World Color Survey

WCS Data Archives

Richard Cook1, Paul Kay2, and Terry Regier3
1. University of California at Berkeley
2. International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley, CA
3. University of Chicago
In any published work based on these data, please cite these archives.
URL: http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/wcs/data.html

Introduction to the WCS Online Data Archives

In the WCS investigation, an average of 24 native speakers of each of 110 unwritten languages were asked (1) to name each of 330 Munsell chips, shown in a constant, random order, and (2), exposed to a palette of these chips and asked to to pick out the best example(s) ("foci") of the major terms elicited in the naming task. See the original WCS Instructions to Fieldworkers for further information on the data elicitation method. The files in this archive display the results of that investigation.

  • The file `inst.txt' contains a plain text version of the original WCS Instructions to Fieldworkers.
  • The file `chip.txt' gives the special WCS coordinates assigned to the Munsell stimuli listed by order of presentation. Letter coordinates (A...J) denote 10 degrees of Munsell Value (lightness); numeral coordinates denote 40 equally space Munsell hues. All chips at maximum Chroma for the (Hue,Value) pair.
  • The file `foci.txt' gives for each term in each language the chip(s) selected as best example(s) of that term by each native consultant.
  • The file `foci.exp.txt' contains the same information as `foci.txt' in a format that assigns each focal chip choice to a separate line (instead of employing certain abbreviations for ranges of adjacent chips).
  • The file `lang.txt' contains for each language in the survey, the country in which the consultants reside and the name of the fieldworker(s), as well as certain further information used internally by WCS staff.
  • The file `speaker.txt' is not available to the public, as it contains information about individual consultants.
  • The file `term.txt' contains for each consultant and each stimulus chip the term with which the consultant named the chip.
  • The file `dict.txt' gives for each term the WCS abbreviation which occurs in several other files, principally `foci.txt' and `term.txt'. The typographical renderings of the actual terms in this file do not in many cases correspond exactly to what was recorded by the fieldworker because of font limitations, among other reasons.
  • The file `BK-term.text' contains the naming responses from the Berlin and Kay (1969) study: Basic Color Terms. These data are comparable to those in `term.txt'.
  • The file `BK-foci.txt' contains the naming responses from the Berlin and Kay (1969) study. These data are comparable to those in `foci.txt'.
  • The file `BK-dict.txt' gives for the Berlin and Kay (1969) study data information on the color terms in that study, comparable to WCS `dict.txt'.
  • The `WCS Mapping Tables' relate, for each of the 330 stimulus chips, the WCS and the Munsell coordinates, as well as the CIEL*a*b* coordinates.
Each individual file in this archive has a separate readme with further details.

Primary WCS Data

FILE

DOWNLOAD (size)

Documentation

inst.txt (22497 bytes) HTML
chip.txt (4018 bytes) readme
foci.txt (270402 bytes) readme
foci-exp.txt (1550056 bytes) readme
lang.txt (6709 bytes) readme
spkr.txt (157525 bytes) readme
term.txt (10216919 bytes) readme
dict.txt (UTF-8) (39132 bytes) readme
WCS-Data-20041016.tar.gz
(all of the above)		 (2708584 bytes) readme

Berlin & Kay (1969 [1991])

BK-term.txt (37323 bytes) readme
BK-foci.txt (2041 bytes) readme
BK-dict.txt (5189 bytes) readme

WCS Mapping Tables

cnum-vhcm-lab-new.txt (12528 bytes) readme
WCS-Munsell-chart (4078 bytes) HTML

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0130420.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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Page Created: 20030601
Last Modified: 20061114