Deer and Yellow words

[Larry Trask]

--On Saturday, May 26, 2001 2:37 am +0000 X99Lynx at aol.com wrote:

> 2. Based on some good evidence, I have an honest belief that there were no
> independent color words in *PIE.  All such words were similes, metaphors
> or by analogy with particular objects, materials or processes.  As some
> early Classicists pointed out, there was no word for "color" in Homer.
> The idea of independent colors was probably a later invention.  There
> were only very specific colored objects of specific hue to use by
> analogy, along with specific stains and natural pigments, few or none of
> which were modern primary colors.  References to reflected color waves,
> surface textures and brightness were all combined.  (The possible
> exception is the black/brown color word that may have been a modern-style
> color word in the Iliad.)

> Even Berlin & Kay, who I think go much too far in assuming consistency in
> pre-Newtonian color terms, say that Homeric Greek was a mere "3b stage
> level" language, with only four "basic color terms" versus more modern
> languages with as many as 14.  My assumption is that the Greeks were more
> advanced in standardizing color terms than PIE speakers and their
> dispersed immediate descendants.  From the Aegeanet and elsewhere, I've
> help collect large folders of notes over the past two years where serious
> analysts verify again and again that color terms cannot be identified
> with any confidence in Near Eastern and Linaer B texts

I'd like to draw attention to the following article on color terms, which I
suspect is little known, but which deserves to be read by anyone interested
in the topic:

John Lyons (1995), 'Colour in language', in Trevor Lamb and Janine Bourriau
(eds), Color: Art and Science, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, pp. 194-224.

After a survey, Lyons reaches a number of conclusions which are broadly
consistent with Steve Long's thinking.  Among his conclusions are these:

1. Color reference is far more prominent in some cultures than in others.

2. Color-term systems are typically more richly developed in languages
having a term for 'color', but are not necessarily absent from languages
lacking such a generic term.

3. In spite of its seeming salience, color is typically far less
universally , and far less richly, embedded in languages than are space,
time, size, shape, and other things.

4. The elaboration of color-term systems is undeniably a product of culture.

5. Many languages lack color terms altogether, as we understand them, but
nevertheless possess a number of strongly context-bound words for labeling
colors.

This article also has some interesting things to say about the troublesome
color terms of ancient Greek.

While I'm here, I might mention two other recent publications on color
terms; the first is probably well-known, while the second may not be:

Anna Wierzbicka (1996), Semantics: Primes and Universals, Oxford: Oxford
UP, ch. 10, 'The meanings of colour terms and the universals of seeing'.

C. L. Hardin and Luisa Maffi (eds) (1997), Color Categories in Thought and
Language, Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

The second contains articles on the linguistics, psychology and physiology
of color.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)