Transcript Issues on Perception and Categorization of Color

Color categorization and
language
Sayaka Abe
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Overview
I. Language and categorization
II. Prototype theory
III. Color: classic studies
IV. Criticisms
V. Further issues
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I. Language and categorization
Why linguists care about cognition?
Observing language allows us to see
underlying coginitive patterns of human
mind
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Q1. What kind of concepts can language
encode or cannot encode?
a. Grammar (closed-class items)
Mary walked to a park.
b. Lexicon (open class items)
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a. Grammar (closed-class)
-ed
PAST
past
‘6 hours ago’
present
future
to
DESTINATION
a
SINGULAR, INDEFINITE (discourse)
No languages can express size, length, shape, colors, etc
with closed-class items. (Talmy 2000 I)
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b. Lexicon (open-class)
Mary: name of a person
Bill, John, Kathy, etc.
walk: action
run, sleep, study, etc.
park: place
school, station, friend’s home, etc.
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Q2. What are universal and
language(culture)-specific linguistic
meanings?
e.g. SEE (Wierzbicka)
(a semantic primitive)
‘snow’ (Boaz 1911)
English 1: snow
Eskimo 4: aput ("snow on the ground"), gana ("falling
snow"), piqsirpoq ("drifting snow"), and qimuqsuq ("snowdrift")
tense markers
English – 3: present, past, future
Hopi - no tense marker
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Q3. Does language affects thought?
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (lingusitic determinism)
e.g. Can the speakers of a language with
12 words for ‘snow’ more readily perceive
different types of snow than the speakers
of a language with only 2 words?
Or thought affect language?
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“Observing language”
1. Looking at the way language is
structured (lexicon, grammar) by referring
to grammar books, fieldwork
2. Looking at behavioral property (naming
tasks by experiments, fieldwork, etc.)
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Naming of things as indication of
cultural significance
‘ume’
‘Japanese plum’
‘some small round fruit’
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II. Prototype Theory
Why prototype theory?
 Problems with necessary and sufficient conditions
Man: +ADULT, +HUMAN, +MALE
Woman: +ADULT, +HUMAN, –MALE
BUT
bachelor: +unmarried +male
√ A single 20 year old male
? 5-year-old boy
? Pope
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• Many words cannot be defined by a set of
necessary and sufficient conditions
• Instead, it is more reasonable to think of a
concept in terms of a ‘best’ (prototypical)
example or ‘peripheral’ examples
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Which one is a typical ‘bird’?
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Features of the prototypical ‘bird’
neither necessary nor sufficient!
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Has feathers
Has a beak.
Can fly
Lays eggs.
Small
Builds a nest in a tree
Eats seeds or worms.
Makes ‘tweet-tweet’ noises
•
Note that the feature: ‘Able to be ridden’ is NOT on the
list above.
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Structure of the category ‘bird’
(North American)
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Which ones are prototypical
‘chairs’?
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What is prototypical may vary
depending on the language, culture
or individual.
e.g. Prototypical ‘food’ in different cultures
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American food
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Japanese tabemono ‘food’
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Summary
Point 1. Different languages have different ways
(numbers of words) of distinguishing the
objects or thoughts.
(e.g. ‘snow’ example)
Point 2. Speakers of different languages have
different prototypical examples of a category.
(e.g. ‘food’ to Americans and Japanese)
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Question
Are these true for all the categorization
phenomena?
How about color?
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II. Color
Color terms have been studied to explore the way humans
cross-culturally classify and group universal aspects of
the physical world.
Real world:
There is a continuous gradation of color from one end of
the color spectrum to the other. There are no natural
breaks, no discrete categories.
Language:
Languages differ in the number of colors they distinguish.
 Language carves up the color spectrum into discrete
categories.
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Berlin and Kay (1969)
1. Informants of 98 languages
2. Used Munsell color chips 330 color
samples as stimuli
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1. Color term inventory
Had subjects give color terms for given
stimuli.
e.g. What is this called?
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Claim 1
• There is a universal inventory of 11 basic color
categories, and all languages use either these
11 or fewer.
white, black, red, green, yellow, blue,
brown, purple, pink, orange and grey
• Basic=
–
–
–
–
Single morpheme (no light brown)
Were in common use (no sage)
Did not have a limited distribution (no blond)
Were not contained within another color (no scarlet)
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Claim 2
• There is an implicational hierarchy of the
inventory of color terms.
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Color term inventories
• If 2  black and white
e.g. Dani (Papuan) and Burarra (Australian)
• If 3  black, white and red
Note: no languages distinguished less than two
colors
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White
Green
[Red]
Black
[Blue]
Yellow
[Brown]
Purple
Pink
Orange
Gray
• What color terms are
expressed in Shona?
– Black,white, red, and
yellow or green.
• What color terms are
expressed in Bassa?
– Black and white
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2. Focal color
Which one is the best
example of _____?
People across different
languages more or
less agree with what
the prototypical
example of given
categories.
www.daicolor.co.jp/english/color_e/color_e01.html
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Claim 3
There are universal constraints, rather than
relativistic effects, in the domain of color.
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Follow up studies (1)
Heider 1972 (Rosch): A high degree of agreement on focal
colors was confirmed.
- Behavioral correlates of focal colors
- Named focal colors more rapidly
- The given names for focal colors are shorter
- Short-term memory task: Suggest that color memory is
indeed aided by the existence of the relevant color terms
in one’s language
Dani (2 color terms) and English
- Long-term memory task: Dani speaker’s learned focal
color terms faster than non-focal ones.
- Black was named most rapidly of all.
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Follow up studies (2)
Kay and McDaniel (1978)
Additional contributions
• Proposes the category ‘grue’ in place of green
and blue.
Zulu (Bantu language) does not
distinguish between green and blue
“grue like the sky” “grue like the grass”
Basically supports Berlin and Kay
“…basic color categories can be derived from
the neural response patterns that underlie the
perception of color”
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What can we say about
categorization of colors?
Point 1. Different languages have different
ways (numbers of words) of distinguishing
things in the world.
 Yes
Point 2. Speakers of different languages
have different prototypical examples of a
category.
 No, according to Berlin and Kay, etc.
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Implications of the studies above
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis valid?
 not with color perception
“…in the case of color at least… it is
perception that determines language.”
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IV. Criticisms of Berlin and Kay
Criticism (Sahlins 1976, Wierzbicka 1990, Lucy 1996,
etc.):
- Words are not simply labels for perceived stimuli.
- The setting of B + K’s tasks, i.e. basic color terms tested
on color chips, are artificial.
- That is, color terms on a given culture do not mean
Munsell chips.
What the color of is inseparable from what we call ‘color’
and is culturally more significant.
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Limit of “colors” in real life
“It is only in comparatively recent times, and only in
technologically advanced societies, that it has been
possible for a vast range of diverse colours to be
applied, through industrial processing, to things. In the
world of nature, things are typically associated with quite
narrow segments of the colour continuum.”
e.g. blood it red, milk is white, charcoal is black, etc.
“…it is not really surprising that color terms should refer,
primarily to rather restricted portions of the spectrum.”
(Taylor 1989)
Equally, the cross-language stability of color focality may
well have as much to do with the stability of the attributes
of certain kinds of things, as with neurological processes
of perception (cf. Wierzbicka 1980b)
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‘Colors’ vs ‘properties of an object’?
‘pink’
or
‘the look of sakura
(cherry blossoms)’
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What’s ‘color’ anyway?
Wierzicka 2006 (Semantics of color: a new
paradigm)
Universality of the notion of ‘color’ itself
should be questioned.
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Burarra “color” terms
“black” and “white”
Jones and Meehan (1978)
-gungaltja ‘light, brilliant and white colors’
‘highly saturated red’
-gungundja ‘other colors: dark, dull and
black colours’
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• Despite their use of the words ‘colour’,
Jones and Meehan’s own observations
show that the distinction is not based on
colour at all.
Rather, ‘brightness’ and ‘lightness’
*Burarra people have no concept of ‘white’
and no concept of ‘a warm color’
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“Color” can be expressed using natural
language, in particular, using the terms of
SEEING (which is a primitive)
- ‘X looks like Y’ mechanism
- ‘high visibility’ and ‘low visibility’
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Hypothesis (Wierzbicka)
X is –gungaltja =
a. some things are like this:
b. when people see a place where these things
are, they can always see these things
c. the sun[M] is always like this
d. fire[M] is always like this
e. at some times, blood is always like this
f. X is like this
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V. Further Issues
• Colors in contexts, as a group
• Warm tones vs. cooler tones
• Color with other attributes (e.g. shapes)
• Incorporatinng into a theory of
subjectivity?
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