The list task and its two parameters (term frequency and its mean position in the lists) are discussed here. A new simple cognitive salience index, S = F /(N mP), that combines the two list task parameters is presented together with the procedure for its calculation. The cognitive salience index is normed to vary between 1 and 0. The basic terms in every domain are the most salient. The salience index of the ideal most salient term has the figure 1 and that of the term not mentioned at all the value is 0. The cognitive salience index gives comparable results between different investigations, as it does not depend on the length of the individual lists. The cognitive salience index is compared with some earlier salience indices.
In this paper the theory of the evolution of basic color terms introduced by Berlin & Kay is applied to Mandarin Chinese. The data was collected using the fieldwork methods, color list and color-naming tasks. The rainbow order of colors does not affect the list task results. The results, i.e. basic color terms, are calculated according to the procedure in Davies & Corbett. There are nine basic color terms in Mandarin. Ranked according to the cognitive salience criterion they are the following:hóng‘red’,huáng‘yellow’,lu‘green’,lán‘blue’,hēi‘black’,bái‘white’,zǐ‘purple’,fěn‘pink’, andhuī‘gray’. Of the fully developed set of BCTs only the terms for ‘brown’ and ‘orange’ are absent. There are no real gender differences for the BCTs. Mandarin is a Stage VII basic color vocabulary language. The absence of the Stage VI term for ‘brown’ is explained using the wild-card theory. As a result Mandarin is not a counter-example to the theory of basic color terms. We suggest that the termchéng‘orange’ is the next candidate for basic status in Mandarin. There are two competing terms for basic ‘brown’zōngandhè. If one competing term for ‘brown’ (with high probability the termzōng) becomes basic, Mandarin Chinese will have a full set (eleven) of basic color terms.
The article is written in the tradition of Brent Berlin and Paul Kay’s theory of basic color terms. According to this theory there is a universal inventory of eleven basic color categories from which the basic color terms of any given language are always drawn. The number of basic color terms varies from 2 to 11 and in a language having a fully developed color system there are eleven basic color terms: white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange and gray . The studies about basic color terms in sign languages show that lexicalization of basic color terms in sign languages follows the same pattern found in spoken languages. The current study is the first close study on the color terminology in Estonian Sign Language. The survey was carried out in summer 2005 and consisted of three tasks, following Davies and Corbett’s field method: the list task, the City University color vision test and the color-naming task. Fifty ESL users from different parts of Estonia were interviewed for the study. The collected data shows that the BCT hierarchy is clearly displayed in Estonian Sign Language and it may be concluded that Estonian Sign Language is a Stage VII language and has nine basic color terms: black , white , red , yellow , green , blue , gray , brown and pink / purple .
In this paper we compare five Finno-Ugric languages – Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Udmurt and Komi-Zyrian – and the Estonian Sign Language (unclassified) in different aspects: established basic colour terms, the proportion of basic colour terms and different colour terms in the collected word-corpora, the cognitive salience index values in the list task and the number of dominant colour tiles in the colour naming task. The data was collected, using the field method of Davies and Corbett, from all languages under consideration, providing a distinctive foundation for linguistic comparison. We argue that Finno-Ugric languages seem to possess relatively large colour vocabularies, especially due to their rich variety of word-formation types, e.g. the composition of compound words. All of the languages under consideration have developed to Stage VI or VII, possessing 7 to 11 lexicalised basic colour terms. The cognitive salience index helps to distinguish primary and secondary basic colour terms, showing certain comprehensive patterns which are similar to Russian and English.
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