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Color categorization and language

Sayaka Abe

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OverviewI. Language and categorization

II. Prototype theory

III. Color: classic studies

IV. Criticisms

V. Further issues

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I. Language and categorization

Why linguists care about cognition?

Observing language allows us to see underlying coginitive patterns of human mind

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Q1. What kind of concepts can language encode or cannot encode?

a. Grammar (closed-class items)

Mary walked to a park.

b. Lexicon (open class items)

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-ed PAST past present future

to DESTINATION

a SINGULAR, INDEFINITE (discourse)

No languages can express size, length, shape, colors, etc with closed-class items. (Talmy 2000 I)

a. Grammar (closed-class)

‘6 hours ago’

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b. Lexicon (open-class)

Mary: name of a personBill, John, Kathy, etc.

walk: actionrun, sleep, study, etc.

park: place school, station, friend’s home, etc.

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Q2. What are universal and language(culture)-specific linguistic

meanings?

e.g. SEE (Wierzbicka)(a semantic primitive)

‘snow’ (Boaz 1911)English 1: snowEskimo 4: aput ("snow on the ground"), gana ("falling

snow"), piqsirpoq ("drifting snow"), and qimuqsuq ("snowdrift")

tense markers English – 3: present, past, future

Hopi - no tense marker

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Q3. Does language affects thought? Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (lingusitic determinism)

e.g. Can the speakers of a language with 12 words for ‘snow’ more readily perceive different types of snow than the speakers of a language with only 2 words?

Or thought affect language?

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“Observing language”

1. Looking at the way language is structured (lexicon, grammar) by referring to grammar books, fieldwork

2. Looking at behavioral property (naming tasks by experiments, fieldwork, etc.)

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Naming of things as indication of cultural significance

‘ume’

‘Japanese plum’

‘some small round fruit’

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II. Prototype TheoryWhy prototype theory?

Problems with necessary and sufficient conditions

Man: +ADULT, +HUMAN, +MALE Woman: +ADULT, +HUMAN, –MALE

BUTbachelor: +unmarried +male √ A single 20 year old male? 5-year-old boy? Pope

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• Many words cannot be defined by a set of necessary and sufficient conditions

• Instead, it is more reasonable to think of a concept in terms of a ‘best’ (prototypical) example or ‘peripheral’ examples

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Which one is a typical ‘bird’?

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Features of the prototypical ‘bird’neither necessary nor sufficient!

1. Has feathers2. Has a beak.3. Can fly4. Lays eggs.5. Small6. Builds a nest in a tree7. Eats seeds or worms.8. Makes ‘tweet-tweet’ noises

• Note that the feature: ‘Able to be ridden’ is NOT on the list above.

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Structure of the category ‘bird’ (North American)

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Which ones are prototypical ‘chairs’?

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What is prototypical may vary depending on the language, culture

or individual.

e.g. Prototypical ‘food’ in different cultures

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American food

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Japanese tabemono ‘food’

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Summary

Point 1. Different languages have different ways (numbers of words) of distinguishing the objects or thoughts.(e.g. ‘snow’ example)

Point 2. Speakers of different languages have

different prototypical examples of a category.(e.g. ‘food’ to Americans and Japanese)

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Question

Are these true for all the categorization phenomena?

How about color?

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II. ColorColor terms have been studied to explore the way humans

cross-culturally classify and group universal aspects of the physical world.

Real world:There is a continuous gradation of color from one end of

the color spectrum to the other. There are no natural breaks, no discrete categories.

Language:Languages differ in the number of colors they distinguish. Language carves up the color spectrum into discrete

categories.

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Berlin and Kay (1969)

1. Informants of 98 languages2. Used Munsell color chips 330 color

samples as stimuli

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1. Color term inventory

Had subjects give color terms for given stimuli.

e.g. What is this called?

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Claim 1• There is a universal inventory of 11 basic color

categories, and all languages use either these 11 or fewer.

white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange and grey

• Basic=– Single morpheme (no light brown)– Were in common use (no sage)– Did not have a limited distribution (no blond)– Were not contained within another color (no scarlet)

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Claim 2

• There is an implicational hierarchy of the inventory of color terms.

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Color term inventories• If 2 black and white

e.g. Dani (Papuan) and Burarra (Australian)

• If 3 black, white and red

Note: no languages distinguished less than two colors

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• What color terms are expressed in Shona?– Black,white, red, and

yellow or green.• What color terms are

expressed in Bassa?– Black and white

White

Black

Green

Yellow

[Red] [Brown][Blue]

PurplePinkOrangeGray

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2. Focal color

Which one is the best example of _____?

People across different languages more or less agree with what the prototypical example of given categories.

www.daicolor.co.jp/english/color_e/color_e01.html

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Claim 3

There are universal constraints, rather than relativistic effects, in the domain of color.

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Follow up studies (1)Heider 1972 (Rosch): A high degree of agreement on focal

colors was confirmed.- Behavioral correlates of focal colors

- Named focal colors more rapidly- The given names for focal colors are shorter

- Short-term memory task: Suggest that color memory is indeed aided by the existence of the relevant color terms in one’s language

Dani (2 color terms) and English - Long-term memory task: Dani speaker’s learned focal

color terms faster than non-focal ones.- Black was named most rapidly of all.

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Follow up studies (2)Kay and McDaniel (1978) Additional contributions• Proposes the category ‘grue’ in place of green

and blue.Zulu (Bantu language) does not

distinguish between green and blue“grue like the sky” “grue like the grass”

Basically supports Berlin and Kay“…basic color categories can be derived from the neural response patterns that underlie the perception of color”

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What can we say about categorization of colors?

Point 1. Different languages have different ways (numbers of words) of distinguishing things in the world. Yes

Point 2. Speakers of different languages have different prototypical examples of a category. No, according to Berlin and Kay, etc.

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Implications of the studies above

• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis valid? not with color perception

“…in the case of color at least… it is perception that determines language.”

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IV. Criticisms of Berlin and Kay Criticism (Sahlins 1976, Wierzbicka 1990, Lucy 1996, etc.):- Words are not simply labels for perceived stimuli. - The setting of B + K’s tasks, i.e. basic color terms tested

on color chips, are artificial.- That is, color terms on a given culture do not mean

Munsell chips.

What the color of is inseparable from what we call ‘color’ and is culturally more significant.

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Limit of “colors” in real life“It is only in comparatively recent times, and only in

technologically advanced societies, that it has been possible for a vast range of diverse colours to be applied, through industrial processing, to things. In the world of nature, things are typically associated with quite narrow segments of the colour continuum.”

e.g. blood it red, milk is white, charcoal is black, etc.“…it is not really surprising that color terms should refer,

primarily to rather restricted portions of the spectrum.” (Taylor 1989)

Equally, the cross-language stability of color focality may well have as much to do with the stability of the attributes of certain kinds of things, as with neurological processes of perception (cf. Wierzbicka 1980b)

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‘Colors’ vs ‘properties of an object’?

‘pink’

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‘the look of sakura (cherry blossoms)’

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What’s ‘color’ anyway?

Wierzicka 2006 (Semantics of color: a new paradigm)

Universality of the notion of ‘color’ itself should be questioned.

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Burarra “color” terms

“black” and “white”

Jones and Meehan (1978)-gungaltja ‘light, brilliant and white colors’

‘highly saturated red’

-gungundja ‘other colors: dark, dull and black colours’

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• Despite their use of the words ‘colour’, Jones and Meehan’s own observations show that the distinction is not based on colour at all.

Rather, ‘brightness’ and ‘lightness’

*Burarra people have no concept of ‘white’ and no concept of ‘a warm color’

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“Color” can be expressed using natural language, in particular, using the terms of SEEING (which is a primitive)

- ‘X looks like Y’ mechanism - ‘high visibility’ and ‘low visibility’

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Hypothesis (Wierzbicka)

X is –gungaltja =a. some things are like this:b. when people see a place where these things

are, they can always see these thingsc. the sun[M] is always like thisd. fire[M] is always like thise. at some times, blood is always like thisf. X is like this

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V. Further Issues

• Colors in contexts, as a group

• Warm tones vs. cooler tones

• Color with other attributes (e.g. shapes)

• Incorporatinng into a theory of subjectivity?