color terms : Berlin & Kay

[Jonathan Lighter]

Absolutely. Which shows that we too can sort colors that we have no single word for.  Which is another nail in the coffin for the vulgar interpretation of Whorf-Sapir, namely that a VOCABULARY (rather than fundamental linguistic structures) locks a culture into inevitable ways of thinking.

My uninformed guess is that a weak interpretation, that grammar and syntax relate intimately to cultural beliefs, is extremely likely.  But which came first, the grammar or the beliefs, is another question.

JL


Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: color terms : Berlin & Kay
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On Oct 7, 2004, at 10:56 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Jonathan Lighter
> Subject: Re: color terms : Berlin & Kay
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> 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." wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "Steve Kl."
> Subject: color terms : Berlin & Kay
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> 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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