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I. Theoritical Background: 1.1.1. Focal Color

This document discusses color categorization across languages. It begins by defining focal colors as the best examples of basic color categories. Focal colors tend to be similar across languages, determined by color perception rather than language. The number of basic color terms in a language influences the range of colors covered. For example, a language with only two terms may use one for light/warm colors and one for dark/cool colors. The document then compares color naming between English and Vietnamese, noting differences in how they categorize orange, blue, and green. It outlines the hypothesis that languages acquire basic color terms in a constrained evolutionary order. Finally, it discusses three types of basic color categories: six fundamental ones, composites formed from combinations of

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Phuong Thao Dang
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63 views10 pages

I. Theoritical Background: 1.1.1. Focal Color

This document discusses color categorization across languages. It begins by defining focal colors as the best examples of basic color categories. Focal colors tend to be similar across languages, determined by color perception rather than language. The number of basic color terms in a language influences the range of colors covered. For example, a language with only two terms may use one for light/warm colors and one for dark/cool colors. The document then compares color naming between English and Vietnamese, noting differences in how they categorize orange, blue, and green. It outlines the hypothesis that languages acquire basic color terms in a constrained evolutionary order. Finally, it discusses three types of basic color categories: six fundamental ones, composites formed from combinations of

Uploaded by

Phuong Thao Dang
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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I.

THEORITICAL BACKGROUND

1.1. Basic color terms
1.1.1. Focal color
A focal color is a shade of a certain color category that
represents the best example of this category.
(http://www.glottopedia.org/index.php/Focal_Colors)
Different languages were believed to classify colours in
more or less random ways.
Focal colours are basically the same across languages:
They are determined not by language, but by the physiology
of colour perception.
Ex: hung hong luobo which translates as 'red turnip'.




1.2. I mplicational Hierarchy of basic color terms:

Focal colors across languages: their variation
follows a systematic pattern


Non-implicational: All languages have two terms for white and black
Implicational:
Every language has at least two basic color terms: dark (black) and
light (white)
Languages with three color terms add red
Languages with four color terms add green or yellow
Fifth color term: either green or yellow
Sixth color term: blue
Seventh color term: brown
The rest: purple, pink, orange or gray
A language: from two to eleven basic color terms.
The table is based on focal colours and tells us little about the actual
range of each colour term in a given language.


The number of color terms in a given language
influences the range of colors:
Two color terms:
Ex: The Indonesian language Lani:
"white": light and warm colors, including red and
yellow.
"black": dark and cool colors, including green and blue.
Basic color terms: simple terms that speakers
easily recall and not cover colors that are within the
range of other color terms.


1.2.1. Comparison between color terms in
Vietnamese and English

According to Jamerson, K. A & Alvarado, N (2001):
Difference between color naming and color
sequence in English and Vietnamese.

Subjects: All monolingual English and some
bilingual Vietnamese and Monolingual Vietnamese
participants in San Diego, USA.

Results: Differences in color naming between the
English and Vietnamese languages are the
categorization of orange, blue, and green.

English Vietnamese
Blue & Green Two different categories

A single category name
(xanh),
-> modify: xanh la cay, or
leaf green, compared to
xanh nuoc bien, or ocean
blue.
Orange A distinct category A modified term for
yellow

Vietnamese has 9 color terms: en, trng, , vng, xanh, nu,
hng v xm whereas English has 11 color terms: black, white, red,
green,yellow, blue, brown, orange, pink, purple/violet and gray/grey

2. Color naming across languages

2.1. Hypothesis of basic color terms and
categorization
2.1.1. Hypothesis of basic color terms
A restricted universal inventory of such
categories
A language adds Basic Colors Term (BCT) in a
constrained order, interpret as an evolutionary
sequence.
(Berlin and Kay (1969)


Changes of hypothesis on The Dani people:
Two-term systems contain:
+ Terms for dark and light shades regardless of hue
+ One term covering white, red and yellow and one
term covering black, green and blue, that is, a
category of white plus warm colors versus one of
black plus cool colors.
Focused not only in white and black, but
sometimes at the foci of red or yellow, and of
green or blue.
(Rosch (Heider,1972a, 1972b)


B&K conceived basic color categories: foci and extensions and
expressed the evolutionary sequence of hypothesis (2) as a
sequence of constraints on the successive encoding of foci.
Roschs finding: Composite categories have multiple foci-a
major reason for the reconception of the evolutionary sequence
in terms of successive divisions of the color space
(K&McD) modeled these successive divisions of the color
space as fuzzy partitions:
+ interpret individual color categories as fuzzy sets
+ define the notion of fuzzy partition in terms of a (standard) set
of fuzzy sets.

2.2. Basic color categories

Type 1: the six fundamental categories (black,
white, red, yellow, green, blue.)
Type 2: the composites: fuzzy unions of the
fundamentals (white/warm and black/cool as
well as several categories comprised by unions
of pairs of the six fundamentals.)
Type 3: derived categories defined in terms of
the fuzzy intersections of the fundamentals:

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