Re: da blanu de

[Robin Turner <robin@bilkent.edu.tr>]

la stivn. cusku di'e

> Color is a particularly vexing issue, as it has cultural determinants. We
> apparently do *not* all agree on what blue <blanu> is. So leaving it is an
> undefined term is problematic. It is simply not the case that understanding
> what we mean by blue is axiomatic. This could, I suppose, be solved by
> specifying the particular wavelengths involved, or the particular retinal
> aldehyde reactions involved, but as has been previously discussed, neither
> of these is really satisfactory. So I can't tell you what I mean by blue,
> but I know it when I see it.

To clarify what I said in my posting to cogling ...

Cross-cultural studies of colour terms have shown that while there is
considerable variation in the number of terms (anything from two upwards), some
things are pretty constant.  One is that however many colour terms a language
has, they occur in a specific order (Berlin & Kay, 1969).  Thus if a language has
only three colour terms, they will be black (dark), white (light) and red; if it
has five, they will be those three plus yellow and green, and so on.

The second point is that there is substantial agreement on prototypical colours.
A speaker of a language which has a word for green but not for blue may describe
a blue object as "green", but their idea of a typical green will be the same as
for someone who also has the word "blue" (Heider (now Rosch), 1972, I think).

In other words, we don't need to worry too much about the colour gismu.

co'o mi'e robin.