PIE brown/Berlin &Kay

Dr. John E. McLaughlin mclasutt at brigham.net
Sat Mar 11 19:06:10 UTC 2000


Steve Long has doubts about the value of the Berlin and Kay color research,
but in my experience, I've found more value in their work that in the work
of others on the same line.  Sure, their work may not be perfect, but in the
absence of another system, that's the one we've got.  In my own work on
Panamint, instead of color swatches, I used photographs of local flora,
fauna, and geology to analyze the Panamint color system.  While I can't put
a Pantone color to it, there's still a visible different between the "red"
of a pronghorn antelope (pale to medium orange), the "red" of a beavertail
cactus blossom (pink), and the "red" of the iron ochre soil used to made
paint (brick red).  In Panamint, though, they're all ankapihty (y is barred
i) 'red'.

I'm still interested in finding out:

What basic color terms are reconstructable to PIE?
What basic color terms are reconstructable to PGermanic?
Has anyone ever looked at this?

I've looked in Buck, but am more interested in current specialist thinking.

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
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