The color lexicon of American English

Abstract

This article describes color naming by 51 American English-speaking informants. A free-naming task produced 122 monolexemic color terms, with which informants named the 330 Munsell samples from the World Color Survey. Cluster analysis consolidated those terms into a glossary of 20 named color categories: the 11 Basic Color Term (BCT) categories of Berlin and Kay (1969, p. 2) plus nine nonbasic chromatic categories. The glossed data revealed two color-naming motifs: the green-blue motif of the World Color Survey and a novel green-teal-blue motif, which featured peach, teal, lavender, and maroon as high-consensus terms. Women used more terms than men, and more women expressed the novel motif. Under a constrained-naming protocol, informants supplied BCTs for the color samples previously given nonbasic terms. Most of the glossed nonbasic terms from the free-naming task named low-consensus colors located at the BCT boundaries revealed by the constrained-naming task. This study provides evidence for continuing evolution of the color lexicon of American English, and provides insight into the processes governing this evolution.

Hunter-Gatherer Color Naming Provides New Insight into the Evolution of Color Terms

“…Consistent with this view, Hadza society is technologically very simple, and the Hadzane data set shows only three high-frequency color terms. However, not necessarily predicted by that view, the Hadzane data set also contains a larger set of less common color terms that collectively name many of the color categories found in the WCS and in English [16]. These non-BWR terms are distributed across the idiolects of the members of the language community, rather than being fully represented within a single, unified lexicon.…”

“…This consensus builds through the interaction of multiple lexical representations that coexist across individuals within a culture [2]. Even in our English data set, the variety of terms deployed for a small number samples (e.g., mustard, magenta) suggest a distributed and perhaps evolving color lexicon for samples at the boundaries of well-established categories [16]. Interestingly, there is some evidence in our data that close familial contact influences Hadza color idiolect: The frequency with which an individual used DK was related to their spouse’s frequency of DK, but not to the frequencies of DK of other camp members.…”

From Listing Data to Semantic Maps: Cross-Linguistic Commonalities in Cognitive Representation of Colour

“…Recent attention has turned beyond the inner circle of BCTs, to terms in common but not universal use (which might potentially become basic if the need for colour communication within a culture places enough emphasis on specificity) (Mylonas & MacDonald 2016;Lindsey & Brown 2014;Jraissati et al 2012). Turquoise and German türkis have been mentioned as a possible incipient BCT (Zollinger 1984).…”

“…Turquoise and German türkis have been mentioned as a possible incipient BCT (Zollinger 1984). However, a recent survey of American English (Lindsey & Brown 2014) found 'teal' to be the more common term for blue-green stimuli. The trend here, though with exceptions, was for 'turquoise' cognate terms to be linked with metallic sheens, suggesting that the concept is dominated by its non-chromatic aspects (perhaps emphasising the function of turquoise as a semi-precious component in jewellery).…”

Colorimetry and Dichromatic Vision

“…Much of the modern work on color and language [22][23][24] has been inspired by the seminal work of Berlin and Kay [25] about the basic color terms (BCTs). These terms are monolexemic, known and used by all members of the language community and can be used to communicate about the color of any type of object.…”