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Color terminology

Richard Kennaway
   (jrk%INFORMATION-SYSTEMS.EAST-ANGLIA.AC.UK@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU) writes:

>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.

I agree. A pure yellow and an equal mixture of red and green light can look
identical. However, CIE, Munsell, Hickethier, and all other systems with
which I am familiar take this into account. Colors are described as identical
if they are matched by an observer whose color perception is normal.

>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.

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc -- how hard is that? A vegetarian is
a person who will not eat meat, and to anticipate your follow-up question,
meat is food prepared from animal bodies (as opposed to animal excretions
such as milk -- but some total vegetarians will not eat that either.) The
last two words I grant you.

>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 disagree. Is the word we translate as "blue" going to cover the terri-
tory of English "blue," or that of Welsh "glas," which means blue/green/gray
in English terms.

>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

Color perception is language-independent? Why then do I consider a yellowish-
brown and a reddish-brown both examples of "brown," while to a Frenchman the
first is "brun" and the second is "marron"? Why does a Russian think that
light blue and dark blue are different colors, and why do English speakers
equally well distinguish light red ("pink") from darker red ("red")?

>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.

My point is you could _not_. Are blue and green different colors? In English
they are, in Welsh not.

--

>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?

Sort of -- I would say a reddish purple.

>        cyan            fancy name for blue-green?

Yes.

>        turqoise        same as cyan?

To me, a light cyan, in fact, but probably a bit closer to blue than green.

>        mauve           very pale purple?

You have me there - I know it's somewhere in the violet-purple area but I don't
know for sure.

>        scarlet         definitely-not-pink red?
>        maroon          same as scarlet?

Now that is interesting. I had a post-doctoral fellowship at Rutgers University,
whose school color is scarlet. To me I saw various shades of red on things, but
none are as dark as what I'd call maroon. So scarlet, whatever it is, is not
the same as maroon, which is to me quite definitely a very dark red.

>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.

Vermilion is bright, slightly orangish red, while pink is pale, often slightly
purplish red.

>.. How much agreement is there nowadays
>among different people's use of the word "scarlet"?  Will the word have
>become obsolete in another century?

As I said, given my experience at Rutgers, not much agreement!

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

Basically, a dark orange.

Bob LeChevalier (lojbab@grebyn.com) writes:

>MY own feeling is that formally defining the colors is a waste of time.
>I, being slightly color-blind, will make errors.  people do not walk around
>with colors standards in their hands, and will use some more nebulous
>standard anyway.  Lojban has the capability to add a place "by standard ..."
>to any color predicate, which is sufficient.

I have often wondered what would be used in the "by standard" places in Lojban.
Can you give me an example of a Lojban sentence in which something appears
in this place?

tdatirv!sarima@uunet.uu.net writes:

>>Bruce Gilson asks how conlangs are to define colour terms. My proposed
>>solution is to state which Munsell Colour [Color] Chips correspond to
>>the senses of the colour terms. Munsell chips are an international
>>standard. Unfortunately I have been unable to locate a source for these
>>chips, though I have tried hard. Does anyone know how to get hold of a set?

>I think it is time to bring a few results from 'experimental linguistics'.
>While the 'bound[a]ries' of color terms appear to vary widely from language
>to language, the core meaning of the *basic* color terms seems to be quite
>stable.  The results show that each color term has a 'central' or 'basic'
>hue, and other colors are included on the basis of *similarity* to this
>central value.  It is thus inappropriate to mandate the exact range of
>meaning of color terms, the natural way to do it is to specify the central
>value, and let usage determine the bound[a]ries.  [Thus choose *one* Munsell
>chip for each color term, and leave the rest to similarity - this is how
>every natural language on earth does it].

>You should try to find the psychologically most natural central colors.
>Thus for the word meaning 'red', you should choose as the central color
>one that is near the central color for red in most languages with the word.
>And so forth for each basic color term.  [The most universal basic color
>terms are white, black, red, blue, yellow, green, and brown].

"Brown" in French is divided into two areas; "blue" and "green" in Welsh are
one. Yoruba has three color words, usually rendered as "black," "white," and
"red," but blue items are presumably "black" and yellow ones are "white."

                                                   Bruce