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From: Bob LeChevalier <lojbab@lojban.org>
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Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 22:56:54 -0500
Subject: [lojban] Re: Oldbie Question from private mail.
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Arnt Richard Johansen wrote:

>On Wed, 12 Jan 2005, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Someone sent me (as lojban@lojban.org) private mail to ask:
>>
>>   3) This url states that  : http://arj.nvg.org/lojban/myths.html
>>
>>   When the new vocabulary was made after the Loglan/Lojban split,
>>   the semantics of the colour adjectives were changed. The word
>>   "blanu" no longer meant "x1 is bluer than x2", but "x1 is blue".
>>   The justification for this change was "we don't want a world
>>   where everything strives to be bigger, better and taller than
>>   everything else". This is clearly a strain of the Western ideal
>>   of equality, which by no means can be called "culturally
>>   neutral".
>>
>>   Is this all true?
>>    
>>
>
>It was I who wrote the above paragraph.
>
>The fact that the Loglan prim "blanu" had two places, can be seen from the 
>Scientific American article, and from 
>http://www.lojban.org/files/draft-dictionary/Working/OLDLOG.TXT , where 
>Loglan "blanu" is translated as Lojban "blamau".
>
>As for the claim that the place structure change was motivated by some 
>ideal of equality, all I can say is "I think someone wrote that on the 
>mailing list somewhere". Unfortunately, when I wrote that web page, I 
>didn't yet realize how important it is to include references. I think 
>sure I could find the original passage somewhere with some web searching, 
>but I'm not entirely sure. If that turns out not to be the case, I'll 
>remove that claim.
>
>In any event, the remaining bullet points in that section are enough to 
>underscore the main point: that it is not possible to achieve full 
>cultural neutrality, because you cannot fully liberate yourself from the 
>biases inherent in your thought. I now realize that that is not expressed 
>as explicitly as it should be.
>
>  
>
Nora just pointed this put to me, so sorry for the very delayed response.

The above cited by Robin from your email was NOT the reason for the 
change in the color word semantics.

The reasons were multiple
1) Color perception studies have shown that the raw comparative form 
does NOT match how we decide what color something is.  For most color 
identification, color-space is divided semantically with boundaries 
approximately defined by closeness to some prototype ideal of the 
color.  Thus we say that an object is blue because it is more like our 
prototypical blue than it is like, say, a prototypical green.  BUT we 
are comparing against a full set of prototypes for our culture, which 
set serves as a standard, and the standard is critical to the color 
identification (Kay and Kempton showed that some cultures use different 
prototypical standards).  There are certain colors that English speakers 
will call simply "black" because that is what they are closest to in our 
set of colors.  But Chinese speakers will label various off-black tinges 
as being "red" that we call "black".  They are redder than they are, 
say, blue, but they are so unsaturated that they do not cross the 
English-speaker's threshold of no longer being "black". 
2) A related problem is an object that is "brown".  Given that brown is 
additive from red and green, we could say that a brown  object is 
"greener" than a (red) apple, but we still would not call it "green".  
Using the comparatives as primitive, there is no clear way to specify 
something as being "green" as opposed to "greener than a non-green thing".
3) Still another variation on an example would be a "blue" sky and a 
pair of "blue" jeans.  These are both blue.  But which is "bluer"  If we 
say that the sky is bluer, we are implying that the bluejeans are NOT 
blue, since they are not "bluer".
4) Then, we had the question of additive and subtractive colors.  Brown 
is an additive combination of green and red, but it is a subtractive 
combination of some other colors.  So whether something brown is 
"greener" than an apple per the above example, depends on whether it is 
additive or subtractive.
5) Finally, we had the question of observing conditions.  When I was 
young we used a color wheel to illuminate our Christmas tree, and thus 
the perceived colors of the silver tinsel changed from red  to blue to 
green to yellow in rotation.  So what color was the tinsel.  Furthermore 
the illumination was additive to all of the objects on the tree, so they 
also changed color.  Changing the background can also affect color 
perception, and there are optical illusions based on that change.

We wanted to try to do colors as X1 is [color] to observer X2 by 
standard X3 under conditions X4,
and indeed something like that was chosen for skari (exactly how the 
color goes into x2 of skari these days is an issue to be decided - I've 
always used "loka [color]" but there was no rule). But there were simply 
too many possible definitions of what a "color" was (I haven't even 
touched on the scientific classification of color by hue, saturation, 
etc.)  Thus we simply left the uncertain places off, making the 
primitive root nonspecific, and intending that people could add places 
with BAI to suit a particular semantics of the color (or make lujvo 
systematically).

We believed that only this approach skirted all of the above problems, 
and thus made it possible to have cultural neutrality in color 
definitions by letting people add whatever was necessary to the color 
concept they wished to convey.

I don't think we have ever claimed that an individual can free 
themselves from cultural bias.  The goal in the language is not to bias 
the language design to favor the concepts or manner of thinking of any 
one culture.  We do this by allowing multiple options where possible and 
removing mandatory specificity when we can (e.g. tense and number)

lojbab


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