color terms : Berlin & Kay

[Wilson Gray]

On Oct 7, 2004, at 10:56 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: color terms : Berlin & Kay
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> Thanks, Steve. I'm looking for languages that  take "the blue from the
> skies and the pretty girls' eyes and a bit of Old Glory too" and
> routinely distinguish.
>
> JL

This could be a complete fallacy, but it seems to me that any random
speaker of English could easily separate instances of light blue from
instances of dark blue, despite the lack of words other than "light"
and "dark" to distinguish the two shades/colors, even though individual
speakers/sorters might differ as to the exact point at which "light"
becomes "dark" or "dark" becomes "light."

-Wilson Gray

>
>
>
> "Steve Kl." <stevekl at PANIX.COM> wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "Steve Kl."
> Subject: color terms : Berlin & Kay
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> The linguists Paul Kay and Brent Berlin have worked on color terms in
> languages for decades.
>
> Paul Kay's homepage lists a good deal of works in this regard:
>
> http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~kay/
>
> Checking those out will lead you to a wealth of material that has been
> written on color terms.
>
> - Steve
>
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