Paul Kay's Home Page

Curriculum Vitae for P.K.(PDF) Curriculum Vitae for P.K.(view as html)

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Here are some papers on color naming and Construction Grammar. Scroll directly to the bottom of this page for some info on related sites, etc. The papers in each section (color naming, Construction Grammar) are listed in chronological order and are in postscript format unless otherwise indicated. Later entries are in PDF format.

PAPERS ON COLOR NAMING

Color naming across languages. Kay, Paul, Brent Berlin, Luisa Maffi, and William Merrifield. To appear in C.L Hardin and L. Maffi (eds.), Color Categories in Thought and Language . Cambridge. 1997 APPEARED: SEPTEMBER 1997.

Science ≠ Imperialism: There are non-trivial constraints on color categorization. Kay, Paul and Brent Berlin. To appear in Brain and Behavioral Sciences. 1997. APPEARED, JUNE 1997.

The emergence of basic color lexicons hypothesis: A comment on John Lyons' "The vocabulary of colour with particular reference to Ancient Greek and Classical Latin." Paul Kay. To appear in The Language of Color in the Mediterranean. Alexander Borg (editor). Stockholm. Almqvist and Wiksell International. Appeared 1999.

"Color Categorization." Paul Kay To appear in The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, Robert A. Wilson and Frank C. Keil (eds.). This is an encyclopedia article with 3.5 pages of text and 5 pages of bibliography. (Appeared 1999)

Methodological Issues in Cross-Language Color Naming(postscript).
Methodological Issues in Cross-Language Color Naming.(pdf)
Paul Kay. First appeared in French as La recherche interlinguistique sur les noms de couleur: Quelques considérations méthodologiques. Anthropologie et Sociétés 23, 69-90 (1999). English version appeared in Language, Culture and Society, Ed. by Christine Jourdan and Kevin Tuite. Cambridge University Press (2006) pp 115-134.

Color Appearance and the Emergence and Evolution of Basic Color Lexicons. Paul Kay and Luisa Maffi. To appear in American Anthropologist.Appeared (1999)101:743-760.

Asymmetries in the Distribution of Composite and Derived Basic Color Categories. Paul Kay. Comment [4 pages] on a paper by Stephen Palmer, entitled Color, Consciousness and the Isomorphism Constraint, to appear in Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Appeared (1999) 22:957-958.

Color. Paul Kay. A 1500 word, encyclopedia style article to appear in a special issue of the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, edited by Alessandro Duranti. Appeared (1999) 1:29-32.

The Linguistics of Color Terms. Paul Kay. A 3000 word entry for the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, ed. by Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes.(Appeared 2001, Elsevier; Amsterdam, NY)

Color Categories are Not Arbitrary.(pdf) Paul Kay.Cross Cultural Research(2005) 39, 39-55(2005)

Individual differences in unique and binary hues [Abstract](html).Gokhan Malkoc, Paul Kay, and Michael A. Webster Journal of Vision 2, 32 (2002).

Resolving the question of color naming universals(pdf). Paul Kay and Terry Regier.Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 100, 9085-9089 (2003).

Color naming and sunlight: Commentary on Lindsey and Brown (2002)(pdf). Terry Regier and Paul Kay. Psychological Science. 15, 289-290 (2004).

Color naming, lens aging, and grue: What the optics of the aging eye can teach us about color language(pdf). Joseph L. Hardy, Christina M. Frederick, Paul Kay, and John S. Werner. Psychological Science (2005) 16, 321-327.

Individual and Population Differences in Focal Colors(pdf). Michael A. Webster and Paul Kay. In Anthropology of Color, ed. by Robert E. MacLaury, Galina V. Paramei and Don Dedrick. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. pp. 29-53. (2007)

Variations in color naming within and across populations [commentary on Steels and Belpaeme](pdf). Michael A. Webster and Paul Kay. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 28, 512-513. 2005.

Focal colors are universal after all (pdf, preprint).Terry Regier, Paul Kay and Richard S. Cook. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102:8386-8391 (2005).

The World Color Survey Database: History and Use(pdf). Richard S. Cook, Paul Kay, and Terry Regier. In Cohen, Henri and Claire Lefebvre (eds.) Handbook of Categorisation in the Cognitive Sciences. Elsevier. (2005)

Variations in normal color vision.IV. Binary hues and hue scaling.(pdf)Gokhan Malkoc, Paul Kay and Michael A. Webster. J.Opt. Soc. Am. A. 22, 2154-2168 (2005). Cardinal points of cone opponent space do not correspond to unique RYGB judgments, nor do RYGB unique hue choices predict intermediate binaries.

Universal foci and varying boundaries in linguistic color categories. Terry Regier, Paul Kay, and Richard S. Cook (2005). In B. G. Bara, L. Barsalou and M. Bucciarelli (Eds.) Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

Color naming universals: the case of Berinmo. Paul Kay and Terry Regier. ms. The color naming data of Berinmo and other 5-term languages exemplify universal tendencies in cross-language color naming.Cognition. 2007 Feb;102(2):289-98. Epub 2006 Feb 7

Language, thought and color: recent developments. Paul Kay and Terry Regier. TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences Vol.10 No.2 February 2006. A brief survey of recent developments in research on color naming and color cognition suggests that the popular opposition of 'relativist' versus 'universalist' approaches conceals, rather than clarifies, interesting new questions.

Whorf hypothesis is supported in the right visual field but not the left. Aubrey L. Gilbert, Terry Regier, Paul Kay, and Richard B. Ivry. Target colors of different lexical category from distractors are found faster than targets of the same lexical category as distractors, but only in right visual field (which feeds the left cerebral hemisphere.) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 103, 489-494. (2005).

Further evidence that Whorfian effects are stronger in the right visual field than the left. G. V. Drivonikou, P. Kay, T. Regier, R. B. Ivry, A. L. Gilbert, A. Franklin, and I. R. L. Davies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104, 1097-1102. (2007).

Color Naming is Near Optimal. Terry Regier, Paul Kay & Naveen Khetarpal. In D. S. McNamara and J. G. Trafton (Eds.), Proceedings of the 29th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. (2007).

Color naming reflects optimal partitions of color space. T. Regier, P. Kay, and N. Khetarpal. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104, 1436-1441. (2007).

Support for lateralization of the Whorf effect beyond the realm of color discrimination. (in press) Aubrey Gilbert, Terry Regier, Paul Kay, & Richard B. Ivry. Brain and Language. (2007).

Lateralized Whorf: Language influences perceptual decision in the right visual field (in press) Paul Kay, Terry Regier, Aubrey L. Gilbert, & Richard B. Ivry. In James W. Minett and William S-Y. Wang, eds. Language, Evolution, and the Brain. Hong Kong: The City University of Hong Kong Press.

Language affects patterns of brain activation associated with perceptual decision Li Hai Tan, Alice H. D. Chan, Paul Kay, Pek-Lan Khong, Lawrance K. C. Yip, and Kang-Kwong Luke. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105, 4004-4009 (2008).

Categorical perception of color is lateralized to the right hemisphere in infants, but to the left hemisphere in adults. A. Franklin, G. V. Drivonikou, L. Bevis, I. R. L. Davies, P. Kay, and T. Regier. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105, 3221-3225 (2008).

Why colour words are really ... colour words [Comment on a paper by Anna Wierzbicka claiming that there can be no color term universals because many languages lack a word for 'color'] Paul Kay and Rolf G. Kuehni. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 14, 886-887. June 2008.

Lateralization of categorical perception of color changes with color term acquisition A. Franklin, G. V. Drivonikou, A. Clifford, P. Kay, T. Regier, and I. R. L. Davies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105: 18221-18225 (2008).