From cbmvax!snark!cowan Tue Sep 24 20:10:04 1991 Return-Path: (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA28682; Tue, 24 Sep 91 18:32:31 -0400 Message-Id: From: cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan (John Cowan) Subject: Re: defining colour terms in conlangs To: conlang@buphy.bu.edu (conlang), lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu (lojban) Date: Tue, 24 Sep 91 17:21:30 EDT In-Reply-To: <24307.9109231901@ucl.ac.uk>; from "And Rosta" at Sep 23, 91 8:01 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11] Status: RO la .and. rostas. cusku di'e (And Rosta 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. So far in the conlang/lojban-list discussion, nobody has made a clear distinction between defining colors by their >boundaries< vs. defining them by their >centers< (although several people have hinted at it). My feeling is that the former undertaking, exemplified by deciding exactly which colors are "crino" (Lojban for "green") and which are "blanu" (Lojban for "blue") is hopeless for a conlang designer. The main studies of color terms in natural languages seem to indicate that native language speakers disagree widely on where to set the boundaries in all languages. Agreement is much better, though, on the center of the color range: "the greenest green" and "the bluest blue". It should be possible for Lojban (or any conlang) to define the central points of its color terms in this way. This makes the conlang independent of all natural languages, and even makes it fairly independent of the particular color system chosen, since for specific colors every system can be mapped into every other. As a matter of interest, I will note the 12 Lojban color words here: blabi 'white' xekri 'black' grusi 'gray' xunre 'red' crino 'green' blanu 'blue' pelxu 'yellow' cicna 'cyan' nukni 'magenta' narju 'orange' bunre 'brown' zirpu 'purple' The first nine should be easy to define by any system. My unofficial intuitions say that: narju is 100% red, 50% green, 25% blue bunre is 50% red, 25% green, 0% blue zirpu has two centers, namely: 50% red, 0% green, 100% blue 100% red, 0% green, 50% blue (This use of the RGB system is purely for convenience, because I have an RGB color tool handy, and does not reflect any Lojban standard.) There are also two color modifiers, carmi 'bright, intense' and kandi 'dim', which roughly reflect the amount of "value" on the HLS system; e.g. carmi xunre 'pink'. -- cowan@snark.thyrsus.com ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan e'osai ko sarji la lojban