and asked 50 English-Persian translators who were Persian native speakers and 50 English native speakers (Because of the limitation of access to English-Persian translators who are also English native speakers) for their perception of those colors in order to find out how perception of the colors with no equivalent in the native language would affect the translation. Results revealed that 98% of translators had difficulty perceiving and translating the two different color lexicons for which Persian had no equivalent, and 99% of translators had difficulty translating 15 different color lexicons, which were chosen among 32 color lexicons of Persian with no English equivalent. Similarly, 97% of English native speakers had difficulty perceiving the translated Persian color lexicons to English, for which they had no certain equivalent. Having compared the results of data collection in Persian and English, the researchers found that there are statistically significant similarities and differences between Persian and English color terms. Comparing the results revealed that the two languages are similar in the number of basic colors; however, color types are more various in Persian while there are more terms for one single color in English; therefore, the marked similarity of color grouping in Persian and English suggests some evidence that color grouping is universal and is inconsistent with the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis. However, part of the results, which shows differences in the perception of colors in two languages, is consistent with the Weak Version of Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis. Consequently, as an implication of the study in EFL/ESL and translation, the study provides some evidence which could be a source in translation of color terms in Persian and English.

Acquisition of the Meaning of the Word Orange Requires Understanding of the Meanings of Red, Pink, and Purple: Constructing a Lexicon as a Connected System.

This research investigated how children build up the language-specific system of the color lexicon, examining factors that play important roles for the construction of an adult-like color lexicon. We had 3-, 4-, and5-year-old Japanese-speaking children and adults (n=20, 18, 19, and 19, respectively) produce names for 93 color swatches. The results showed that children of all ages were able to apply most of the chromatic words to the colors close to the center of each category, but even 5-year-olds struggle to delineate the boundaries between the words. Furthermore, the model analyses revealed that broad-covering and high-frequency words are mapped to the center of the lexical category earlier. However, cross-individual consistency in adults' use contributed most strongly for the adult-like boundary delineation. The results suggest that the process of system construction consists of at least two steps (i.e., mapping words to their category center and finding appropriate boundaries between neighboring words), with the quantity and the quality of the input contributing differently to the steps.

The Turkic colour term <i>kӧk</i> ‘blue-green’. The evolution of its semantics and its impact on the system of colour terms in the contact languages

According to B. Berlin and P. Kay’s classic theory of the universality of colour terms, the basic colour lexicon in various languages of the world must historically have passed through certain universal evolutionary stages of development in the appropriate order. The article aims to contribute to the study of questions related to the evolution of colour term systems characterized by macrocolours, which depict the main parts of the spectrum of blue, green and yellow. The linguistic representation of such systems is featured by the designation of blue-green, or yellow-green, or blue-yellow-green parts of the spectrum by means of one term. The study shows that in the 20th century, significant number of the languages of Eurasia were characterized by the existence of the blue-green colour system. It can be assumed that the reason for the destruction of such systems in the languages of the European part of the continent was the close interaction with the native speakers of the Iranian, Volga and Perm languages in the Seljuk and Bulgar States. The situation was different for the languages geographically located in Siberia, where the Turkic and Tungusic languages, with their blue-green systems, had an assimilating effect on speakers of the Samoyed and Ob-Ugric languages, for which in the 18th century the yellow-green-blue system was recorded, which became blue-green for the majority of the speakers by the 20th century. Our analysis of the changes is based on the actual fixations of the relevant linguistic phenomena in dictionaries and written documents. It shows how the systems with macrocolours evolved, outlies the areas of their distribution and explains the evolutionary processes caused by the intensive interlanguage contacts, the study of which yields two possible scenarios for the development of the systems of colour terms.

Differences in color categorization manifested by males and females: a quantitative World Color Survey study

Gender-related differences in human color preferences, color perception, and color lexicon have been reported in the literature over several decades. This work focuses on the way the two genders categorize color stimuli. Using the cross-cultural data from the World Color Survey (WCS) and rigorous mathematical methodology, a function is constructed, which measures the differences in color categorization systems manifested by men and women. A significant number of cases are identified, where men and women exhibit markedly disparate behavior. Interestingly, of the regions in the Munsell color array, the green-blue (“grue”) region appears to be associated with the largest group of categorization differences, with females revealing a more differentiated color categorization pattern compared to males. More precisely, in those cases, females tend to use separate green and/or blue categories, while males predominantly use the grue category. In general, the cases singled out by our method warrant a closer study, as they may indicate a transitional categorization scheme.

Metaphor Analysis on Color Lexicon with Plant Attributes in Madurese Language

The research aimed to describe the Madurese color lexicons with plant attributes and to analyze those lexicons metaphorically. This research engaged 18 informants to denote Madurese color lexicons by showing 139 color cards. The referential comparison method was followed by sorting the decisive element technique through referential competence-in-dividing, and Connect Compare Equate as the advanced technique was used as the data analysis method. The research finds that 53 color lexicons with plant attributes in 8 Madurese color lexicons, namely potѐ ‘white’, celleng ‘black’, mѐra ‘red’, bhiru ‘green’, konѐng ‘yellow’, cokklat ‘brown’, bhiru ‘blue’, and bungo ‘purple’. Furthermore, these plant attributes can be classified into fruits, flowers, vegetables, seeds, spices, leaves, trees, part of the tree, and part of the fruit. The domination of plant attributes in Madurese color lexicons emerges due to the sociocultural factors embodied in Madurese ethnic group itself, those are (1) farming is Madurese main way of living, (2) Madurese ethnic group respect the nature as the place where they can pray and thank God, and (3) some objects associated with color lexicons are abundantly available at their surroundings, thus they frequently use it in their daily life.