Re: Color terminology

[cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!jrk]

Bruce ("61510::GILSON" <gilson%61510.decnet@MIL.NAVY.NRL.CCF4>) writes:
>dave@PRC.Unisys.COM writes:
>>In a language constructed in a modern scientific society, there would
>>seem to be absolutely no reason not to have standards for color names.
>>Instead of saying that "blanu" is "more or less like the English
>>'blue'", it could be precisely defined.

BS alert!  "A modern scientific society"?  What on earth is that?  Must we,
in "a modern scientific society", call oxygen "element 8", a tiger "tigris
longipilis", and bronze "an alloy of 60% tin, 40% lead"?  Loglan once
flirted with this trap, but (even before the Schism) avoided it.

Flame off.

Colour words name perceptions, not spectral composition.  If you want words
for the latter, go ahead, but they will not be "colour words".  Different
spectral compositions can appear the same colour; light sources of
identical spectral composition can have very different colours.  This was
studied by Land (he of the Land camera) but I don't have references.

As for the supposed imprecision and idiosyncratic use of words like "blue",
this is no different from many non-colour words.  Go on, define "brass".
Or "vegetarian".  Or "computer".  Or "honour".  Etc.

It is true, that in a conlang the meanings of the colour words (and all the
others) must be decided by fiat of the designers, instead of, as in a
natlang, there being a consensus which is both discovered by new speakers
through experience and influenced by them.  But giving the official
definition in terms of CIE or Hickethier numbers is, IMHO, as absurd as
basing words for everyday animals on Latin biological nomenclature.

I would recommend Lakoff's "Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things", for his
chapter on the colour systems of various languages.  It suggests to me that
a set of colour words can be defined in terms of human perception rather
than relative intensities of this or that electromagnetic frequency - the
"focal" colours which he describes.  It appears that colour perception is
language-independent (so much for Sapir-Whorf :-(), and that the focal
colours have culture-independent physiological correlates.  For those
looking for a usable and culture-independent system of colour words, this
would seem to be a good place to start.

If you must have a connection with the technical jargon of printing,
photography, paint manufacture, and computer graphics, I would suggest the
Colour Naming System.  It is a set of standardised verbal descriptions of
colours (e.g. "light greenish red", "medium grey", etc) that people who
know nothing about CIE, Munsell chips, etc. can use to specify colours in a
meaningful and standard way.  There are some computer graphics people here
who would know about it - I'll try and get some more info about it if
anyone's interested.

CNS is based on English, but you could make a version based on the focal
colours instead.

--
Richard Kennaway          SYS, University of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K.
Internet:  jrk@sys.uea.ac.uk            uucp:  ...mcsun!ukc!uea-sys!jrk

PS.  FWIW, as far as I know, my colour perception is normal, yet there are
several colour words (not names for Ciemunsellhickethier coordinates :-))
whose meanings I have only a vague idea of.  Such as:

        magenta         a slightly purplish red?
        cyan            fancy name for blue-green?
        turqoise        same as cyan?
        mauve           very pale purple?
        scarlet         definitely-not-pink red?
        maroon          same as scarlet?

And what, if any, are the distinctions between vermilion and pink, or
between purple, violet, and indigo?  I saw dave@PRC.Unisys.COM's message
about how he uses the last three, but it's not clear if this is a usage he
has simply decided to adopt, or a general consensus.

I suspect (I'll look up the OED when I get home) that many of these less
common colour words originated from names of particular dyestuffs or
artists' materials.  At one time, a scarlet robe would be just that - dyed
with scarlet, whatever that was.  You would never see one that was almost,
but not quite, scarlet, and everyone would have much the same notion of
what was meant by the word.  With improvement in the technology of dyes,
clothes can be any colour you like, and the sharp distinction between
things which are scarlet and things which are not has faded.  Perhaps the
English language is following suit.  How much agreement is there nowadays
among different people's use of the word "scarlet"?  Will the word have
become obsolete in another century?

PPS. How is "brown" described by the various colour standards?