R E P O R T R ESUMES ED 019 655 AL 00.1 003 UNIVERSALITY AND EVOLUTION OF BASIC COLORTERMS. WORKING PAPER NUMBER 1. BY- BERLIN, BRENT KAY, PAUL CALIFORNIA UNIV., BERKELEY, LANG.-BEHAV.RES. LAB. EDRS PRICE MF-$0.50 HC-$3.24 79P. DESCRIPTORS- *LANGUAGE UNIVERSALS, *VISUALDISCRIMINATION, *CULTURAL FACTORS; *COMMUNICATION (THOUGHTTRANSFER), *LANGUAGE RESEARCH, COGNITIVE MEASUREMENT,COGNITIVE TESTS, HYPOTHESIS TESTING, CODIFICATION, ANTHROPOLOGY,LINGUISTIC THEORY, BASIC COLOR TERMS, THE RESEARCH REPORTED IN THIS WORKINGPAPER "STRONGLY INDICATES" THAT SEMANTIC UNIVERSALS HAVEBEEN DISCOVERED IN THE DOMAIN OF COLOR VOCABULARY.MOREOVER, THESE UNIVERSALS APPEAR TO BE RELATED TO THE HISTORICALDEVELOPMENT OF ALL LANGUAGES IN A WAY THAT CAN PROPERLY BETERMED EVOLUTIONARY. THE RESEARCH WAS CONDUCTED IN A GRADUATESEMINAR GIVEN IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OFCALIFORNIA, BERKELEY. STUDENTS AND THE AUTHORS SYSTEMATICALLYCOLLECTED DATA FROM SEVERAL INFORMANTS IN EACHOF SEVENTEEN LANGUAGES FROM A NUMBER OF UNRELATED LANGUAGEFAMILIES. AN ADDITIONAL THREE LANGUAGES WERE INVESTIGATEDIN DETAIL AFTER THE ORIGINAL RESEARCH SEMINAR WAS COMPLETED.THESE MATERIALS FROM TWENTY LANGUAGES WERE SUPPLEMENTED BYCOMPARATIVE DATA FROM THE LITERATURE, BRINGING THE SAMPLEOF LANGUAGES TO SO REPRESENTING A WIDE VARIETY OF MAJOR LINGUISTICSTOCKS. THE SEMINAR WAS DESIGNED AS AN EXPERIMENTALTEST OF THE FOLLOWING, LOOSELY STATED HYPOTHESIS-THEPREVAILING DOCTRINE OF AMERICAN LINGUISTS AND ANTHROPOLOGISTSHAS, IN THIS CENTURY, BEEN THAT OF EXTREME LINGUISTICRELATIVITY. PROPONENTS OF THIS VIEW FREQUENTLY OFFER ASA PARADIGM EXAMPLE THE ALLEGED TOTAL SEMANTIC ARBITRARINESSOF THE LEXICAL CODING OF COLOR. THE AUTHORS FEELTHAT THIS ALLEGATION OF "TOTAL ARBITRARINESS" INTHE WAY LANGUAGES SEGMENT THE COLOR SPACE IS A "GROSSOVERSTATEMENT." THEIR HYPOTHESIS WAS BASED ON INTUITIVE EXPERIENCEIN SEVERAL LANGUAGES OF THREE UNRELATED MAJOR STOCKS.THEIR FEELING WAS THAT COLOR WORDS TRANSLATED RATHERTOO EASILY AMONG VARIOUS PAIRS OF UNRELATED LANGUAGES FORTHE EXTREME LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY THESIS TO BE VALID. THEIR RESULTSSUPPORT THE ABOVE HYPOTHESIS AND CAST DOUBT ON THECOMMONLY HELD BELIEF THAT EACH LANGUAGE SEGMENTS THE THREEDIMENSIONAL COLOR CONTINUUM 'ARBITRARILY AND INDEPENDENTLY.THEY SUGGEST THAT ALTHOUGH DIFFERENT LANGUAGES ENCODE INTHEIR LEXICONS DIFFERENT NUMBERS OF BASIC COLOR CATEGORIES,THERE EXISTS UNIVERSALLY A TOTAL INVENTORY OF 11 BASIC COLORCATEGORIES FROM WHICH THE 11 OR FEWER BASIC COLORTERMS OF ANY GIVEN LANGUAGE ARE ALWAYS DRAWN--THESE CATEGORIESBEING WHITE, BLACK, RED, GREEN, YELLOW, BLUE, BROWN,PINK, ORANGE, AND GREY.(AMM) 1.1 1 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH,EDUCATION & WELFARE OFFICE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCEDEXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE POINTS OF VIEW OR OPINIONS PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORiGINATINGIT. EDUCATION STATED DO NOT NECESSARILYREPRESENT OFFICIAL OFFICE OF POSITION OR POLICY. Universality and Evolution of Basic Color Terms "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MM. MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY PA 0L.KAY TO ERIC AND ORGANIZATIONS OPERATING UNDER AGREEMENTS WITH THE U.S. OFFICE OF EDUCATION. FURTHER REPRODUCTION OUTSIDE THE ERIC SYSTEM REQUIRES PERMISSION OF THE MIN OWNER." Brent Berlin and Paul Kay University of California, Berkeley Working Paper Number 1, Laboratory for Language-BehaviorResearch University of California, Berkeley AL 0 01003 Contents 0 Introduction 1. The hypothesis and generalfindings 1.1 Procedure 10 2 refining basic color terms 1.3 Mapping basic color terms 11.4 Universality of basic color terms 1.5 Inter-language vs. intra-languagevariability 1. 6 Category foci vs. categoryboundaries 2. Evolution of basic color terms 2.1 Basic color lexicon andtechnological/cultural complexity 2.2 The seven stages in theevolution of basic color terms 2.3 Supporting data and examples 2. 3.1Stage I systems 2. 3. 2 Stage II systems 2. 3. 3Stage III systems 2. 3. 4 Stage IV systems 2. 3. 5Stage V systems 2. 3. 6Stage VI systems 2. 3. 7Stage VII systems 2.4 Internal reconstruction of basiccolor terms 2. 5 Problematical cases 3. Summary and indications forfuture research Notes References cited -2- 0. Introduction Ethnoscience studies, and studies of color vocabulary in particular, have firmly established the point that to understand the full range of meanings of a word in any language, each new language must be approached in its own terms, without a priori theories of semantic universals. H. C. Conklin (1955) has shown, for example, thatHanuri'oo "color'? words in fact encode a great deal of non-colorimetric information. The essentially methodological point made in such studies has been frequently misinter- preted by anthropologists and linguists as an argument against the existence of semantic universals. The research reported here strongly indicates that semantic universals have been discovered in the domain of color vocabulary. Moreover, these universals appear to be related to the historical development of all languages in a way that can properly be termed evolutionary. 1. The hypothesis and general findings Research was conducted in a graduate seminar given in the Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley. Students and the authors systematically collected data from several informants in each of seventeen languages from a number of unrelated language families. An additional three languages were investigated in detail after the original research seminar was completed.1 These materials from twenty languages were supplemented by comparative data from the literature bringing our present sample of languages to 80 representing a wide variety of major linguistic stocks. The seminar was designed as an experimental test of the following, loosely stated hypothesis: The prevailing doctrine of American linguists and anthropologists has, in this century, been that of extreme linguistic relativity. Proponents of this view frequently offer as a paradigm example the alleged total semantic arbitrariness of the lexical coding of color.2 We suspect that -3- this allegation of "total arbitrariness'' in the way languagessegment the color space is a gross overstatement. The hypothesis was based on the intuitive experience ofthe authors in several languages of three unrelated major stocks. Curfeeling was that color words translated rather too easily among various pairs ofunrelated languages for the extreme linguistic relativity thesis to be valid.Cur results support the above hypothesis and cast doubt on the commonly held belief thateach language segments the three dimensional color continuum arbitrarilyand independently of each other language. 3 It appears now that, althoughdifferent languages encode in their lexicons different numbers of basic colorcategories, there exists universally a total inventory of eleven basic colorcategories from which the eleven or fewer basic color terms of any given language arealways drawn. The eleven basic color categories are white, black, rezl, green,yellow, blue, brown, pink, orange, and grey. A second and totally unexpected finding is the following: if alanguage encodes some number n < 11 basic color categories, then there arestrict limitations on which n categories it may encode. The list ofU basic categories is partially ordered, producing seven equivalenceclasses4: I. white, black < 2, red < 3. green < 4. yellow < 5.blue < 6. brown < 7. purple, pink, orange, grey 1 If a language codes a category from the mth equivalenceclass, (m LI:1, 2f, ..*7), then it encodes all categories in each equivalenceclass r < m. Thus, excluding the empirically unlikely possibility of a one-termcolor vocabulary, there are just twenty-one possible basic color lexicons.5(Cee r. able 1; we are not of course referring to the phonological or syntacticfeatures of the colo.c lexemes). Moreover, if a color lexicon encodes six or fewer categories, we can predict exactly which onesthey will be.'1 his fact has clear implications for the evolution of color vocabulary in all languages.(In fact, the above or- dering gives considerably over-simplified picture of thedetailed evolutionary sequence, which is presentedbelow). Table I: The Twenty-one PossibleBasic Color Lexicons Perceptual categories encoded in thebasic color terms: No. of basic a) 0 0 0 r..I bn color 0 0 a) ,m as 0 .) ro a) ,....,,t o rwl CO terms li) $4 a) 51 $.4 .4 o $.4 XI 04 P. 0 to Type $.4 ttO )4 1 2 + 2 3 + 3 4 + + + 4 5 + + 5 6 + + + OM. + WOO - WWI OMOP 6 7 + + + OMM 6.0 -- 7 8 + + + 8 + + + + + IMIM + 1000 -- NW. ~ + 4MW 9 8 + + el.. ..WO + 10 + + + + + + + IMMO 11 9 + + OM + -- 12 9 + + + + M.. 0.. + 13 9 + + + + Maw 14 9 + + + 4. + + Ma MOWS + 15 9 + + + + M1M + + 16 9 + + + + + + + WOO 17 10 + + + + + + MOO* + 18 10 + + + + + + + 19 10 4 + + + + + + + + 20 10 + + + + + 21 11 + + + + -4- In sum, our two majorfindings are (i) the referentsfor the basic color terms of all languages appearto be drawn from a setof 11 universal perceptual categories,(ii) these categories becomeencoded the history of a givenlan- guage in a(partially) fixed order. There doesaot appear to be anyevidence that differences incomplexity of basic color lexiconbetween languages reflect 6 perceptual differences betweenthe speakers of thoselanguages. 1.1. Procedure. Standarized color stimuli wereused in conducting theresearch. 7 hese 7 %;onsisted of a set of 329 colorchips provided by the MunsellColor Company. The set is comprised of(1) 320 color chips of 40 equallyspaced hues and eight degrees of brightness, all atmaximum saturation, and(ii) nine chips of neutral hue (white, black andgreys).'I