Color Lexicon Research Articles

색채어의 상징의미 대조 연구 - 한국어와 미얀마어 기본 색채어를 중심으로 -

이 연구는 한국어와 미얀마어의 색채어가 가진 기본 의미 및 상징의미를 대조 분석함으로써 학습자들의 의사소통 향상을 높이는데 목적이 있다. 의사소통 성공을 위해서는 어휘는 필수로 알아야 되며, 확장 의미, 사회문화적인 상징의미까지 습득해야 한다. 어휘를 대조할 때 의미론적인 측면으로 한 사람의 정서, 문화에 따라 색채도 다르게 나오는 것을 전제로 하여 검토해 보았다. 먼저 어휘의 정확성, 확장 의미, 상징한 바를 알 수 있기 위해서는 문헌 자료 수업을 한 후 각 언어의 사전 검토 작업을 이행하였다. 사람들의 환경 및 인간의 특성들 때문에 유사점 및 차이점이 나왔다. 그 결과 기본 색채어의 특성 때문에 사전적 의미는 차이가 없다는 것으로 나오는 색채어는 ‘검다, 희다’였으며, ‘붉다’는 정치적인 뜻이나 건강의 상징의미를 나타내기도 하였다. ‘노랗’다는 놀랍다, 겁에 질린다로 주로 상징하였고 미얀마어는 위험, 고귀한 상징의미를 도출하였다. 이러한 의미론적인 대조 분석을 함으로써 학습자들의 학업에 기여할 수 있을 것이다.

The colour lexicon of the Serbian language - a study of dark blue and dark red colour categories Part 2: Categorical facilitation with Serbian colour terms

Part 1 of this study (Jakovljev & Zdravkovic, 2018) isolated two frequent and salient non- BCTs in the Serbian language: teget ?dark blue? and bordo ?dark red?, that segregate the blue and the red part of the colour space respectively. Now we conducted two experiments to additionally test the cognitive salience of these terms, investigating whether they can produce the category effects in a colour discrimination task. We demonstrated within? and between-participants agreement about the placement of the boundary in the blue and the red part of the colour space, additionally showing that Serbian speakers have distinctive representations of these categories. Analysis of RT in the discrimination task showed category effects ? participants were faster when discriminating colour pairs that belong to different linguistic categories than the pairs from the same category. These results for the first time demonstrated category effect in the Serbian language as well as the category effect in speeded discrimination of the red part of the colour space for any language. They also support views that category effect is linked to higher cognitive processes; hence it can be language specific.

THE SEMANTICS OF YELLOW COLOR TERMS IN CHINESE AND RUSSIAN LINGUOCULTURES

The article considers the importance of yellow color in Chinese and Russian linguocultures. It is known that the vocabulary of color designations as elements of a specific language dictionary is a special microsystem, its description has a significant cultural value. In a comparative study of vocabulary, which denotes color, it is possible to see the fixation of a special kind of sign memory of each linguoculture to be compared. Unlike comparing the grammatical structure of languages, the lexical comparative description of this group of units allows us to see a significant number of coinciding or convergent elements characterizing universal cognitive processes. The relevance of the proposed article is determined by a comparative analysis of the lexical class of color markings by the example of a specific primary color of two unrelated languages. The aim of the study is to compare the semantic volume of color identification in yellow in Chinese and Russian linguocultures. The method of research was the work of Russian linguists N.B. Bakhilina, Т.М. Vasilyeva, T.I. Vendina, 1. Guriev, I.V. Dvoretsky, V.G. Kulpina, F.N. Novikov, S.G. Ter-Minasova, T.Yu. Svetlichnaya. The novelty of the work is the reference to the vocabulary of color designation in Russian and Chinese in a comparative aspect. In the work a complex method of investigation is used, methods such as dexryptic, contextual, statistical, comparative are used. The sources of the research were the work of Russian and Chinese linguists, Russian and Chinese dictionaries, art and journalistic texts in Russian and Chinese. The results and material of the research can be used in reading lecture courses on the lexicology of Russian and Chinese languages, as well as in special courses on the problems of the relationship between language and thinking, and the cultural peculiarities of Russian and Chinese color lexicon.

The colour lexicon of the Serbian language - a study of dark blue and dark red colour categories Part 1: Colour-term elicitation task

In this study, we linguistically investigated Serbian colour terminology. We administrated colourterm elicitation task aiming to establish the inventory of basic colour terms (BCTs) in the Serbian language and, in particular, to investigate the salience and the status of colour terms teget ?dark blue? and bordo ?dark red?. Native speakers of Serbian (N = 83) participated in a list task (Morgan & Corbett, 1989), in which they had to list as many Serbian colour terms as possible during five minutes. Based on the collected data, we calculated frequency of each term, its mean position and two indexes of salience. Results showed that 11 Serbian most salient colour terms correspond to the eleven BCTs found by Berlin and Kay (1969), namely, plavo ?blue?, crveno ?red?, zuto ?yellow?, zeleno ?green?, crno ?black?, belo ?white?, ljubicasto ?purple?, narandzasto ?orange?, sivo ?grey?, roze ?pink?, and braon ?brown?, but that basic status of braon needs to be further examined. Teget ?dark blue? and bordo ?dark red?, along with tirkizno ?turquoise? and oker ?ochre? were frequently used, with higher salience indices than other non-BCTs. Further research is needed to find out whether teget and bordo meet criteria of BCTs in the Serbian language.

Quantitative approach for defining basic color terms and color category best exemplars.

A new method is presented that identifies basic color terms (BCTs) from color-naming data. A function is defined that measures how well a term is understood by a communicating population. BCTs are then separated from other color terms by a threshold value applied to this function. A new mathematical algorithm is proposed and analyzed for determining the best exemplar associated with each BCT. Using data provided by the World Color Survey, comparisons are made between the paper's methods and those from other studies. These comparisons show that the paper's new definition of "basicness" mostly agrees with the typical definition found in the color categorization literature, which was originally due to Kay and colleagues. The new definition, unlike the typical one, has the advantage of not relying on syntactic or semantic features of languages or color lexicons. This permits the methodology developed to be generalizable and applied to other category domains for which a construct of "basicness" could have an important role.

Clustering colors

Regier, Kay, and Khetarpal report the results of computer simulations that cluster color stimuli on the basis of their coordinates in CIELAB space, one of two commonly used perceptual color spaces. Regier and coauthors find partitions of those stimuli that are strikingly similar to the way actual color lexicons partition color space. They do not argue for the custom-made clustering method used in their simulations, nor for the assumption of CIELAB space. The present paper aims to answer the question to what extent their computational results depend on these assumptions. It does this by applying a great variety of known clustering methods to Regier et al.’s stimuli, and by assuming not only CIELAB space but also CIELUV space, the other main color space.

Biological origins of color categorization

The biological basis of the commonality in color lexicons across languages has been hotly debated for decades. Prior evidence that infants categorize color could provide support for the hypothesis that color categorization systems are not purely constructed by communication and culture. Here, we investigate the relationship between infants' categorization of color and the commonality across color lexicons, and the potential biological origin of infant color categories. We systematically mapped infants' categorical recognition memory for hue onto a stimulus array used previously to document the color lexicons of 110 nonindustrialized languages. Following familiarization to a given hue, infants' response to a novel hue indicated that their recognition memory parses the hue continuum into red, yellow, green, blue, and purple categories. Infants' categorical distinctions aligned with common distinctions in color lexicons and are organized around hues that are commonly central to lexical categories across languages. The boundaries between infants' categorical distinctions also aligned, relative to the adaptation point, with the cardinal axes that describe the early stages of color representation in retinogeniculate pathways, indicating that infant color categorization may be partly organized by biological mechanisms of color vision. The findings suggest that color categorization in language and thought is partially biologically constrained and have implications for broader debate on how biology, culture, and communication interact in human cognition.

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.

О некоторых особенностях трансформации языкового сознания (на примере лексики цветообозначений в бурятском языке)

О некоторых особенностях трансформации языкового сознания (на примере лексики цветообозначений в бурятском языке)

Study of the Japanese color lexicon using cluster analysis

Study of the Japanese color lexicon using cluster analysis

Categorical Perception Beyond the Basic Level: The Case of Warm and Cool Colors

Categories can affect our perception of the world, rendering between-category differences more salient than within-category ones. Across many studies, such categorical perception (CP) has been observed for the basic-level categories of one's native language. Other research points to categorical distinctions beyond the basic level, but it does not demonstrate CP for such distinctions. Here we provide such a demonstration. Specifically, we show CP in English speakers for the non-basic distinction between "warm" and "cool" colors, claimed to represent the earliest stage of color lexicon evolution. Notably, the advantage for discriminating colors that straddle the warm-cool boundary was restricted to the right visual field-the same behavioral signature previously observed for basic-level categories. This pattern held in a replication experiment with increased power. Our findings show that categorical distinctions beyond the basic-level repertoire of one's native language are psychologically salient and may be spontaneously accessed during normal perceptual processing.

The color lexicon of the Somali language.

This empirical study had three goals: (a) to describe Somali color naming and its motifs, (b) to relate color naming by Somali informants to their color vision, and (c) to search for historical and demographic clues about the diversity of Somali color naming. Somali-speaking informants from Columbus, Ohio provided monolexemic color terms for 83 or 145 World Color Survey (WCS) color samples. Proximity analysis reduced the 103 color terms to the eight chromatic color meanings from the WCS plus black, white, and gray. Informants' data sets were grouped by spectral clustering analysis into four WCS color naming motifs named after the terms for the cool colors: (a) Green-Blue, (b) Grue (a single term meaning "green or blue"), (c) Gray, and (d) Dark. The results show that, first, the Somali language has about four motifs among its speakers. Second, individuals' color vision test results and their motifs were not correlated, suggesting that multiple motifs do not arise from individual variation in color vision. Last, the Somali color lexicon has changed over the past century. New color terms often came from the names of familiar colored objects, and informants' motifs were closely related to their ages and genders, suggesting that the diversity of color naming across speakers of Somali probably results from ongoing language change.

Hunter-Gatherer Color Naming Provides New Insight into the Evolution of Color Terms

Most people name the myriad colors in the environment using between two and about a dozen color terms, with great variation within and between languages. Investigators generally agree that color lexicons evolve from fewer terms to more terms, as technology advances and color communication becomes increasingly important. However, little is understood about the color naming systems at the least technologically advanced end of the continuum. The Hadza people of Tanzania are nomadic hunter-gatherers who live a subsistence lifestyle that was common before the advent of agriculture (see Supplemental Experimental Procedures, section I;), suggesting that the Hadzane language should be at an early stage of color lexicon evolution. When Hadza, Somali, and US informants named 23 color samples, Hadza informants named only the black, white, and red samples with perfect consensus. Otherwise, they used low-consensus terms or responded "don't know." However, even low-consensus color terms grouped test colors into lexical categories that aligned with those found in other world languages. Furthermore, information-theoretic analysis showed that color communication efficiency within the Hadza, Somali, and US language communities falls on the same continuum as other world languages. Thus, the structure of color categories is in place in Hadzane, even though words for many of the categories are not in general use. These results suggest that even very simple color lexicons include precursors of many color categories but that these categories are initially represented in a diverse and distributed fashion.

Cattle and their colours: A synchronic investigation of cattle colour terminology in Northern Sotho

In Northern Sotho, a separate colour lexicon is distinguished, containing terms which are believed to be used exclusively as colour terms to describe not only the colours, but also the colour patterning found among domestic animals, particularly cattle. According to current literature, the use of these terms is restricted to the description of cattle and/or other domestic animals. This study, which is corpus-based, investigates the metaphorical extension of these terms which widens their descriptive scope to include objects other than cattle. It is furthermore argued that these terms have unique grammatical features, found nowhere else in the grammatical system of Northern Sotho. Lastly, the metaphoric link between these colour and colour-pattern terms and similar sounding words designating other animals, birds or everyday objects is investigated. It is concluded that this particular colour lexicon is of an ambivalent nature: on the one hand it is an indigenous knowledge system which is clearly in decline, mostly due to non-linguistic factors, but simultaneously, its ability to be extended to the description of other objects points towards a certain measure of vitality.

The color lexicon of American English

This article describes color naming by 51 American English-speaking informants. A free-naming task produced 122 monolexemic color terms, with which informants named the 330 Munsell samples from the World Color Survey. Cluster analysis consolidated those terms into a glossary of 20 named color categories: the 11 Basic Color Term (BCT) categories of Berlin and Kay (1969, p. 2) plus nine nonbasic chromatic categories. The glossed data revealed two color-naming motifs: the green-blue motif of the World Color Survey and a novel green-teal-blue motif, which featured peach, teal, lavender, and maroon as high-consensus terms. Women used more terms than men, and more women expressed the novel motif. Under a constrained-naming protocol, informants supplied BCTs for the color samples previously given nonbasic terms. Most of the glossed nonbasic terms from the free-naming task named low-consensus colors located at the BCT boundaries revealed by the constrained-naming task. This study provides evidence for continuing evolution of the color lexicon of American English, and provides insight into the processes governing this evolution.

Black as night or as a chimney sweep? Color words and typical exemplars

Color is a key feature, crucial for recognizing and categorizing objects. Even though color appearance tends to be perceived as stable, and universal tendencies have been found, color lexicon is subject to both intercultural and intralinguistic variations. Within a general hypothesis of integrating universalistic assumptions with a relativistic view, color terms and comparative color-based expressions (e.g., white as snow ) were studied. Data were collected through questionnaires and corpora; the languages studied included Italian, Danish, and English. Our data provide a picture of the variegated intertwinement between nature and culture in the investigated languages. From a universalistic perspective, natural objects (e.g., sea, sky), which appear to be more stable across time and space, are more frequently mentioned as typical exemplars than artificial ones. From a relativistic perspective, some typical exemplars, which are not common interlinguistically, are mainly related to the linguistic representation of local history and traditions of the specific nation and culture. Instead of positing a single (either universalistic or relativistic) explanatory model, different interfaces and several contextual parameters are hypothesized to work jointly with universalistic constraints in lexicalizing the chromatic experience.

Semantic Meaning of Colours in John Milton’s Poem Paradise Lost

The present study throws a new light on the semantics of encoded color terms in John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost. Color terms in Milton’s magnificent poem are not examined individually, but in word combinations, particularly alongside with nouns and adjectives. The range of color terms is not very extensive as the study entails only the spectral colors, such as red, blue, and the achromatic ones, such as white and black. These four colors develop a particular range of symbolic meanings with religious connotations which remain absent in other color terms. However, the analysis of color lexicon requires considerable knowledge of various scientific subjects, hence, the study adopts an interdisciplinary approach as evidence on the meaning of color terms is obtained from literature, theology as well as cognitive science. Distinct color terms, the symbolic meaning of which is of religious origin, bear distinct connotative meanings, which help to reveal Milton’s religious convictions. The findings of the study reveal that color vocabulary is structured into two concepts, namely of light and darkness. In Paradise Lost, black fire is disastrous and portrayed as a symbol of hell. Black bituminous gurge refers to the dark abyss, the place where Satan’s angels were imprisoned. Milton represents death as a black attendant, whereas the God is portrayed with a radiant glowing white light. The blue firmament refers to heaven, the dwelling place of God. The Red Sea is a sign of danger and blood, whilst celestial rosy red is a symbol of love. Red right hand signifies violent anger and pertains to the punishing hand of God. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.23.5506

Kata Kolok Color Terms and the Emergence of Lexical Signs in Rural Signing Communities

ABSTRACTHow do new languages develop systematic ways to talk about sensory experiences, such as color? To what extent is the evolution of color terms guided by societal factors? This article describes the color lexicon of a rural sign language called Kata Kolok that emerged approximately one and a half centuries ago in a Balinese village. Kata Kolok has four color signs: black, white, red, and a blue-green term. In addition, two non-conventionalized means are used to provide color descriptions: naming relevant objects, and pointing to objects in the vicinity. Comparison with Balinese culture and spoken Balinese brings to light discrepancies between the systems, suggesting that neither cultural practices nor language contact have driven the formation of color signs in Kata Kolok. The few lexicographic investigations from other rural sign languages report limitations in the domain of color. On the other hand, larger, urban signed languages have extensive systems, for example, Australian sign Language has up to nine color terms. These comparisons support the finding that rural sign languages like Kata Kolok fail to provide the societal pressures for the lexicon to expand further.

Aphasic patients exhibit a reversal of hemispheric asymmetries in categorical color discrimination

Patients with left hemisphere (LH) or right hemisphere (RH) brain injury due to stroke were tested on a speeded, color discrimination task in which two factors were manipulated: (1) the categorical relationship between the target and the distracters and (2) the visual field in which the target was presented. Similar to controls, the RH patients were faster in detecting targets in the right visual field when the target and distracters had different color names compared to when their names were the same. This effect was absent in the LH patients, consistent with the hypothesis that injury to the left hemisphere handicaps the automatic activation of lexical codes. Moreover, the LH patients showed a reversed effect, such that the advantage of different target–distracter names was now evident for targets in the left visual field. This reversal may suggest a reorganization of the color lexicon in the right hemisphere following left hemisphere brain injury and/or the unmasking of a heightened right hemisphere sensitivity to color categories.

World Color Survey color naming reveals universal motifs and their within-language diversity

We analyzed the color terms in the World Color Survey (WCS) (www.icsi.berkeley.edu/wcs/), a large color-naming database obtained from informants of mostly unwritten languages spoken in preindustrialized cultures that have had limited contact with modern, industrialized society. The color naming idiolects of 2,367 WCS informants fall into three to six "motifs," where each motif is a different color-naming system based on a subset of a universal glossary of 11 color terms. These motifs are universal in that they occur worldwide, with some individual variation, in completely unrelated languages. Strikingly, these few motifs are distributed across the WCS informants in such a way that multiple motifs occur in most languages. Thus, the culture a speaker comes from does not completely determine how he or she will use color terms. An analysis of the modern patterns of motif usage in the WCS languages, based on the assumption that they reflect historical patterns of color term evolution, suggests that color lexicons have changed over time in a complex but orderly way. The worldwide distribution of the motifs and the cooccurrence of multiple motifs within languages suggest that universal processes control the naming of colors.