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<p>Dear all,</p>
<p>My query below, on "blue"/"green" in English, did not elicit an
avalanche of responses, but I did get a few interesting ones
addressed to me personally, for which many thanks.</p>
<p>Bottom line: nobody seem to be familiar with any existing
descriptions of cross-dialectal variation with respect to the
applicability of "blue" and "green" to various in-between shades
blue/green.</p>
<p>My own survey, now totaling over 600 subjects, did reveal
significant cross-dialectal variation, the highlights of which are
presented in the attached table, summarizing the results for the
three in-between blue-green colours in the survey. (The survey is
now closed; thanks to everybody who responded.)<span
style="font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui,
".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; color: rgb(28, 30,
33); font-size: 13px; font-style: normal;
font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal;
font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2;
text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(242, 243,
245); text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color:
initial;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br>
</span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui,
".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; color: rgb(28, 30,
33); font-size: 13px; font-style: normal;
font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal;
font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2;
text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(242, 243,
245); text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color:
initial;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></span><span
style="font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui,
".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; color: rgb(28, 30,
33); font-size: 13px; font-style: normal;
font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal;
font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2;
text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(242, 243,
245); text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color:
initial;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span
style="font-family: inherit;"></span>The left-hand column
shows the number of respondents for each of the major dialects
in the survey. The remaining cells show percentages of
respondents who chose "</span></span><span style="font-family:
system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui,
".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; color: rgb(28, 30,
33); font-size: 13px; font-style: normal;
font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal;
font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2;
text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(242, 243,
245); text-decoration-style: initial; text-decoration-color:
initial;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span
style="font-family: inherit;">blue" over "green" as the
correct colour term.<span> </span></span><br>
<br style="content: ""; display: block; margin-top:
10px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Stimulus 6 turned out to
be less interesting: in all dialects it evinced a strong
preference for "green" over "blue". Stimuli 2 and 8 are the
interesting ones, and for the most part they correlate
closely in their scores. The dialects are ordered by their
scores for Stimulus 8, ranging from New Zealand, the most
green-favouring, to USA, the most blue-favouring. Lumping
together the New Zealand and Australia responses, the
difference between them and the USA for stimulus 8 is
significant at a level of p < 0.001.</span></span></span></p>
<p>I find it fascinating that there's still stuff out there to be
discovered about colour terms in English.</p>
Finally, for a somewhat different (though still English-specific)
perspective on the subject, you might wish to check out the
following fun sites (thanks to Tiago Tresoldi):<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/">https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://xkcd.com/color/rgb/">http://xkcd.com/color/rgb/</a><br>
<br>
David<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 07/04/2019 23:29, David Gil wrote:<br>
</div>
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cite="mid:435bf78d-fa1f-b280-cd38-4053974fddda@shh.mpg.de">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US">Dear all,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US">I've recently become aware of dialectal variation
within English with respect to the denotation of the colour
terms "blue" and "green"; specifically, the extent to which
they apply to intermediate colours such as cyan, turquoise and
teal.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>I'm currently
running an informal survey on google forms (see link below);
the results are still coming in, but I'm already observing
interesting dialectal variation.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes">
</span>For example, in stimulus 8, showing a shade of teal,
subjects are presented with a forced choice task: is it "blue"
or "green"?<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>The
percentage of subjects who chose "blue" range from 19% in
Australian English (23 subjects) to 65% in USA English (97
subjects), with other countries occupying intermediate
positions on the scale.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US">My question: has anybody described this kind of
variation within English dialects before?<span
style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It's the world's most
studied language, and a very popular domain of investigation,
and yet a Google search didn't come up with any references to
precisely this kind of variation.<span
style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>Any comments related to
this topic would be appreciated.<br
style="mso-special-character:line-break">
<br style="mso-special-character:line-break">
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1e5nvUB8B3OdUXo1Rat7xrwrxj4H_qgJcvpAkNcHIj8c/edit"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1e5nvUB8B3OdUXo1Rat7xrwrxj4H_qgJcvpAkNcHIj8c/edit</a></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US">Thanks,</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-ansi-language:EN-US"
lang="EN-US">David</span></p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
David Gil
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
Email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:gil@shh.mpg.de" moz-do-not-send="true">gil@shh.mpg.de</a>
Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816
</pre>
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<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
David Gil
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
Email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:gil@shh.mpg.de">gil@shh.mpg.de</a>
Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816
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