Name: Basic Color Terms
ISBN: 9781575861623

Paul Kay

Brent Berlin

Explores the psychophysical and neurophysical determinants of cross-linguistic constraints on the shape of color lexicons.

Their Universality and Evolution

Basic Color Terms

Sarah Sammis

** spoiler alert **
           The authors of the study are native English speakers. Berlin, is an anthropologist. He and Kay worked primarily with other anthropologists and ethnolinguists to report on various languages usage of color terms. At no point did they speak with native speakers of languages who also happen to be experts in colors. By experts, I mean anyone who works with color on a regular basis: artists or people who make dyes, etc.

The second obvious bias is towards western languages. English as the authors' native language gets a pass and is slotted in amongst the most advanced. English — a language notorious for borrowing words. But it's given a pass because the words were borrowed longer ago than other languages when English/Spanish/French introduced their words into the languages of the people they conquered. If English gets a pass on borrowing "orange" and "blue" for instance, so should any other language.

http://pussreboots.com/blog/2024/comm...

Basic Color Terms Their Universality and Evolution

Reviews