Publication Details
Title: Focal Colors Are Universal After All
Author: T. Regier, P. Kay, and R. S. Cook
Group: AI
Date: May 2005
PDF: http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/pubs/ai/focalcolors05.pdf
Overview:
It is widely held that named color categories in the world's languages are organized around universal focal colors and that these focal colors tend to be chosen as the best examples of color terms across languages. However, this notion has been supported primarily by data from languages of industrialized societies. In contrast, recent research on a language from a nonindustrialized society has called this idea into question. We examine color-naming data from languages of 110 nonindustrialized societies and show that (i) best-example choices for color terms in these languages cluster near the prototypes for English white, black, red, green, yellow, and blue, and (ii) best-example choices cluster more tightly across languages than do the centers of category extensions, suggesting that universal best examples (foci) may be the source of universal tendencies in color naming.
Bibliographic Information:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 102, No. 23, pp. 8386-8391. DOI:10.1073/pnas.0503281102.
Bibliographic Reference:
T. Regier, P. Kay, and R. S. Cook. Focal Colors Are Universal After All. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 102, No. 23, pp. 8386-8391. DOI:10.1073/pnas.0503281102., May 2005
Author: T. Regier, P. Kay, and R. S. Cook
Group: AI
Date: May 2005
PDF: http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/pubs/ai/focalcolors05.pdf
Overview:
It is widely held that named color categories in the world's languages are organized around universal focal colors and that these focal colors tend to be chosen as the best examples of color terms across languages. However, this notion has been supported primarily by data from languages of industrialized societies. In contrast, recent research on a language from a nonindustrialized society has called this idea into question. We examine color-naming data from languages of 110 nonindustrialized societies and show that (i) best-example choices for color terms in these languages cluster near the prototypes for English white, black, red, green, yellow, and blue, and (ii) best-example choices cluster more tightly across languages than do the centers of category extensions, suggesting that universal best examples (foci) may be the source of universal tendencies in color naming.
Bibliographic Information:
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 102, No. 23, pp. 8386-8391. DOI:10.1073/pnas.0503281102.
Bibliographic Reference:
T. Regier, P. Kay, and R. S. Cook. Focal Colors Are Universal After All. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 102, No. 23, pp. 8386-8391. DOI:10.1073/pnas.0503281102., May 2005