An online color naming experiment in Russian using Munsell color samples

Abstract

Russian color naming was explored in a web-based experiment. The purpose was 3-fold: to examine (1) CIELAB coordinates of centroids for 12 Russian basic color terms (BCTs), including 2 Russian terms for "blue", sinij "dark blue", and goluboj "light blue", and compare these with coordinates for the 11 English BCTs obtained in earlier studies; (2) frequent nonBCTs; and (3) gender differences in color naming. Native Russian speakers participated in the experiment using an unconstrained colornaming method. Each participant named 20 colors, selected from 600 colors densely sampling the Munsell Color Solid. Color names and response times of typing onset were registered. Several deviations between centroids of the Russian and English BCTs were found. The 2 "Russian blues", as expected, divided the BLUE area along the lightness dimension; their centroids deviated from a centroid of English blue. Further minor departures were found between centroids of Russian and English counterparts of "brown" and "red". The Russian color inventory confirmed the linguistic refinement of the PURPLE area, with high frequencies of nonBCTs. In addition, Russian speakers revealed elaborated naming strategies and use of a rich inventory of nonBCTs. Elicitation frequencies of the 12 BCTs were comparable for both genders; however, linguistic segmentation of color space, employing a synthetic observer, revealed gender differences in naming colors, with more refined naming of the "warm" colors from females. We conclude that, along with universal perceptual factors, that govern categorical partition of color space, Russian speakers' color naming reflects language-specific factors, supporting the weak relativity hypothesis. K E Y W O R D Scentroids, CIELAB, color naming, color space, gender differences, linguistic segmentation, Russian, webbased experiment | I NT ROD UCTI ONAccording to its color, a visual stimulus is assigned to a certain color category. Identified by a linguistic label (in adult humans), language-specific concepts enable attention to be drawn to certain perceptual attributes of reality. Color names, like other groups of semantically related words, are systems in which one word's position influences the positions of all others.

Objects as culture‐specific referents of color terms in Russian

“…In the present web‐based study with access to an extensive sample of native Russian speakers, we employed a psycholinguistic method to investigate further the gamut of object referents of Russian color terms and to identify categories of object referents that are culture‐specific, that is, reflect Russians' natural environment, as well as social practices and cultural context. The results are an extension of our previous analysis of the same dataset, which focused primarily on Russian basic color terms (BCTs) and their (denotative) comparison with the English counterparts.…”

“…All data presented below in graphic and tabular form refer to the corpus of Russian color terms obtained in our large‐scale study . The most frequent object‐derived color names were sirenevyj “lilac” and birûzovyj “turquoise” (Figure ).…”

“…Detailed information on the interface of the web‐based psycholinguistic experiment (http://www.colournaming.com) can be found in our previous works . A subset of the Munsell Renotation Data set was employed ( N = 600 in total) specified in sRGB (Figure ).…”

“…Description of color by means of naming objects, which possess this color, is a universal feature of existing languages . Color names develop metonymically, whereby “Entity stand for entity's color”, quoting Casson .…”

The impact of signboard‐building color combinations on color harmony and legibility

“…In contrast, web‐based color surveys with many participants can be conducted under circumstances of lesser colorimetric control. Despite the limitations of color accuracy, recent studies have attempted web‐based experiments for collecting data on a large scale . Thus, our choice was to collect responses from a large number of participants.…”