scholarly journals Delving Deeper Into Color Space

i-Perception ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 204166951879206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmina Jraissati ◽  
Igor Douven

So far, color-naming studies have relied on a rather limited set of color stimuli. Most importantly, stimuli have been largely limited to highly saturated colors. Because of this, little is known about how people categorize less saturated colors and, more generally, about the structure of color categories as they extend across all dimensions of color space. This article presents the results from a large Internet-based color-naming study that involved color stimuli ranging across all available chroma levels in Munsell space. These results help answer such questions as how English speakers name a more complex color set, whether English speakers use so-called basic color terms (BCTs) more frequently for more saturated colors, how they use non-BCTs in comparison with BCTs, whether non-BCTs are highly consensual in less saturated parts of the solid, how deep inside color space basic color categories extend, or how they behave on the chroma dimension.

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 487-495
Author(s):  
Don Dedrick

AbstractRecent work on color naming challenges the idea that there are shared perceptually salient colors or color categories that are "hardwired" into homo sapiens and provide the basis for one of the most famous cross-cultural claims of all time, Brent Berlin and Paul Kay's claim that there is a small number of "basic" color terms (eleven), and that some subset of these terms is present in every human language (Berlin & Kay, 1969; see Kay and Maffi, 1999; Kay and Reiger, 2003; and Kay 2005 for updates).


2002 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Alvarado ◽  
Kimberly Jameson

AbstractCross-cultural studies of color naming show that basic terms are universally the most frequently used to name colors. However, such basic color terms are always used in the context of larger linguistic systems when specific properties of color experience are described. To investigate naturalistic naming behaviors, we examined the use of modifiers in English and Vietnamese color naming using an unconstrained naming task (Jameson & Alvarado, in press). Monolingual and bilingual subjects named a representative set of 110 color stimuli sampled from a commonly used color-order stimulus space. Results revealed greater reliance upon polylexemic naming among monolingual Vietnamese speakers and greater use of monolexemic basic hue terms and secondary terms (object glosses) among monolingual English speakers. Systematic differences across these language groups imply that widely used monolexemic naming methods may differentially impact color-naming findings in cross-cultural investigations of color cognition.


2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingyi Gao ◽  
Urmas Sutrop

In this paper the theory of the evolution of basic color terms introduced by Berlin & Kay is applied to Mandarin Chinese. The data was collected using the fieldwork methods, color list and color-naming tasks. The rainbow order of colors does not affect the list task results. The results, i.e. basic color terms, are calculated according to the procedure in Davies & Corbett. There are nine basic color terms in Mandarin. Ranked according to the cognitive salience criterion they are the following: hóng ‘red’, huáng ‘yellow’, lu ‘green’, lán ‘blue’, hēi ‘black’, bái ‘white’, zǐ ‘purple’, fěn ‘pink’, and huī ‘gray’. Of the fully developed set of BCTs only the terms for ‘brown’ and ‘orange’ are absent. There are no real gender differences for the BCTs. Mandarin is a Stage VII basic color vocabulary language. The absence of the Stage VI term for ‘brown’ is explained using the wild-card theory. As a result Mandarin is not a counter-example to the theory of basic color terms. We suggest that the term chéng ‘orange’ is the next candidate for basic status in Mandarin. There are two competing terms for basic ‘brown’ zōng and hè. If one competing term for ‘brown’ (with high probability the term zōng) becomes basic, Mandarin Chinese will have a full set (eleven) of basic color terms.


2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 119-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Dedrick ◽  
David Bimler ◽  
Kimberly Jameson ◽  
Debi Roberson

AbstractIn "Does the Basic Color Terms discussion suffer from the Stimulus Error?" Rolf Kuehni describes a research stumbling block known as the "stimulus error," and hints at the difficulties it causes for mainstream color naming research (Kuehni, is Issue). Among the issues intrinsic to Kuehni's "stimulus error" description is the important question of what can generally be inferred from color naming behaviors based on bounded samples of empirical stimuli. Here we examine some specifics of the color naming research issues that Kuehni raises. While we share Kuehni's view regarding potential problems caused by the "stimulus error" and his concern regarding its prevalence, Kuehni's commentary seems primarily aimed at stimulating a general discussion of color naming research implications, because the articles he critiques do not actually commit the "stimulus error" in any serious sense. Based on Kuehni's comments, we further examine some of the relevant empirical and theoretical implications for cross-cultural color naming research.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Humberto Moreira ◽  
Julio Lillo ◽  
Leticia Álvaro

Two experiments compared “Red-Green” (R-G) dichromats’ empirical and metacognized capacities to discriminate basic color categories (BCCs) and to use the corresponding basic color terms (BCTs). A first experiment used a 102-related-colors set for a pointing task to identify all the stimuli that could be named with each BCT by each R-G dichromat type (8 protanopes and 9 deuteranopes). In a second experiment, a group of R-G dichromats (15 protanopes and 16 deuteranopes) estimated their difficulty discriminating BCCs-BCTs in a verbal task. The strong coincidences between the results derived from the pointing and the verbal tasks indicated that R-G dichromats have very accurate metacognition about their capacities (they only had considerable difficulty discriminating 13 out of the total of 55 possible BCT pairs) and limitations (Brown-Green and Blue-Purple pairs were rated especially difficult to differentiate) in the use of BCTs. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) solutions derived from both tasks were very similar: BCTs in R-G dichromats were properly represented in 2D MDS solutions that clearly show one chromatic dimension and one achromatic dimension. Important concordances were found between protanopes and deuteranopes. None of these dichromats showed substantial difficulty discriminating the Red-Green pair. So, to name them “R-G” dichromats is misleading considering their empirical capacities and their metacognition. Further reasons to propose the use of the alternative denomination “Brown-Green” dichromats are also discussed. We found some relevant differences between the “Brown-Green” dichromats’ empirical and self-reported difficulties using BCTs. Their metacognition can be considered a “caricature” of their practical difficulties. This caricature omits some difficulties including their problems differentiating “white” and “black” from other BCTs, while they overestimate their limitations in differentiating the most difficult pairs (Brown-Green and Blue-Purple). Individual differences scaling (INDSCAL) analyses indicated that the metacognition regarding the use of BCTs in “Brown-Green” dichromats, especially deuteranopes, is driven slightly more by the chromatic dimension and driven slightly less by the achromatic dimension, than their practical use of BCTs. We discuss the relevance of our results in the framework of the debate between the linguistic relativity hypothesis (LRH) and the universal evolution (UE) theories.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nobuyuki Umezu ◽  
Eriho Takahashi

Abstract Color terms are used to express light spectrum characteristics captured by human vision, and color naming across languages partition color spaces differently. Such partition differences have been surveyed through several empirical experiments that employ Munsell color chips. We propose a novel visualization method for color terms based on thousands of images collected from query results provided by an image search engines such as Google. A series of experiments was conducted using eight basic color terms in seven languages. Pixel values in the images are counted to form color histograms according to the color pallet used in the world color survey. The visualization results can be summarized as follows: (1) Japanese and Korean color terms have wider distributions in the color space than terms in other languages do and (2) color visualizations for color terms pink and brown are affected by their links to proper nouns. Highlights Color terms are visualized with 3D histograms on WCS pallet. Color frequencies are assembled automatically from internet images. Red, orange, and yellow have sharp peaks. French pink has several peaks. Pink and brown are affected by their links to proper nouns. English and French colors have smaller distributions than those of Japanese and Korean.


Author(s):  
Yulia A. Griber ◽  
Dimitris Mylonas ◽  
Galina V. Paramei

AbstractThe present study is an apparent-time analysis of color terms in Russian native speakers (N = 1927), whose age varied between 16 and 98 years. Stratified sampling was employed with the following age groups: 16–19, 20–29, and so on, with the oldest group of 70 years and over. Color names were elicited in a web-based psycholinguistic experiment (http://colournaming.com). Participants labeled color samples (N = 606) using an unconstrained color-naming method. Color vocabulary of each age group was estimated using multiple linguistic measures: diversity index; frequency of occurrences of 12 Russian basic color terms (BCTs) and of most frequent non-BCTs; color-naming pattern. Our findings show intergenerational differences in Russian color-term vocabulary, color-naming patterns, and object referents. The CT diversity (measured by the Margalef index) progressively increments with speakers’ juniority; the lexical refinement is manifested by the increasing variety of BCT modifiers and growing use of non-BCTs, both traditional and novel. Furthermore, the most frequent Russian non-BCTs sirenevyj “lilac”, salatovyj “lettuce‐colored”, and birûzovyj “turquoise” appear to be the emerging BCTs. The greatest diversity and richness of CT inventory is observed in Russian speakers aged 20–59 years, i.e., those who constitute the active workforce and are enthusiastic consumers. In comparison, speakers of 60 and over manifest less diverse color inventory and greater prevalence of (modified) BCTs. The two youngest groups (16–29 years) are linguistic innovators: their color vocabulary includes abundant recent loanwords, predominantly from English and, not infrequently, CTs as nouns rather than adjectives. Moreover, Generation Z (16–19 years) tend to offer highly specific or idiosyncratic color descriptors that serve expressive rather than informative function. The apprehended dynamics of color naming in apparent time reflects intergenerational differences as such, but even more so dramatic changes of sociocultural reality in the post-Soviet era, whereby Russian speakers, in particular under 60 years, were/are greatly impacted by globalization of trade: new market product arrivals resulted in adoption of novel and elaboration of traditional CTs for efficient communication about perceived color


1983 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-194
Author(s):  
Ronald P. Schaefer

The synchronic distributional pattern of potential basic color terms in one dialect of Tswana is examined in a wide range of construction types. From this pattern the non-basic status of the term lephutsi emerges, as well as a constraint requiring the exclusion of animals from the semantic extension of basic terms designating hue. Accepting lephutsi as non-basic, however, leaves a pattern of semantic reference violating a widely assumed universal constraint governing historical stages in the evolution of color names. To resolve this dilemma, a comparative analysis of color term reference in the Sotho languages is undertaken. Based on this analysis, the semantic reference for one basic color term in Tswana is hypothesized to have undergone a historical change, whereby the universal constraints on color naming give way to the constraint governing basic terms for hue.


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