The evolution of color naming reflects pressure for efficiency: Evidence from the recent past

Abstract

It has been proposed that semantic systems evolve under pressure for efficiency. This hypothesis has so far been supported largely indirectly, by synchronic cross-language comparison, rather than directly by diachronic data. Here, we directly test this hypothesis in the domain of color naming, by analyzing recent diachronic data from Nafaanra, a language of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, and comparing it with quantitative predictions derived from the mathematical theory of efficient data compression. We show that color naming in Nafaanra has changed over the past four decades while remaining near-optimally efficient, and that this outcome would be unlikely under a random drift process that maintains structured color categories without pressure for efficiency. To our knowledge, this finding provides the first direct evidence that color naming evolves under pressure for efficiency, supporting the hypothesis that efficiency shapes the evolution of the lexicon.

Concepts Are Restructured During Language Contact: The Birth of Blue and Other Color Concepts in Tsimane’-Spanish Bilinguals

“…For instance, in the case of color concepts, the set of terms in Greek and English studied in Athanasopoulos (2009), Athanasopoulos et al (2010Athanasopoulos et al ( , 2011 differ only by one term (i.e., blue vs. light and dark blue). Given that the number of color terms used consistently by speakers of a language varies from two to 11 and above (Berlin & Kay, 1969;Conway et al, 2020;Gibson et al, 2017;Kay & Maffi, 1999;Regier et al, 2015;Zaslavsky et al, 2018Zaslavsky et al, , 2022, we speculated that it might be easier to investigate conceptual changes in the color-labeling system in bilingual speakers who speak languages that are on different ends of the spectrum of the number-of-color-words scale-that is, a language that has a few color terms used consistently by its population and a language that has at least 11 color terms used consistently (as in industrialized populations, which typically have 11 or 12 common terms). Probing vastly different cultures would potentially yield larger differences.…”

Florence “blues” are clothed in triple basic terms

“…By leaning upon "Linguistic historical background" (see the Addendum below), we conclude that the "triple Florence blues" probably resulted from the pressure for efficiency of communication (Jameson, & Komarova, 2009;Zaslavsky et al, 2019Zaslavsky et al, , 2022 vis-à-vis significant cultural practices in Middle-Ages Florence-flourishing of the blue dyeing technology and trade, and profuse employment of blue pigments in wall paintings and manuscripts. According to the latest findings on categorical perception, the linguistic "blue" distinction apparently enables greater chromatic precision of the conveyed blue-shade denotata (cf., Gibson et al, 2017) and facilitates the discrimination of colors because observers pay attention to the linguistic distinction between categories (cf., Witzel & Gegenfurtner, 2015).…”

“…Novel basic color categories (BCCs) were demonstrated to emerge due to needs for communication efficiency (Gibson et al, 2017;Jameson & Komarova, 2009;Zaslavsky et al, 2019Zaslavsky et al, , 2022. Other factors drive the enrichment of the color lexicon, too, such as salient features of the environment and cultural complexity (Josserand et al, 2021).…”

Emergence of common concepts, symmetries and conformity in agent groups—an information-theoretic model

“…We will not model particular mechanisms on how agents agree on a common concept or how they communicate; instead, we will postulate information-theoretical optimality criteria for desirable common concepts. This approach is supported by increasing evidence that approximate information optimality is reproducibly observed as outcome in the evolution of communication [8,9]. Specifically, for our study, we are intentionally ignoring the details of the processes and mechanisms leading to the emergence of concepts.…”