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Ambiguity, Polysemy and Vagueness

2010-06-03T10:17:10Z

Vicente: Created page with 'Ambiguity, polysemy and vagueness are terms used in cognitive semantics referring to different instances of plurality of meaning. According to Deane (1988) these three phenomena ...'

Ambiguity, polysemy and vagueness are terms used in cognitive semantics referring to different instances of plurality of meaning. According to Deane (1988) these three phenomena “form a gradient between total semantic identity” (vagueness) “and total semantic distinctness” (p. 327) (ambiguity). Therefore, polysemy is a case somewhere in between these two extremes. The borders between the categories of ambiguity, polysemy and vagueness are fuzzy. Thus, there are lexical examples that can be assigned to more than one category.

== Ambiguity ==
Ambiguity is a term used to characterise phenomena that have more than only one meaning. These meanings are distinct from each other and have no close schema in common. That is why a single expression may lead to multiple interpretations. In natural language many words, strings of words and sentences are ambiguous, simply because of the fact that numerous words cover several distinct meanings, or specific structural elements give rise to different readings. That means that “an expression or utterance is ambiguous if it can be interpreted in more than one way” (Löbner 2002: p. 39). However, disregarding puns (see 1.5), in every linguistic situation only one meaning of an ambiguous expression can be used. There are several forms of ambiguity to be distinguished – according to their trigger:

===Lexical Ambiguity===
Lexical ambiguity is concerned with multiple interpretations of lexemes. A word is ambiguous if it involves two lexical items that have identical forms, but have distinct, i.e. unrelated meanings.
There are numerous examples of lexical ambiguity. A clear-cut one is the lexeme ''ball''. This word may either denote the round object which is used for several sports, like football, volleyball or basketball, or it can be used to refer to a large formal dancing party. Both forms are identically written and pronounced but just accidentally share the same form: ''ball'' in the sense of the round object originates in the Old Norse word ‘ballr’, whereas ''ball'' as the formal event comes from Greek ‘ballizar’ (meaning ‘to dance’) and was first attested in the English language in the 1630s being introduced through Old French. (Online Etymological Dictionary)
Another example by Chierchia & McConnell-Ginet (1993) is the following sentence: ''You should have seen the bull we got from the Pope.'' The sentence is ambiguous, because the word ''bull'' may stand for several distinct things – either a male animal of different kinds, a swearword or an official order or statement from the Pope. As ambiguity is context dependent lexical disambiguation (knowing which word meaning has been used) is quite easy in most cases when considering previous expectations and context (p. 32).

The most classical example of lexical ambiguity is ''bank'', which may either denote an organisation providing financial services, or the side of a river – just to mention two of the lexeme’s possible meanings.

Further examples of lexical ambiguity are:

''bright'' - a bright (intelligent) person vs. bright (sunny) weather

''file'' - arranged collection of papers vs. metal tool

===Structural Ambiguity===
Structural ambiguity is a result of two or more different syntactic structures that can be attributed to one string of words. That means that a sentence is structurally ambiguous not because it contains a single lexeme that has several distinct meanings, but because the syntactic structure of the sentence causes multiple interpretations.

(1) ''Young boys and girls love the adventure playground.''

This sentence is syntactically ambiguous, because the reference of ''young'' is unclear. There are two possible interpretations of the subject. It may either be that ''[young boys] and girls love the adventure playground'', or ''young [boys and girls] love [it]''. The structural analysis shows that the sentence may be interpreted in a way that ''young'' only refers to the boys, or it may be understood as characterising the boys as well as the girls.

(2) ''Flying planes can be dangerous.''

This often quoted example of structural (also called syntactic) ambiguity comes from Noam Chomsky. Sentences that contain lexemes that change their word form or even word class depending on the sentence’s interpretation are part of this category. ''Flying planes'' in this example sentence may be understood as “to fly planes” as well as “planes, which fly”. Therefore, the lexeme ''flying'' can be interpreted as the gerund form of a verb in a verb phrase, or as an attribute of a noun phrase.

There are several linguists, who have come up with similar examples like the last one. Lyons (1975) (cf. pp. 212f.) as well as Langacker (1993) (cf. p. 432), for example, determine those instances as grammatically ambiguous. The terms structural, syntactic and grammatical ambiguity are basically interchangeable.

Lyons’ examples for grammatical ambiguity are the following:

(3) ''They can fish.''

The ambiguous interpretation is a result of “the double classification” of ''fish'' (either intransitive verb or noun) as well as of can (either auxilliary or transitive verb).

(4) ''beautiful girl’s dress''

This is an example similar to the first one of structural ambiguity. It is a question of reference and therefore, may either be understood as ''[beautiful girl’s] dress'' or ''beautiful [girl’s dress]''. Is the adjective ''beautiful'' attributed to the ''girl'' or to the ''dress''? That question makes the reading of the sentence ambiguous.

However, Lyons points out that these cases of free interpretation are hardly leading to misinterpreations in natural language use. It usually gets quite obvious which meaning is aimed at through the rest of the sentence and the context.

===Transformational Ambiguity===
The category of transformational ambiguity is mentioned by Lyons (1975), who characterises its prototypes as “ambiguous constructions which depend upon the ‘deeper connexions’” (p. 249). Furthermore, he points out that these constructions are mostly only ambiguous out of context. One of his examples is the phrase ''the love of God''. Isolated from any textual relations it is unclear whether ''God'' is the subject or the object in this noun phrase. Additionally, Lyons quotes Chomsky’s already mentioned example of ''flying planes'', which he – in contrast to other linguists – counts as belonging to transformational ambiguity. Basically, neither categorisation is wrong as many linguists do not distinguish transformational from grammatical ambiguity. Thus, transformational ambiguity is a subcategory of grammatical ambiguity.

Another Chomskian example mentioned by Lyons is: ''the shooting of the hunters''. This is the same case as the ''God''-example: it is unclear whether ''the hunters'' are subject or object in this phrase.

===Scope Ambiguity===
A further type of ambiguity called scope ambiguity is discussed by Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet(1993), among others. It is a subcategory of structural ambiguity. However, scope ambiguity can be distinguished from structural ambiguity through its “single surface syntactic structure” (p. 33). Chierchia and McConnell-Ginet’s example for this subcategory is: ''Someone loves everyone''. This sentence can either mean ‘Everyone is loved by (at least) one person.’ or ‘There is a person and this person loves everyone.’ Note that in the former case ''someone'' may denote several different individuals, whereas it is only one single individual in the latter case.

===Pun===
A pun is a special form of ambiguity (mostly lexical) that is consciously used to create statements with ambiguous – distinct – meanings. That means that a pun is a play with words involving and creating double contexts (cf. Tuggy 1993: pp. 168, 178). Puns in spoken discourse make use of homophones, and puns in written discourse utilize homographs. Punning is a useful tool for jokes, creating at least two meanings – mostly a literal as well as a figurative one. Here is one example: ''After he ate the duck, the alligator got a little down in the mouth.''

== Vagueness ==
Tuggy (1993) offers a classical definition of vagueness. He characterises it as a linguistic phenomenon, where “two or more meanings associated with a given phonological form are […] united as non-distinguished subcases of a single, more general meaning” (p. 167). That means that vagueness involves “a lexeme with a single but nonspecific meaning” (ibid., p. 168).

Typical examples of vagueness are kinship terms, e.g. ''child'', as well as lexemes with flexible boundaries, e.g. gradable adjectives like ''tall'' (cf. Löbner 2002: p. 45). An utterance like “It’s my ''child''’s birthday tomorrow.” is vague, because the lexeme ''child'' is vague. There are two possible instantinations, namely [a female human under 18] and [a male human under 18]. When receiving such an uttereance it is much more likely that the common schema [a human under 18] is activated instead of its instantiations.

The lexeme ''tall'' in the statement “He is a ''tall'' man.” is vague as well. ''Tall'' belongs to the group of gradable adjectives. Therefore, the boundaries of the category ''tall'' are flexible depending on the context it is used in. From the perspective of a little child, a 5-foot-tall man will be considered ''tall''. But the same man will not be considered with the same quality – ''tall'' – from the perspective of a 6-foot-tall woman. Thus, categorisations of this kind are always matter of norms (cf. Löbner 2002: p. 195).

== Polysemy ==
On a scale of meaning variance ambiguity and vagueness are the two extremes, whereas polysemy is in between the other two. It shares features with both and is a common phenomenon in everyday language use. Polysemy involves lexemes that are clearly united (share a common schema) as well as clearly seperable at the same time. Polysemous words are the result of lexemes gaining new usages over time which share the same phonological form and appear to have separate meanings to non-etymologists. ''Foot'' is one example of polysemy. There are distinct usages of the word – either as a body part or as a scale unit (1 foot = 30.48 centimetres). Even though it appears that these are two very different meanings, both forms go back to the Old English word ''fot''. Other examples of polysemy are ''earth'' (the planet vs. ground/ soil) and ''brother'' (kinship term vs. term of address for a male person living in a cloister).

Polysemy is sometimes mixed up with homonymy. However, as e.g. Langacker (1991) points out, there is a clear-cut distinction between these two (p. 268). Polysemous lexems always share the same etymological background and/or are conceived of as being semantically related by speakers, whereas homonymous words just happen to end up with the same phonological form. Therefore, homonymy may be seen as a subcategory of lexical ambiguity. Some linguists, like Löbner (cf. 2002: p. 39), claim the same for polysemy.

Metaphorical uses of words are instances of polysemy as well. ''The foot of a mountain'', for example, makes use of the polysemous lexeme ''foot'' and denotes the bottom part of the mountain, just as a person’s ''foot'' refers to the bottom part of the human body.

== References ==

- Deane, Paul.1988. Polysemy and Cognition. ''Lingua'' 75.

- Löbner, Sebastian. 2002. ''Understanding Semantics''. London [a.o.]: Arnold [a.o.].

- ''Online Etymological Dictionary''. Available online at www.etymonline.com. 23. January 2010.

- Chierchia, Gennaro & McConnell-Ginet, Sally. 1993. ''Meaning and Grammar: An introduction to Semantics''. Cambridge, Messachusetts [a.o.]: MIT Press.

- Lyons, John. 1975. ''Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics''. Cambridge [a.o.]: Cambridge University Press.

- Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. ''Foundations of Cognitive Grammar''. Volume II. Descriptive Application. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

- Tuggy, David. 1993. “Ambiguity, polysemy, and vagueness.” ''Cognitive Linguistics'' 4-3.

- Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. ''Concept, Image, and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar''. Berlin [a.o.]: Mouton de Gruyter.

== Additional Reading ==

Spencer, Andrew. 1991. ''Morphological Theory: An Introduction to Word Structure in Generative Grammar''. Oxford: Blackwell.

Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. ''Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Volume I. Theoretical Prerequisites''. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Portal:Semantics

2010-05-20T09:11:24Z

Vicente: /* Major approaches to semantic analysis */

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Semantics<br>
This portal presents the most central topics in the study of meaning.
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=='''<div style="font-size:80%;">Fundamental issues</div>'''==
'''Meaning and use'''<br>
[[Arbitrariness of the sign]] -- [[Context dependence]] -- [[Cooperative Principle]] -- [[Descriptive meaning]] -- [[Emotive meaning]] -- [[Felicity condition]] -- [[Fixed-context assumption]] -- [[Gricean maxims]] -- [[Implicature]] -- [[Meaning]] -- [[Meaning postulate]] -- [[Meaning theories]] -- [[Non-descriptive meaning]] -- [[Use-mention distinction]]<br>

'''Denotation and reference'''<br>
[[Binding]] -- [[Cataphoric relation]] -- [[Connotation]] -- [[Cumulative reference]] -- [[Denotation]] -- [[Extension]] -- [[Equivalence]] -- [[Icon]] -- [[Iconicity]] -- [[Individual constant]] -- [[Individual term]] -- [[Individual variable]] -- [[Intension]] -- [[Koreferenz]] -- [[Reference]] -- [[Symbol]]<br>

'''Interpretation and truth'''<br>
[[Analytic truth]] -- [[Assignment]] -- [[Axiom]] -- [[Compositionality Principle]] -- [[Contingent truth]] -- [[Covert category]] -- [[Dual (semantics)]] -- [[External negation]] -- [[Idiom]] -- [[Internal negation]] -- [[Interpretation]] -- [[Interpretive rules]] -- [[Katz-Postal-principle]] -- [[Left downward monotonicity]] -- [[Left upward monotonicity]] -- [[Meaning postulate]] -- [[Modal logic]] -- [[Monotonicity]] -- [[Name]] -- [[Narrow scope]] -- [[Necessary truth]] -- [[Opaque context]] -- [[Rigid designator]] -- [[Truth]]<br>

'''Semantic metalanguage'''<br>
[[Atomic formula]] -- [[Aussagenlogik]] -- [[Boolesche Operatoren]] -- [[Formula]] -- [[Funktionale Applikation]] -- [[Interpretation function]] -- [[Lambda-abstraction]] -- [[Lambda-operator]] -- [[Metalanguage]] -- [[Meta-variable]] -- [[Predicate logic]]<br>

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Major branches of semantics</div>''' ==

'''Lexical semantics'''<br>
[[Ambiguity]] -- [[Antonym]] -- [[Cohyponym]] -- [[Complementary]] -- [[Converses]] -- [[Equipollent antonyms]] -- [[Holonym]] -- [[Hyperonym]] -- [[Hyponym]] -- [[Kohyponym]] -- [[Lexical ambiguity]] -- [[Lexical semantics]] -- [[Meronym]] -- [[Opposition]] -- [[Overlapping antonyms]] -- [[Reversives]] -- [[Synonymy]]<br>

'''Sentence semantics'''<br>
[[Affected object]] -- [[Agent]] -- [[Anomaly]] -- [[Argument]] -- [[Arity]] -- [[Beneficiary]] -- [[Case relation]] -- [[Case role]] -- [[Conditional sentence]] -- [[Contradiction]] -- [[Declarative sentence]] -- [[Direktive]] -- [[Echo question]] -- [[Equivalence]] -- [[Ergativität]] -- [[Exclamative sentence]] -- [[Experiencer]] -- [[Expressive]] -- [[Homonymy]] -- [[Illocutionary force]] -- [[Imperative]] -- [[Implication]] -- [[Implicature]] -- [[Irrealis]] -- [[Jussiv]] -- [[Kāraka]] -- [[Kohortativ]] -- [[Kommissiv]] -- [[Konditional(is)]] -- [[Konjunktiv]] -- [[Kutscherimperativ]] -- [[Modality]] -- [[Mutuant]] -- [[Negation]] -- [[Optativ]] -- [[Predicate]]<br>

'''Situation semantics'''<br>
[[Alethische Modalität]] -- [[Epistemische Modalität]] -- [[Event time]] -- [[Internally caused situation]] -- [[Modality]] -- [[Mutual situation]]<br>

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== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Major approaches to semantic analysis</div>''' ==

'''Cognitive semantics'''<br>
[[Base (in Cognitive Grammar)|Base]] -- [[Cognitive grammar]] -- [[Cognitive semantics]] -- [[Construal]] -- [[Conceptualization]] -- [[Frame Semantics]] -- [[Mental space]] -- [[Profile (in Cognitive Grammar)|Profile]] -- [[Ambiguity, Polysemy and Vagueness]] -- [[Metaphors in Politics]]<br>

'''Formal semantics'''<br>
[[Generalized Quantifier Theory]] -- [[Generative Semantics]] -- [[Intensional logic]] -- [[Katz-Fodor-semantics]] -- [[Logical semantics]] -- [[Model (semantics)|Model]] -- [[Model theory]] -- [[Montague Grammar]] -- [[Predicate logic]] -- [[Proof theory]]<br>

'''Structuralist semantics'''<br>
[[Componential analysis]] -- [[Conceptual Structure]] -- [[Semantic feature]] -- [[Sense relation]]<br>

'''Prototype semantics'''<br>
[[Basic category]] -- [[Family resemblance]] -- [[Gestalt psychology]] -- [[Prototype]] -- [[Prototype theory]] -- [[Focal Colors]] -- [[Basic Color Terms]]

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Lexico-grammatical domains</div>''' ==

'''Nominal semantics'''<br>
[[Abstract noun]] -- [[Attributive use]] -- [[Bare plural]] -- [[Collective noun]] -- [[Concrete noun]] -- [[Conservativity]] -- [[Count noun and mass noun]] -- [[Definite]] -- [[Definite description]] -- [[Definite description]] -- [[Determiner]] -- [[Dvanda compound]] -- [[Endocentric compound]] -- [[Existential interpretation]] -- [[Exocentric compound]] -- [[Generic interpretation]] -- [[Inalienable possession]] -- [[Mass noun]]<br>

'''Adjectival semantics'''<br>
[[Absolute|Absolute adjectives]] -- [[Attributive adjective]] -- [[Comparative]] -- [[Extensional adjective]] --[[Intensional adjective]] -- [[Predicative adjective]] -- [[Relational|Relational adjectives]] -- [[Superlative]]<br>

'''Verbal semantics'''<br>
[[Aspect]] -- [[Aspectual classes]] -- [[Absentive]] -- [[Collective predicate]] -- [[Completive aspect]] -- [[Distributive predicate]] -- [[Factive predicate]] -- [[Inchoative]] -- [[Konjunktiv]] -- [[Optativ]] -- [[Portal:Tense and aspect|Tense and aspect]]<br>

'''Semantics of function words'''<br>
[[Adversative coordination]] -- [[Anaphoric pronoun]] -- [[Antecedent]] -- [[Conjunction]] -- [[Connective]] -- [[Deictic pronoun]] -- [[Deixis]] -- [[Donkey anaphora]] -- [[Downward monotonicity]] -- [[Focus particle]] -- [[Generalized quantifier]] -- [[Negative polarity item]]<br>

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Associations</div>''' ==

[http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/asw/gfs/ Gesellschaft für Semantik]

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Journals</div>''' ==

[http://jos.oxfordjournals.org Journal of Semantics]<br>
[http://semprag.org/ Semantics and Pragmatics]

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Book series</div>''' ==

[http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/seriesbyseries.asp?ref=EISZ Explorations in Semantics] (Blackwell)<br>
[http://info.emeraldinsight.com/products/books/series.htm?PHPSESSID=gnvm7k2va3i4s6srrjqamovk44&id=0092-4563 Syntax and Semantics] (Emerald)

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Other ressources</div>''' ==

[http://www2.let.uu.nl/Uil-OTS/Lexicon/ Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics]
[http://www.semanticsarchive.net Semantics archive]<br>
[http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/asw/gfs/deutsch/onlinewb/frames.html Online-Wörterbuch zur Semantik und Pragmatik]

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Biographical articles</div>''' ==

[[Gottlob Frege]] - [[John Lyons]]

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This portal is maintained by [[Volker Gast]]. Please use the discussions tab or
[mailto:v.gast@fu-berlin.de Email] to enter your comments, critical remarks, or suggestions. Thank you.
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[[Category:Portal|Semantics]]
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Focal Colors

2010-05-20T09:07:50Z

Vicente: /* Color perception */

A focal color is a shade of a certain color category that represents the best example of this category. Even speakers from different language communities recognize these focal colors to be the perceptually salient and to be the best representative of a particular color category. Such commonly recognized shades are ''red, green, blue, yellow, purple, pink, orange,'' and ''gray''. Focal colors are determined by particular criteria. This theory was proved by the anthropologist Brent Berlin and the linguist Paul Kay in 1969 and further developed by Eleanor Rosch in 1972. The emergence of focal colors is part of the linguistic color debate and opposes the Sapir-Whorfian Relativist Hypothesis. Focal colors became the corner stone of the prototype theory of linguistic categorization.

== Color Perception ==

Color is the psychological interpretation of retinal and neuronal perception of reflected visible light. Human beings are able to differentiate between 7,500,000 color shades (Brown/Lenneberg 1954: 457). Since there are so many different colors we perceive color as a continuum in a three-dimensional space. One dimension is produced by hue, which is the perception of different wavelengths; another one is brightness, which is based on the reflectivity of a surface; and, finally, saturation, which is the perception of one dominant wavelength (Payne 2006: 605). Although there are no visible borders in the color continuum, people distinguish between certain colors. Moreover, color terms are part of every language in the world, but they all categorize them differently. Therefore, color terms provide information about human thinking and acting and form a suitable starting point for modern research on categorization.

== Relativist Theory ==

In the 20th century a debate arose that was concerned with the categorization of colors. Basically, a color term is the signifier of Saussure’s linguistic sign which denotes a color concept or the signified, respectively. As already mentioned, different language communities categorize colors in different ways. This means that two individuals from two different cultures might perceive the color term ''red'' as a different combination of hue, brightness and saturation or they would refer to the same color with two different terms. Therefore, anthropologists in the 1950’s claimed that categorization of color is arbitrary, i.e. that it is based on conventions and that it is not innate. They said that such categorization is dependent on the cultural and social background of each speech community. This thesis is also called Sapir-Whorfian-Hypothesis (Whorf 1956). Benjamin Lee Whorf investigated on the basis of the linguistic knowledge of his teacher, Edward Sapir, the language of the Hopi people inter alia and found out that they perceive time and space differently from people in North America (Bußmann 2002: 577). Later Brown and Lenneberg (1954) found out that color names differed enormously between languages and bridged the gap between Whorf’s thesis and linguistic categorization, especially color terms.

== Universalist Theory ==

The Whorfian view was strongly opposed by Berlin and Kay in 1969. They carried out a cross-linguistic study in which they wanted to prove the relativist thesis as wrong. They claimed that there are specific reference points in the color continuum that we use for orientation. These reference points, called ‘foci’, are universal and not culture-specific. In fact, these ‘foci’ underlie a particular hierarchy. Hence, they maintained that color categorization is not arbitrary but innate. Their study and the one by Eleanor Rosch one contributed the most important aspects to the universalist theory. They are presented in the following.

== Empirical Research of Berlin & Kay ==

Berlin and Kay (henceforth: BK) investigated 98 languages. They sampled 20 languages in oral tests and supplemented the remaining 78 languages by consulting dictionaries and field worker’s notes (BK 1969: 23). In order to achieve a representative result they worked with the so called Munsell Color chips, which had also been used by Lenneberg and Roberts. These are standardized chips which represent the three dimensions relevant to our perception of color (hue, brightness, saturation). This color system consists of 329 color chips. 320 chips represent 40 different hues each divided into eight different levels of brightness. The remaining nine chips represent ''black, white,'' and seven levels of ''gray''. The participants of the study were asked to pick out

(1) “All those chips which they would under any condition call ''x''.

(2) The best, most typical examples of ''x''. (BK 1969: 7)”

The color term ''x'' has to consist of a single word (i.e. not ''green-blue'') and must be familiar to most speakers of this language. Furthermore, the term is not borrowed from another language such as ''pink'' in German and it should not be restricted in its reference such as ''blond''. Color chips of ''x'' that fulfilled these criteria were called basic color terms (henceforth BCT).
Berlin and Kay found out that people focus certain points in the color continuum as a kind of orientation (BK 1969: 13). Such reference points or ‘best examples’ were called ‘foci’. Focal colors had not only been detected in English but also in the remaining 19 languages. Therefore, focal colors are not only shared by one speech community but also by speakers of different languages. In fact, BK found out that when a language has color terms that correspond the English terms, the focal points will be in same area. Hence, color categorization is not arbitrary but is rooted in focal colors. Thus, “whenever we speak of colour categories, we refer to the foci of categories rather than to their boundaries or total area, except when specifically stating otherwise” (BK 1969: 13). BK showed that color terms have ‘good’ and ‘bad’ examples. When it comes down to best example of a category, people basically share the same concept.
With regard to BCT they identified two to eleven basic terms across languages except for Russian and Hungarian. English for example has ''red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, gray, black'' and ''white''. For further details, see also [[basic color terms]].

== Empirical Research of Rosch ==

The findings of BK raised a lot of questions. The psychologist Eleanor Rosch (nee Heider) tried to explain the psychological background of focal colors and concentrated on the three most basic cognitive processes: ''selection of stimuli; identification and classification''; as well as ''naming''. In order to conduct her study, she needed subjects who hardly knew color terms and related to color categories as rare as possible (Rosch 1973: 331). Such informants could get a controlled input stimuli for learning new color categories. Therefore, she worked with pre-school children and speakers of the Dugum Dani language from Papua New Guinea. The Dani people have a two-term color system (''mili'' and ''mola'') which is based on hue and on brightness (Heider 1972: 460). The English equivalents for those two are ''light'' and ''dark''. In order to attach her results to BK’s study, she also used the Munsell Color Chips. She first examined if focal colors are perceptually salient. In her first experiment, she tested the ''stimulus'' (arousal of attention) with 3-year-old children. The subjects were asked to pick out any color they like. The focal chips ''yellow, orange'' and ''green'' seemed to be most attractive to them. The results for the other five hues were also statistically significant (Ungerer/Schmid 2006: 12). Hence, 3-year-old children pick out focal chips more often than non-focal ones. The second experiment was concerned with ''identification and classification''. 4-year-old children were given focal and non-focal chips in random order and were asked to pick out and point to the same color in the Munsell color array. Focal chips were matched more accurately than non-focal ones.<br />
The last two experiments were conducted with the Dani as informants and an American control group. In one experiment short-term memory was tested. Rosch presented the Dani eight focal and non-focal chips for five seconds each. Then, the subjects had to point to the color they had just seen in the color array. Focal chips were matched more precisely. Thus, focal colors are remembered more accurately in short-term memory than non-focal ones. However, the American control group matched the colors more precisely than the Dani. This might not be surprising since the Dani have little practice in memorizing such colors; for example they do not see red, yellow, green traffic lights every day (Taylor 2003: 10). In her last experiment she tested long-term memory. Since the Dani speakers only know two basic color terms, she taught them 16 new color terms in random order. The names she used were those of Dani clans. The subjects were able to produce the names of focal colors more rapidly than those of non-focal ones. Hence, names of focal colors are acquired more rapidly than non-focal ones.<br />
Rosch was able to find out that focal colors are more perceptually salient than non-focal ones (Rosch 1973: 348). This cognitive salience is probably not anchored in language but reflects certain physiological aspects of men’s perspective mechanisms. Later, she coined the term ‘prototype’ instead of ‘focal’. She also conducted a study to prove that prototypes are not only restricted to color categorization but can also be applied to shapes (Ungerer/Schmid 2006: 15).

== Significance ==

BK were able to verify that different languages do not separate colors from each other arbitrarily, but they use so called focal colors as reference points (Bußmann 2002:213). Rosch then proved that focal colors have a special cognitive status.
Focal colors paved the way for prototype theory (Ungerer/Schmid 2006:9) since Rosch transferred her findings to the domain of shapes. In other investigations she found out that each linguistic category has better or less good examples and, therefore, eliminated the classical approach to linguistic categorization. Claims of the relativity theory were already revised when the study of BK had been published. BK’s and Rosch’s most important contribution might be that of perception (Payne 2006: 609). Linguists paid more attention to cognitive perception when dealing with categorization.
As already mentioned the study by Berlin and Kay motivated other anthropologists to investigate hundreds of other languages in e.g. ''World Color Survey'' (Kay, forthcoming) and ''Color and Cognition in Mesoamerica: Constructing Categories as Vantages'' (Maclaury 1996).

== Criticism ==

Rosch finding’s that prototypes are rooted in perception accounts for salient focal colors. Whether we see a color or not is determined by neural responses meaning that cells respond to a certain colors or not. Such central color categories are for example ''red, yellow, green, blue, black,'' and ''white''. Hence, basic color terms like ''purple'' or ''pink'' do not have a salient focus but are regarded as salient focal colors (Payne 2006: 609). In terms of BK, one can define a focus of a color category but defining its boundaries is still controversial, although there must be a boundary somewhere for example between ''yellow'' and ''red'' (Payne 2006: 608).
Due to these problems some claims of the universalist theory have also been revised since the 1970’s. This concerns most of all basic color terms. Research about focal colors gave way to prototype research. Consequently, interest in focal colors almost disappeared or is included in writings about BCT’s.

== See also ==

Prototype (http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Prototyp)

Sapir-Whorf-Hypothesis (http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Sapir-Whorf-Hypothese)

Ferdinand de Saussure (linguistic sign) (http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Ferdinand_de_Saussure)

== References ==

- Berlin, Brent and Paul Kay (1969). ''Basic color terms: their universality and evolution''. Berkeley: University of California Press.

- Brown, R. W., & Lenneberg, E. H. (1954). “A study in language and cognition.” ''Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology'' 49: 454-462.

- Bußmann, Hadumod (2002). “Farbbezeichnungen.” In: Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. 3rd ed. Ed. Hadumod Bußmann. Stuttgart. 213.

- Bußmann, Hadumod (2002). “Sapir-Whorf-Hypothese.” In: Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. 3rd ed. Ed. Hadumod Bußmann. Stuttgart. 577.

- Heider, Eleanor (1971). “’Focal’ Color Areas and the Development of Color Names” ''Developmental Psychology'' 4: 447-455.

- Heider, Eleanor (1972). “Probabilities, Sampling, and Ethnographic Method: The Case of Dani Color Names.” ''MAN'' 7, 1972. 448-466.

- Kay, Paul (1999). ''Color''. <http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~kay/> (11.03.2010, 10:36)

- Payne, D.L. (2006). “Color Terms.” In: ''Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics''. 2nd ed. Ed. Keith Brown. Amsterdam: Elsevier. 605-610.

- Rosch, Eleanor (1973). “Natural Categories.” ''Cognitive Psychology'' 4: 328-350.

- Taylor, David (2003). ''Linguistic Categorization''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

- Ungerer, F. & H.-J. Schmid (2006). ''An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics''. London: Longman.

- Whorf, B.L. (1956). “The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behaviour to Language” ''Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writing of Benjamin Lee Whorf''. Ed. J.B. Caroll. Cambridge. 134-159.

== External Links ==

- http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mdowman/language_and_cognition/

- http://www.personal.uni-jena.de/~x4diho/Script.Language%20and%20Cognition%201.pdf

- http://psychology.berkeley.edu/faculty/profiles/erosch.html

- http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&client=firefox-a&hs=qPD&rls=org.mozilla%3Ade%3Aofficial&q=paul+kay+may+1999+color&meta=&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Focal Colors

2010-05-20T09:06:02Z

Vicente: /* See also */

A focal color is a shade of a certain color category that represents the best example of this category. Even speakers from different language communities recognize these focal colors to be the perceptually salient and to be the best representative of a particular color category. Such commonly recognized shades are ''red, green, blue, yellow, purple, pink, orange,'' and ''gray''. Focal colors are determined by particular criteria. This theory was proved by the anthropologist Brent Berlin and the linguist Paul Kay in 1969 and further developed by Eleanor Rosch in 1972. The emergence of focal colors is part of the linguistic color debate and opposes the Sapir-Whorfian Relativist Hypothesis. Focal colors became the corner stone of the prototype theory of linguistic categorization.

== Color perception ==

Color is the psychological interpretation of retinal and neuronal perception of reflected visible light. Human beings are able to differentiate between 7,500,000 color shades (Brown/Lenneberg 1954: 457). Since there are so many different colors we perceive color as a continuum in a three-dimensional space. One dimension is produced by hue, which is the perception of different wavelengths; another one is brightness, which is based on the reflectivity of a surface; and, finally, saturation, which is the perception of one dominant wavelength (Payne 2006: 605). Although there are no visible borders in the color continuum, people distinguish between certain colors. Moreover, color terms are part of every language in the world, but they all categorize them differently. Therefore, color terms provide information about human thinking and acting and form a suitable starting point for modern research on categorization.

== Relativist Theory ==

In the 20th century a debate arose that was concerned with the categorization of colors. Basically, a color term is the signifier of Saussure’s linguistic sign which denotes a color concept or the signified, respectively. As already mentioned, different language communities categorize colors in different ways. This means that two individuals from two different cultures might perceive the color term ''red'' as a different combination of hue, brightness and saturation or they would refer to the same color with two different terms. Therefore, anthropologists in the 1950’s claimed that categorization of color is arbitrary, i.e. that it is based on conventions and that it is not innate. They said that such categorization is dependent on the cultural and social background of each speech community. This thesis is also called Sapir-Whorfian-Hypothesis (Whorf 1956). Benjamin Lee Whorf investigated on the basis of the linguistic knowledge of his teacher, Edward Sapir, the language of the Hopi people inter alia and found out that they perceive time and space differently from people in North America (Bußmann 2002: 577). Later Brown and Lenneberg (1954) found out that color names differed enormously between languages and bridged the gap between Whorf’s thesis and linguistic categorization, especially color terms.

== Universalist Theory ==

The Whorfian view was strongly opposed by Berlin and Kay in 1969. They carried out a cross-linguistic study in which they wanted to prove the relativist thesis as wrong. They claimed that there are specific reference points in the color continuum that we use for orientation. These reference points, called ‘foci’, are universal and not culture-specific. In fact, these ‘foci’ underlie a particular hierarchy. Hence, they maintained that color categorization is not arbitrary but innate. Their study and the one by Eleanor Rosch one contributed the most important aspects to the universalist theory. They are presented in the following.

== Empirical Research of Berlin & Kay ==

Berlin and Kay (henceforth: BK) investigated 98 languages. They sampled 20 languages in oral tests and supplemented the remaining 78 languages by consulting dictionaries and field worker’s notes (BK 1969: 23). In order to achieve a representative result they worked with the so called Munsell Color chips, which had also been used by Lenneberg and Roberts. These are standardized chips which represent the three dimensions relevant to our perception of color (hue, brightness, saturation). This color system consists of 329 color chips. 320 chips represent 40 different hues each divided into eight different levels of brightness. The remaining nine chips represent ''black, white,'' and seven levels of ''gray''. The participants of the study were asked to pick out

(1) “All those chips which they would under any condition call ''x''.

(2) The best, most typical examples of ''x''. (BK 1969: 7)”

The color term ''x'' has to consist of a single word (i.e. not ''green-blue'') and must be familiar to most speakers of this language. Furthermore, the term is not borrowed from another language such as ''pink'' in German and it should not be restricted in its reference such as ''blond''. Color chips of ''x'' that fulfilled these criteria were called basic color terms (henceforth BCT).
Berlin and Kay found out that people focus certain points in the color continuum as a kind of orientation (BK 1969: 13). Such reference points or ‘best examples’ were called ‘foci’. Focal colors had not only been detected in English but also in the remaining 19 languages. Therefore, focal colors are not only shared by one speech community but also by speakers of different languages. In fact, BK found out that when a language has color terms that correspond the English terms, the focal points will be in same area. Hence, color categorization is not arbitrary but is rooted in focal colors. Thus, “whenever we speak of colour categories, we refer to the foci of categories rather than to their boundaries or total area, except when specifically stating otherwise” (BK 1969: 13). BK showed that color terms have ‘good’ and ‘bad’ examples. When it comes down to best example of a category, people basically share the same concept.
With regard to BCT they identified two to eleven basic terms across languages except for Russian and Hungarian. English for example has ''red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, gray, black'' and ''white''. For further details, see also [[basic color terms]].

== Empirical Research of Rosch ==

The findings of BK raised a lot of questions. The psychologist Eleanor Rosch (nee Heider) tried to explain the psychological background of focal colors and concentrated on the three most basic cognitive processes: ''selection of stimuli; identification and classification''; as well as ''naming''. In order to conduct her study, she needed subjects who hardly knew color terms and related to color categories as rare as possible (Rosch 1973: 331). Such informants could get a controlled input stimuli for learning new color categories. Therefore, she worked with pre-school children and speakers of the Dugum Dani language from Papua New Guinea. The Dani people have a two-term color system (''mili'' and ''mola'') which is based on hue and on brightness (Heider 1972: 460). The English equivalents for those two are ''light'' and ''dark''. In order to attach her results to BK’s study, she also used the Munsell Color Chips. She first examined if focal colors are perceptually salient. In her first experiment, she tested the ''stimulus'' (arousal of attention) with 3-year-old children. The subjects were asked to pick out any color they like. The focal chips ''yellow, orange'' and ''green'' seemed to be most attractive to them. The results for the other five hues were also statistically significant (Ungerer/Schmid 2006: 12). Hence, 3-year-old children pick out focal chips more often than non-focal ones. The second experiment was concerned with ''identification and classification''. 4-year-old children were given focal and non-focal chips in random order and were asked to pick out and point to the same color in the Munsell color array. Focal chips were matched more accurately than non-focal ones.<br />
The last two experiments were conducted with the Dani as informants and an American control group. In one experiment short-term memory was tested. Rosch presented the Dani eight focal and non-focal chips for five seconds each. Then, the subjects had to point to the color they had just seen in the color array. Focal chips were matched more precisely. Thus, focal colors are remembered more accurately in short-term memory than non-focal ones. However, the American control group matched the colors more precisely than the Dani. This might not be surprising since the Dani have little practice in memorizing such colors; for example they do not see red, yellow, green traffic lights every day (Taylor 2003: 10). In her last experiment she tested long-term memory. Since the Dani speakers only know two basic color terms, she taught them 16 new color terms in random order. The names she used were those of Dani clans. The subjects were able to produce the names of focal colors more rapidly than those of non-focal ones. Hence, names of focal colors are acquired more rapidly than non-focal ones.<br />
Rosch was able to find out that focal colors are more perceptually salient than non-focal ones (Rosch 1973: 348). This cognitive salience is probably not anchored in language but reflects certain physiological aspects of men’s perspective mechanisms. Later, she coined the term ‘prototype’ instead of ‘focal’. She also conducted a study to prove that prototypes are not only restricted to color categorization but can also be applied to shapes (Ungerer/Schmid 2006: 15).

== Significance ==

BK were able to verify that different languages do not separate colors from each other arbitrarily, but they use so called focal colors as reference points (Bußmann 2002:213). Rosch then proved that focal colors have a special cognitive status.
Focal colors paved the way for prototype theory (Ungerer/Schmid 2006:9) since Rosch transferred her findings to the domain of shapes. In other investigations she found out that each linguistic category has better or less good examples and, therefore, eliminated the classical approach to linguistic categorization. Claims of the relativity theory were already revised when the study of BK had been published. BK’s and Rosch’s most important contribution might be that of perception (Payne 2006: 609). Linguists paid more attention to cognitive perception when dealing with categorization.
As already mentioned the study by Berlin and Kay motivated other anthropologists to investigate hundreds of other languages in e.g. ''World Color Survey'' (Kay, forthcoming) and ''Color and Cognition in Mesoamerica: Constructing Categories as Vantages'' (Maclaury 1996).

== Criticism ==

Rosch finding’s that prototypes are rooted in perception accounts for salient focal colors. Whether we see a color or not is determined by neural responses meaning that cells respond to a certain colors or not. Such central color categories are for example ''red, yellow, green, blue, black,'' and ''white''. Hence, basic color terms like ''purple'' or ''pink'' do not have a salient focus but are regarded as salient focal colors (Payne 2006: 609). In terms of BK, one can define a focus of a color category but defining its boundaries is still controversial, although there must be a boundary somewhere for example between ''yellow'' and ''red'' (Payne 2006: 608).
Due to these problems some claims of the universalist theory have also been revised since the 1970’s. This concerns most of all basic color terms. Research about focal colors gave way to prototype research. Consequently, interest in focal colors almost disappeared or is included in writings about BCT’s.

== See also ==

Prototype (http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Prototyp)

Sapir-Whorf-Hypothesis (http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Sapir-Whorf-Hypothese)

Ferdinand de Saussure (linguistic sign) (http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Ferdinand_de_Saussure)

== References ==

- Berlin, Brent and Paul Kay (1969). ''Basic color terms: their universality and evolution''. Berkeley: University of California Press.

- Brown, R. W., & Lenneberg, E. H. (1954). “A study in language and cognition.” ''Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology'' 49: 454-462.

- Bußmann, Hadumod (2002). “Farbbezeichnungen.” In: Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. 3rd ed. Ed. Hadumod Bußmann. Stuttgart. 213.

- Bußmann, Hadumod (2002). “Sapir-Whorf-Hypothese.” In: Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. 3rd ed. Ed. Hadumod Bußmann. Stuttgart. 577.

- Heider, Eleanor (1971). “’Focal’ Color Areas and the Development of Color Names” ''Developmental Psychology'' 4: 447-455.

- Heider, Eleanor (1972). “Probabilities, Sampling, and Ethnographic Method: The Case of Dani Color Names.” ''MAN'' 7, 1972. 448-466.

- Kay, Paul (1999). ''Color''. <http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~kay/> (11.03.2010, 10:36)

- Payne, D.L. (2006). “Color Terms.” In: ''Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics''. 2nd ed. Ed. Keith Brown. Amsterdam: Elsevier. 605-610.

- Rosch, Eleanor (1973). “Natural Categories.” ''Cognitive Psychology'' 4: 328-350.

- Taylor, David (2003). ''Linguistic Categorization''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

- Ungerer, F. & H.-J. Schmid (2006). ''An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics''. London: Longman.

- Whorf, B.L. (1956). “The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behaviour to Language” ''Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writing of Benjamin Lee Whorf''. Ed. J.B. Caroll. Cambridge. 134-159.

== External Links ==

- http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mdowman/language_and_cognition/

- http://www.personal.uni-jena.de/~x4diho/Script.Language%20and%20Cognition%201.pdf

- http://psychology.berkeley.edu/faculty/profiles/erosch.html

- http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&client=firefox-a&hs=qPD&rls=org.mozilla%3Ade%3Aofficial&q=paul+kay+may+1999+color&meta=&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Focal Colors

2010-05-20T09:05:31Z

Vicente: /* Focal colors */

A focal color is a shade of a certain color category that represents the best example of this category. Even speakers from different language communities recognize these focal colors to be the perceptually salient and to be the best representative of a particular color category. Such commonly recognized shades are ''red, green, blue, yellow, purple, pink, orange,'' and ''gray''. Focal colors are determined by particular criteria. This theory was proved by the anthropologist Brent Berlin and the linguist Paul Kay in 1969 and further developed by Eleanor Rosch in 1972. The emergence of focal colors is part of the linguistic color debate and opposes the Sapir-Whorfian Relativist Hypothesis. Focal colors became the corner stone of the prototype theory of linguistic categorization.

== Color perception ==

Color is the psychological interpretation of retinal and neuronal perception of reflected visible light. Human beings are able to differentiate between 7,500,000 color shades (Brown/Lenneberg 1954: 457). Since there are so many different colors we perceive color as a continuum in a three-dimensional space. One dimension is produced by hue, which is the perception of different wavelengths; another one is brightness, which is based on the reflectivity of a surface; and, finally, saturation, which is the perception of one dominant wavelength (Payne 2006: 605). Although there are no visible borders in the color continuum, people distinguish between certain colors. Moreover, color terms are part of every language in the world, but they all categorize them differently. Therefore, color terms provide information about human thinking and acting and form a suitable starting point for modern research on categorization.

== Relativist Theory ==

In the 20th century a debate arose that was concerned with the categorization of colors. Basically, a color term is the signifier of Saussure’s linguistic sign which denotes a color concept or the signified, respectively. As already mentioned, different language communities categorize colors in different ways. This means that two individuals from two different cultures might perceive the color term ''red'' as a different combination of hue, brightness and saturation or they would refer to the same color with two different terms. Therefore, anthropologists in the 1950’s claimed that categorization of color is arbitrary, i.e. that it is based on conventions and that it is not innate. They said that such categorization is dependent on the cultural and social background of each speech community. This thesis is also called Sapir-Whorfian-Hypothesis (Whorf 1956). Benjamin Lee Whorf investigated on the basis of the linguistic knowledge of his teacher, Edward Sapir, the language of the Hopi people inter alia and found out that they perceive time and space differently from people in North America (Bußmann 2002: 577). Later Brown and Lenneberg (1954) found out that color names differed enormously between languages and bridged the gap between Whorf’s thesis and linguistic categorization, especially color terms.

== Universalist Theory ==

The Whorfian view was strongly opposed by Berlin and Kay in 1969. They carried out a cross-linguistic study in which they wanted to prove the relativist thesis as wrong. They claimed that there are specific reference points in the color continuum that we use for orientation. These reference points, called ‘foci’, are universal and not culture-specific. In fact, these ‘foci’ underlie a particular hierarchy. Hence, they maintained that color categorization is not arbitrary but innate. Their study and the one by Eleanor Rosch one contributed the most important aspects to the universalist theory. They are presented in the following.

== Empirical Research of Berlin & Kay ==

Berlin and Kay (henceforth: BK) investigated 98 languages. They sampled 20 languages in oral tests and supplemented the remaining 78 languages by consulting dictionaries and field worker’s notes (BK 1969: 23). In order to achieve a representative result they worked with the so called Munsell Color chips, which had also been used by Lenneberg and Roberts. These are standardized chips which represent the three dimensions relevant to our perception of color (hue, brightness, saturation). This color system consists of 329 color chips. 320 chips represent 40 different hues each divided into eight different levels of brightness. The remaining nine chips represent ''black, white,'' and seven levels of ''gray''. The participants of the study were asked to pick out

(1) “All those chips which they would under any condition call ''x''.

(2) The best, most typical examples of ''x''. (BK 1969: 7)”

The color term ''x'' has to consist of a single word (i.e. not ''green-blue'') and must be familiar to most speakers of this language. Furthermore, the term is not borrowed from another language such as ''pink'' in German and it should not be restricted in its reference such as ''blond''. Color chips of ''x'' that fulfilled these criteria were called basic color terms (henceforth BCT).
Berlin and Kay found out that people focus certain points in the color continuum as a kind of orientation (BK 1969: 13). Such reference points or ‘best examples’ were called ‘foci’. Focal colors had not only been detected in English but also in the remaining 19 languages. Therefore, focal colors are not only shared by one speech community but also by speakers of different languages. In fact, BK found out that when a language has color terms that correspond the English terms, the focal points will be in same area. Hence, color categorization is not arbitrary but is rooted in focal colors. Thus, “whenever we speak of colour categories, we refer to the foci of categories rather than to their boundaries or total area, except when specifically stating otherwise” (BK 1969: 13). BK showed that color terms have ‘good’ and ‘bad’ examples. When it comes down to best example of a category, people basically share the same concept.
With regard to BCT they identified two to eleven basic terms across languages except for Russian and Hungarian. English for example has ''red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, gray, black'' and ''white''. For further details, see also [[basic color terms]].

== Empirical Research of Rosch ==

The findings of BK raised a lot of questions. The psychologist Eleanor Rosch (nee Heider) tried to explain the psychological background of focal colors and concentrated on the three most basic cognitive processes: ''selection of stimuli; identification and classification''; as well as ''naming''. In order to conduct her study, she needed subjects who hardly knew color terms and related to color categories as rare as possible (Rosch 1973: 331). Such informants could get a controlled input stimuli for learning new color categories. Therefore, she worked with pre-school children and speakers of the Dugum Dani language from Papua New Guinea. The Dani people have a two-term color system (''mili'' and ''mola'') which is based on hue and on brightness (Heider 1972: 460). The English equivalents for those two are ''light'' and ''dark''. In order to attach her results to BK’s study, she also used the Munsell Color Chips. She first examined if focal colors are perceptually salient. In her first experiment, she tested the ''stimulus'' (arousal of attention) with 3-year-old children. The subjects were asked to pick out any color they like. The focal chips ''yellow, orange'' and ''green'' seemed to be most attractive to them. The results for the other five hues were also statistically significant (Ungerer/Schmid 2006: 12). Hence, 3-year-old children pick out focal chips more often than non-focal ones. The second experiment was concerned with ''identification and classification''. 4-year-old children were given focal and non-focal chips in random order and were asked to pick out and point to the same color in the Munsell color array. Focal chips were matched more accurately than non-focal ones.<br />
The last two experiments were conducted with the Dani as informants and an American control group. In one experiment short-term memory was tested. Rosch presented the Dani eight focal and non-focal chips for five seconds each. Then, the subjects had to point to the color they had just seen in the color array. Focal chips were matched more precisely. Thus, focal colors are remembered more accurately in short-term memory than non-focal ones. However, the American control group matched the colors more precisely than the Dani. This might not be surprising since the Dani have little practice in memorizing such colors; for example they do not see red, yellow, green traffic lights every day (Taylor 2003: 10). In her last experiment she tested long-term memory. Since the Dani speakers only know two basic color terms, she taught them 16 new color terms in random order. The names she used were those of Dani clans. The subjects were able to produce the names of focal colors more rapidly than those of non-focal ones. Hence, names of focal colors are acquired more rapidly than non-focal ones.<br />
Rosch was able to find out that focal colors are more perceptually salient than non-focal ones (Rosch 1973: 348). This cognitive salience is probably not anchored in language but reflects certain physiological aspects of men’s perspective mechanisms. Later, she coined the term ‘prototype’ instead of ‘focal’. She also conducted a study to prove that prototypes are not only restricted to color categorization but can also be applied to shapes (Ungerer/Schmid 2006: 15).

== Significance ==

BK were able to verify that different languages do not separate colors from each other arbitrarily, but they use so called focal colors as reference points (Bußmann 2002:213). Rosch then proved that focal colors have a special cognitive status.
Focal colors paved the way for prototype theory (Ungerer/Schmid 2006:9) since Rosch transferred her findings to the domain of shapes. In other investigations she found out that each linguistic category has better or less good examples and, therefore, eliminated the classical approach to linguistic categorization. Claims of the relativity theory were already revised when the study of BK had been published. BK’s and Rosch’s most important contribution might be that of perception (Payne 2006: 609). Linguists paid more attention to cognitive perception when dealing with categorization.
As already mentioned the study by Berlin and Kay motivated other anthropologists to investigate hundreds of other languages in e.g. ''World Color Survey'' (Kay, forthcoming) and ''Color and Cognition in Mesoamerica: Constructing Categories as Vantages'' (Maclaury 1996).

== Criticism ==

Rosch finding’s that prototypes are rooted in perception accounts for salient focal colors. Whether we see a color or not is determined by neural responses meaning that cells respond to a certain colors or not. Such central color categories are for example ''red, yellow, green, blue, black,'' and ''white''. Hence, basic color terms like ''purple'' or ''pink'' do not have a salient focus but are regarded as salient focal colors (Payne 2006: 609). In terms of BK, one can define a focus of a color category but defining its boundaries is still controversial, although there must be a boundary somewhere for example between ''yellow'' and ''red'' (Payne 2006: 608).
Due to these problems some claims of the universalist theory have also been revised since the 1970’s. This concerns most of all basic color terms. Research about focal colors gave way to prototype research. Consequently, interest in focal colors almost disappeared or is included in writings about BCT’s.

== See also ==

Prototype (http://www.glottopedia./index.php/Prototyp)

Sapir-Whorf-Hypothesis (http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Sapir-Whorf-Hypothese)

Ferdinand de Saussure (linguistic sign) (http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Ferdinand_de_Saussure)

== References ==

- Berlin, Brent and Paul Kay (1969). ''Basic color terms: their universality and evolution''. Berkeley: University of California Press.

- Brown, R. W., & Lenneberg, E. H. (1954). “A study in language and cognition.” ''Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology'' 49: 454-462.

- Bußmann, Hadumod (2002). “Farbbezeichnungen.” In: Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. 3rd ed. Ed. Hadumod Bußmann. Stuttgart. 213.

- Bußmann, Hadumod (2002). “Sapir-Whorf-Hypothese.” In: Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. 3rd ed. Ed. Hadumod Bußmann. Stuttgart. 577.

- Heider, Eleanor (1971). “’Focal’ Color Areas and the Development of Color Names” ''Developmental Psychology'' 4: 447-455.

- Heider, Eleanor (1972). “Probabilities, Sampling, and Ethnographic Method: The Case of Dani Color Names.” ''MAN'' 7, 1972. 448-466.

- Kay, Paul (1999). ''Color''. <http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~kay/> (11.03.2010, 10:36)

- Payne, D.L. (2006). “Color Terms.” In: ''Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics''. 2nd ed. Ed. Keith Brown. Amsterdam: Elsevier. 605-610.

- Rosch, Eleanor (1973). “Natural Categories.” ''Cognitive Psychology'' 4: 328-350.

- Taylor, David (2003). ''Linguistic Categorization''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

- Ungerer, F. & H.-J. Schmid (2006). ''An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics''. London: Longman.

- Whorf, B.L. (1956). “The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behaviour to Language” ''Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writing of Benjamin Lee Whorf''. Ed. J.B. Caroll. Cambridge. 134-159.

== External Links ==

- http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mdowman/language_and_cognition/

- http://www.personal.uni-jena.de/~x4diho/Script.Language%20and%20Cognition%201.pdf

- http://psychology.berkeley.edu/faculty/profiles/erosch.html

- http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&client=firefox-a&hs=qPD&rls=org.mozilla%3Ade%3Aofficial&q=paul+kay+may+1999+color&meta=&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Focal Colors

2010-05-20T09:02:46Z

Vicente: /* 8 | See also */

=Focal colors=

A focal color is a shade of a certain color category that represents the best example of this category. Even speakers from different language communities recognize these focal colors to be the perceptually salient and to be the best representative of a particular color category. Such commonly recognized shades are ''red, green, blue, yellow, purple, pink, orange,'' and ''gray''. Focal colors are determined by particular criteria. This theory was proved by the anthropologist Brent Berlin and the linguist Paul Kay in 1969 and further developed by Eleanor Rosch in 1972. The emergence of focal colors is part of the linguistic color debate and opposes the Sapir-Whorfian Relativist Hypothesis. Focal colors became the corner stone of the prototype theory of linguistic categorization.

== 1 | Color perception ==

Color is the psychological interpretation of retinal and neuronal perception of reflected visible light. Human beings are able to differentiate between 7,500,000 color shades (Brown/Lenneberg 1954: 457). Since there are so many different colors we perceive color as a continuum in a three-dimensional space. One dimension is produced by hue, which is the perception of different wavelengths; another one is brightness, which is based on the reflectivity of a surface; and, finally, saturation, which is the perception of one dominant wavelength (Payne 2006: 605). Although there are no visible borders in the color continuum, people distinguish between certain colors. Moreover, color terms are part of every language in the world, but they all categorize them differently. Therefore, color terms provide information about human thinking and acting and form a suitable starting point for modern research on categorization.

== 2 | Relativist Theory ==

In the 20th century a debate arose that was concerned with the categorization of colors. Basically, a color term is the signifier of Saussure’s linguistic sign which denotes a color concept or the signified, respectively. As already mentioned, different language communities categorize colors in different ways. This means that two individuals from two different cultures might perceive the color term ''red'' as a different combination of hue, brightness and saturation or they would refer to the same color with two different terms. Therefore, anthropologists in the 1950’s claimed that categorization of color is arbitrary, i.e. that it is based on conventions and that it is not innate. They said that such categorization is dependent on the cultural and social background of each speech community. This thesis is also called Sapir-Whorfian-Hypothesis (Whorf 1956). Benjamin Lee Whorf investigated on the basis of the linguistic knowledge of his teacher, Edward Sapir, the language of the Hopi people inter alia and found out that they perceive time and space differently from people in North America (Bußmann 2002: 577). Later Brown and Lenneberg (1954) found out that color names differed enormously between languages and bridged the gap between Whorf’s thesis and linguistic categorization, especially color terms.

== 3 | Universalist Theory ==

The Whorfian view was strongly opposed by Berlin and Kay in 1969. They carried out a cross-linguistic study in which they wanted to prove the relativist thesis as wrong. They claimed that there are specific reference points in the color continuum that we use for orientation. These reference points, called ‘foci’, are universal and not culture-specific. In fact, these ‘foci’ underlie a particular hierarchy. Hence, they maintained that color categorization is not arbitrary but innate. Their study and the one by Eleanor Rosch one contributed the most important aspects to the universalist theory. They are presented in the following.

== 4| Empirical Research of Berlin & Kay ==

Berlin and Kay (henceforth: BK) investigated 98 languages. They sampled 20 languages in oral tests and supplemented the remaining 78 languages by consulting dictionaries and field worker’s notes (BK 1969: 23). In order to achieve a representative result they worked with the so called Munsell Color chips, which had also been used by Lenneberg and Roberts. These are standardized chips which represent the three dimensions relevant to our perception of color (hue, brightness, saturation). This color system consists of 329 color chips. 320 chips represent 40 different hues each divided into eight different levels of brightness. The remaining nine chips represent ''black, white,'' and seven levels of ''gray''. The participants of the study were asked to pick out

(1) “All those chips which they would under any condition call ''x''.

(2) The best, most typical examples of ''x''. (BK 1969: 7)”

The color term ''x'' has to consist of a single word (i.e. not ''green-blue'') and must be familiar to most speakers of this language. Furthermore, the term is not borrowed from another language such as ''pink'' in German and it should not be restricted in its reference such as ''blond''. Color chips of ''x'' that fulfilled these criteria were called basic color terms (henceforth BCT).
Berlin and Kay found out that people focus certain points in the color continuum as a kind of orientation (BK 1969: 13). Such reference points or ‘best examples’ were called ‘foci’. Focal colors had not only been detected in English but also in the remaining 19 languages. Therefore, focal colors are not only shared by one speech community but also by speakers of different languages. In fact, BK found out that when a language has color terms that correspond the English terms, the focal points will be in same area. Hence, color categorization is not arbitrary but is rooted in focal colors. Thus, “whenever we speak of colour categories, we refer to the foci of categories rather than to their boundaries or total area, except when specifically stating otherwise” (BK 1969: 13). BK showed that color terms have ‘good’ and ‘bad’ examples. When it comes down to best example of a category, people basically share the same concept.
With regard to BCT they identified two to eleven basic terms across languages except for Russian and Hungarian. English for example has ''red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, gray, black'' and ''white''. For further details, see also [[basic color terms]].

== 5 | Empirical Research of Rosch ==

The findings of BK raised a lot of questions. The psychologist Eleanor Rosch (nee Heider) tried to explain the psychological background of focal colors and concentrated on the three most basic cognitive processes: ''selection of stimuli; identification and classification''; as well as ''naming''. In order to conduct her study, she needed subjects who hardly knew color terms and related to color categories as rare as possible (Rosch 1973: 331). Such informants could get a controlled input stimuli for learning new color categories. Therefore, she worked with pre-school children and speakers of the Dugum Dani language from Papua New Guinea. The Dani people have a two-term color system (''mili'' and ''mola'') which is based on hue and on brightness (Heider 1972: 460). The English equivalents for those two are ''light'' and ''dark''. In order to attach her results to BK’s study, she also used the Munsell Color Chips. She first examined if focal colors are perceptually salient. In her first experiment, she tested the ''stimulus'' (arousal of attention) with 3-year-old children. The subjects were asked to pick out any color they like. The focal chips ''yellow, orange'' and ''green'' seemed to be most attractive to them. The results for the other five hues were also statistically significant (Ungerer/Schmid 2006: 12). Hence, 3-year-old children pick out focal chips more often than non-focal ones. The second experiment was concerned with ''identification and classification''. 4-year-old children were given focal and non-focal chips in random order and were asked to pick out and point to the same color in the Munsell color array. Focal chips were matched more accurately than non-focal ones.<br />
The last two experiments were conducted with the Dani as informants and an American control group. In one experiment short-term memory was tested. Rosch presented the Dani eight focal and non-focal chips for five seconds each. Then, the subjects had to point to the color they had just seen in the color array. Focal chips were matched more precisely. Thus, focal colors are remembered more accurately in short-term memory than non-focal ones. However, the American control group matched the colors more precisely than the Dani. This might not be surprising since the Dani have little practice in memorizing such colors; for example they do not see red, yellow, green traffic lights every day (Taylor 2003: 10). In her last experiment she tested long-term memory. Since the Dani speakers only know two basic color terms, she taught them 16 new color terms in random order. The names she used were those of Dani clans. The subjects were able to produce the names of focal colors more rapidly than those of non-focal ones. Hence, names of focal colors are acquired more rapidly than non-focal ones.<br />
Rosch was able to find out that focal colors are more perceptually salient than non-focal ones (Rosch 1973: 348). This cognitive salience is probably not anchored in language but reflects certain physiological aspects of men’s perspective mechanisms. Later, she coined the term ‘prototype’ instead of ‘focal’. She also conducted a study to prove that prototypes are not only restricted to color categorization but can also be applied to shapes (Ungerer/Schmid 2006: 15).

== 6 | Significance ==

BK were able to verify that different languages do not separate colors from each other arbitrarily, but they use so called focal colors as reference points (Bußmann 2002:213). Rosch then proved that focal colors have a special cognitive status.
Focal colors paved the way for prototype theory (Ungerer/Schmid 2006:9) since Rosch transferred her findings to the domain of shapes. In other investigations she found out that each linguistic category has better or less good examples and, therefore, eliminated the classical approach to linguistic categorization. Claims of the relativity theory were already revised when the study of BK had been published. BK’s and Rosch’s most important contribution might be that of perception (Payne 2006: 609). Linguists paid more attention to cognitive perception when dealing with categorization.
As already mentioned the study by Berlin and Kay motivated other anthropologists to investigate hundreds of other languages in e.g. ''World Color Survey'' (Kay, forthcoming) and ''Color and Cognition in Mesoamerica: Constructing Categories as Vantages'' (Maclaury 1996).

== 7 | Criticism ==

Rosch finding’s that prototypes are rooted in perception accounts for salient focal colors. Whether we see a color or not is determined by neural responses meaning that cells respond to a certain colors or not. Such central color categories are for example ''red, yellow, green, blue, black,'' and ''white''. Hence, basic color terms like ''purple'' or ''pink'' do not have a salient focus but are regarded as salient focal colors (Payne 2006: 609). In terms of BK, one can define a focus of a color category but defining its boundaries is still controversial, although there must be a boundary somewhere for example between ''yellow'' and ''red'' (Payne 2006: 608).
Due to these problems some claims of the universalist theory have also been revised since the 1970’s. This concerns most of all basic color terms. Research about focal colors gave way to prototype research. Consequently, interest in focal colors almost disappeared or is included in writings about BCT’s.

== 8 | See also ==

Prototype (http://www.glottopedia./index.php/Prototyp)

Sapir-Whorf-Hypothesis (http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Sapir-Whorf-Hypothese)

Ferdinand de Saussure (linguistic sign) (http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Ferdinand_de_Saussure)

== 9 | References ==

- Berlin, Brent and Paul Kay (1969). ''Basic color terms: their universality and evolution''. Berkeley: University of California Press.

- Brown, R. W., & Lenneberg, E. H. (1954). “A study in language and cognition.” ''Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology'' 49: 454-462.

- Bußmann, Hadumod (2002). “Farbbezeichnungen.” In: Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. 3rd ed. Ed. Hadumod Bußmann. Stuttgart. 213.

- Bußmann, Hadumod (2002). “Sapir-Whorf-Hypothese.” In: Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. 3rd ed. Ed. Hadumod Bußmann. Stuttgart. 577.

- Heider, Eleanor (1971). “’Focal’ Color Areas and the Development of Color Names” ''Developmental Psychology'' 4: 447-455.

- Heider, Eleanor (1972). “Probabilities, Sampling, and Ethnographic Method: The Case of Dani Color Names.” ''MAN'' 7, 1972. 448-466.

- Kay, Paul (1999). ''Color''. <http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~kay/> (11.03.2010, 10:36)

- Payne, D.L. (2006). “Color Terms.” In: ''Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics''. 2nd ed. Ed. Keith Brown. Amsterdam: Elsevier. 605-610.

- Rosch, Eleanor (1973). “Natural Categories.” ''Cognitive Psychology'' 4: 328-350.

- Taylor, David (2003). ''Linguistic Categorization''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

- Ungerer, F. & H.-J. Schmid (2006). ''An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics''. London: Longman.

- Whorf, B.L. (1956). “The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behaviour to Language” ''Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writing of Benjamin Lee Whorf''. Ed. J.B. Caroll. Cambridge. 134-159.

== 10 | External Links ==

- http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mdowman/language_and_cognition/

- http://www.personal.uni-jena.de/~x4diho/Script.Language%20and%20Cognition%201.pdf

- http://psychology.berkeley.edu/faculty/profiles/erosch.html

- http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&client=firefox-a&hs=qPD&rls=org.mozilla%3Ade%3Aofficial&q=paul+kay+may+1999+color&meta=&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Focal Colors

2010-05-20T08:58:50Z

Vicente: Created page with '=Focal colors= A focal color is a shade of a certain color category that represents the best example of this category. Even speakers from different language communities recogniz...'

=Focal colors=

A focal color is a shade of a certain color category that represents the best example of this category. Even speakers from different language communities recognize these focal colors to be the perceptually salient and to be the best representative of a particular color category. Such commonly recognized shades are ''red, green, blue, yellow, purple, pink, orange,'' and ''gray''. Focal colors are determined by particular criteria. This theory was proved by the anthropologist Brent Berlin and the linguist Paul Kay in 1969 and further developed by Eleanor Rosch in 1972. The emergence of focal colors is part of the linguistic color debate and opposes the Sapir-Whorfian Relativist Hypothesis. Focal colors became the corner stone of the prototype theory of linguistic categorization.

== 1 | Color perception ==

Color is the psychological interpretation of retinal and neuronal perception of reflected visible light. Human beings are able to differentiate between 7,500,000 color shades (Brown/Lenneberg 1954: 457). Since there are so many different colors we perceive color as a continuum in a three-dimensional space. One dimension is produced by hue, which is the perception of different wavelengths; another one is brightness, which is based on the reflectivity of a surface; and, finally, saturation, which is the perception of one dominant wavelength (Payne 2006: 605). Although there are no visible borders in the color continuum, people distinguish between certain colors. Moreover, color terms are part of every language in the world, but they all categorize them differently. Therefore, color terms provide information about human thinking and acting and form a suitable starting point for modern research on categorization.

== 2 | Relativist Theory ==

In the 20th century a debate arose that was concerned with the categorization of colors. Basically, a color term is the signifier of Saussure’s linguistic sign which denotes a color concept or the signified, respectively. As already mentioned, different language communities categorize colors in different ways. This means that two individuals from two different cultures might perceive the color term ''red'' as a different combination of hue, brightness and saturation or they would refer to the same color with two different terms. Therefore, anthropologists in the 1950’s claimed that categorization of color is arbitrary, i.e. that it is based on conventions and that it is not innate. They said that such categorization is dependent on the cultural and social background of each speech community. This thesis is also called Sapir-Whorfian-Hypothesis (Whorf 1956). Benjamin Lee Whorf investigated on the basis of the linguistic knowledge of his teacher, Edward Sapir, the language of the Hopi people inter alia and found out that they perceive time and space differently from people in North America (Bußmann 2002: 577). Later Brown and Lenneberg (1954) found out that color names differed enormously between languages and bridged the gap between Whorf’s thesis and linguistic categorization, especially color terms.

== 3 | Universalist Theory ==

The Whorfian view was strongly opposed by Berlin and Kay in 1969. They carried out a cross-linguistic study in which they wanted to prove the relativist thesis as wrong. They claimed that there are specific reference points in the color continuum that we use for orientation. These reference points, called ‘foci’, are universal and not culture-specific. In fact, these ‘foci’ underlie a particular hierarchy. Hence, they maintained that color categorization is not arbitrary but innate. Their study and the one by Eleanor Rosch one contributed the most important aspects to the universalist theory. They are presented in the following.

== 4| Empirical Research of Berlin & Kay ==

Berlin and Kay (henceforth: BK) investigated 98 languages. They sampled 20 languages in oral tests and supplemented the remaining 78 languages by consulting dictionaries and field worker’s notes (BK 1969: 23). In order to achieve a representative result they worked with the so called Munsell Color chips, which had also been used by Lenneberg and Roberts. These are standardized chips which represent the three dimensions relevant to our perception of color (hue, brightness, saturation). This color system consists of 329 color chips. 320 chips represent 40 different hues each divided into eight different levels of brightness. The remaining nine chips represent ''black, white,'' and seven levels of ''gray''. The participants of the study were asked to pick out

(1) “All those chips which they would under any condition call ''x''.

(2) The best, most typical examples of ''x''. (BK 1969: 7)”

The color term ''x'' has to consist of a single word (i.e. not ''green-blue'') and must be familiar to most speakers of this language. Furthermore, the term is not borrowed from another language such as ''pink'' in German and it should not be restricted in its reference such as ''blond''. Color chips of ''x'' that fulfilled these criteria were called basic color terms (henceforth BCT).
Berlin and Kay found out that people focus certain points in the color continuum as a kind of orientation (BK 1969: 13). Such reference points or ‘best examples’ were called ‘foci’. Focal colors had not only been detected in English but also in the remaining 19 languages. Therefore, focal colors are not only shared by one speech community but also by speakers of different languages. In fact, BK found out that when a language has color terms that correspond the English terms, the focal points will be in same area. Hence, color categorization is not arbitrary but is rooted in focal colors. Thus, “whenever we speak of colour categories, we refer to the foci of categories rather than to their boundaries or total area, except when specifically stating otherwise” (BK 1969: 13). BK showed that color terms have ‘good’ and ‘bad’ examples. When it comes down to best example of a category, people basically share the same concept.
With regard to BCT they identified two to eleven basic terms across languages except for Russian and Hungarian. English for example has ''red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, gray, black'' and ''white''. For further details, see also [[basic color terms]].

== 5 | Empirical Research of Rosch ==

The findings of BK raised a lot of questions. The psychologist Eleanor Rosch (nee Heider) tried to explain the psychological background of focal colors and concentrated on the three most basic cognitive processes: ''selection of stimuli; identification and classification''; as well as ''naming''. In order to conduct her study, she needed subjects who hardly knew color terms and related to color categories as rare as possible (Rosch 1973: 331). Such informants could get a controlled input stimuli for learning new color categories. Therefore, she worked with pre-school children and speakers of the Dugum Dani language from Papua New Guinea. The Dani people have a two-term color system (''mili'' and ''mola'') which is based on hue and on brightness (Heider 1972: 460). The English equivalents for those two are ''light'' and ''dark''. In order to attach her results to BK’s study, she also used the Munsell Color Chips. She first examined if focal colors are perceptually salient. In her first experiment, she tested the ''stimulus'' (arousal of attention) with 3-year-old children. The subjects were asked to pick out any color they like. The focal chips ''yellow, orange'' and ''green'' seemed to be most attractive to them. The results for the other five hues were also statistically significant (Ungerer/Schmid 2006: 12). Hence, 3-year-old children pick out focal chips more often than non-focal ones. The second experiment was concerned with ''identification and classification''. 4-year-old children were given focal and non-focal chips in random order and were asked to pick out and point to the same color in the Munsell color array. Focal chips were matched more accurately than non-focal ones.<br />
The last two experiments were conducted with the Dani as informants and an American control group. In one experiment short-term memory was tested. Rosch presented the Dani eight focal and non-focal chips for five seconds each. Then, the subjects had to point to the color they had just seen in the color array. Focal chips were matched more precisely. Thus, focal colors are remembered more accurately in short-term memory than non-focal ones. However, the American control group matched the colors more precisely than the Dani. This might not be surprising since the Dani have little practice in memorizing such colors; for example they do not see red, yellow, green traffic lights every day (Taylor 2003: 10). In her last experiment she tested long-term memory. Since the Dani speakers only know two basic color terms, she taught them 16 new color terms in random order. The names she used were those of Dani clans. The subjects were able to produce the names of focal colors more rapidly than those of non-focal ones. Hence, names of focal colors are acquired more rapidly than non-focal ones.<br />
Rosch was able to find out that focal colors are more perceptually salient than non-focal ones (Rosch 1973: 348). This cognitive salience is probably not anchored in language but reflects certain physiological aspects of men’s perspective mechanisms. Later, she coined the term ‘prototype’ instead of ‘focal’. She also conducted a study to prove that prototypes are not only restricted to color categorization but can also be applied to shapes (Ungerer/Schmid 2006: 15).

== 6 | Significance ==

BK were able to verify that different languages do not separate colors from each other arbitrarily, but they use so called focal colors as reference points (Bußmann 2002:213). Rosch then proved that focal colors have a special cognitive status.
Focal colors paved the way for prototype theory (Ungerer/Schmid 2006:9) since Rosch transferred her findings to the domain of shapes. In other investigations she found out that each linguistic category has better or less good examples and, therefore, eliminated the classical approach to linguistic categorization. Claims of the relativity theory were already revised when the study of BK had been published. BK’s and Rosch’s most important contribution might be that of perception (Payne 2006: 609). Linguists paid more attention to cognitive perception when dealing with categorization.
As already mentioned the study by Berlin and Kay motivated other anthropologists to investigate hundreds of other languages in e.g. ''World Color Survey'' (Kay, forthcoming) and ''Color and Cognition in Mesoamerica: Constructing Categories as Vantages'' (Maclaury 1996).

== 7 | Criticism ==

Rosch finding’s that prototypes are rooted in perception accounts for salient focal colors. Whether we see a color or not is determined by neural responses meaning that cells respond to a certain colors or not. Such central color categories are for example ''red, yellow, green, blue, black,'' and ''white''. Hence, basic color terms like ''purple'' or ''pink'' do not have a salient focus but are regarded as salient focal colors (Payne 2006: 609). In terms of BK, one can define a focus of a color category but defining its boundaries is still controversial, although there must be a boundary somewhere for example between ''yellow'' and ''red'' (Payne 2006: 608).
Due to these problems some claims of the universalist theory have also been revised since the 1970’s. This concerns most of all basic color terms. Research about focal colors gave way to prototype research. Consequently, interest in focal colors almost disappeared or is included in writings about BCT’s.

== 8 | See also ==

Prototyp (http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Prototyp)

Sapir-Whorf-Hypothese (http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Sapir-Whorf-Hypothese)

Ferdinand de Saussure (linguistic sign) (http://www.glottopedia.de/index.php/Ferdinand_de_Saussure)

== 9 | References ==

- Berlin, Brent and Paul Kay (1969). ''Basic color terms: their universality and evolution''. Berkeley: University of California Press.

- Brown, R. W., & Lenneberg, E. H. (1954). “A study in language and cognition.” ''Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology'' 49: 454-462.

- Bußmann, Hadumod (2002). “Farbbezeichnungen.” In: Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. 3rd ed. Ed. Hadumod Bußmann. Stuttgart. 213.

- Bußmann, Hadumod (2002). “Sapir-Whorf-Hypothese.” In: Lexikon der Sprachwissenschaft. 3rd ed. Ed. Hadumod Bußmann. Stuttgart. 577.

- Heider, Eleanor (1971). “’Focal’ Color Areas and the Development of Color Names” ''Developmental Psychology'' 4: 447-455.

- Heider, Eleanor (1972). “Probabilities, Sampling, and Ethnographic Method: The Case of Dani Color Names.” ''MAN'' 7, 1972. 448-466.

- Kay, Paul (1999). ''Color''. <http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~kay/> (11.03.2010, 10:36)

- Payne, D.L. (2006). “Color Terms.” In: ''Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics''. 2nd ed. Ed. Keith Brown. Amsterdam: Elsevier. 605-610.

- Rosch, Eleanor (1973). “Natural Categories.” ''Cognitive Psychology'' 4: 328-350.

- Taylor, David (2003). ''Linguistic Categorization''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

- Ungerer, F. & H.-J. Schmid (2006). ''An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics''. London: Longman.

- Whorf, B.L. (1956). “The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behaviour to Language” ''Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writing of Benjamin Lee Whorf''. Ed. J.B. Caroll. Cambridge. 134-159.

== 10 | External Links ==

- http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~mdowman/language_and_cognition/

- http://www.personal.uni-jena.de/~x4diho/Script.Language%20and%20Cognition%201.pdf

- http://psychology.berkeley.edu/faculty/profiles/erosch.html

- http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&client=firefox-a&hs=qPD&rls=org.mozilla%3Ade%3Aofficial&q=paul+kay+may+1999+color&meta=&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Portal:Semantics

2010-05-19T12:25:50Z

Vicente: /* Major approaches to semantic analysis */

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[[Image:Zenon_of_citium.jpg]]
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Semantics<br>
This portal presents the most central topics in the study of meaning.
|[[Image:Picture_frege.jpg]]
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</div>
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=='''<div style="font-size:80%;">Fundamental issues</div>'''==
'''Meaning and use'''<br>
[[Arbitrariness of the sign]] -- [[Context dependence]] -- [[Cooperative Principle]] -- [[Descriptive meaning]] -- [[Emotive meaning]] -- [[Felicity condition]] -- [[Fixed-context assumption]] -- [[Gricean maxims]] -- [[Implicature]] -- [[Meaning]] -- [[Meaning postulate]] -- [[Meaning theories]] -- [[Non-descriptive meaning]] -- [[Use-mention distinction]]<br>

'''Denotation and reference'''<br>
[[Binding]] -- [[Cataphoric relation]] -- [[Connotation]] -- [[Cumulative reference]] -- [[Denotation]] -- [[Extension]] -- [[Equivalence]] -- [[Icon]] -- [[Iconicity]] -- [[Individual constant]] -- [[Individual term]] -- [[Individual variable]] -- [[Intension]] -- [[Koreferenz]] -- [[Reference]] -- [[Symbol]]<br>

'''Interpretation and truth'''<br>
[[Analytic truth]] -- [[Assignment]] -- [[Axiom]] -- [[Compositionality Principle]] -- [[Contingent truth]] -- [[Covert category]] -- [[Dual (semantics)]] -- [[External negation]] -- [[Idiom]] -- [[Internal negation]] -- [[Interpretation]] -- [[Interpretive rules]] -- [[Katz-Postal-principle]] -- [[Left downward monotonicity]] -- [[Left upward monotonicity]] -- [[Meaning postulate]] -- [[Modal logic]] -- [[Monotonicity]] -- [[Name]] -- [[Narrow scope]] -- [[Necessary truth]] -- [[Opaque context]] -- [[Rigid designator]] -- [[Truth]]<br>

'''Semantic metalanguage'''<br>
[[Atomic formula]] -- [[Aussagenlogik]] -- [[Boolesche Operatoren]] -- [[Formula]] -- [[Funktionale Applikation]] -- [[Interpretation function]] -- [[Lambda-abstraction]] -- [[Lambda-operator]] -- [[Metalanguage]] -- [[Meta-variable]] -- [[Predicate logic]]<br>

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Major branches of semantics</div>''' ==

'''Lexical semantics'''<br>
[[Ambiguity]] -- [[Antonym]] -- [[Cohyponym]] -- [[Complementary]] -- [[Converses]] -- [[Equipollent antonyms]] -- [[Holonym]] -- [[Hyperonym]] -- [[Hyponym]] -- [[Kohyponym]] -- [[Lexical ambiguity]] -- [[Lexical semantics]] -- [[Meronym]] -- [[Opposition]] -- [[Overlapping antonyms]] -- [[Reversives]] -- [[Synonymy]]<br>

'''Sentence semantics'''<br>
[[Affected object]] -- [[Agent]] -- [[Anomaly]] -- [[Argument]] -- [[Arity]] -- [[Beneficiary]] -- [[Case relation]] -- [[Case role]] -- [[Conditional sentence]] -- [[Contradiction]] -- [[Declarative sentence]] -- [[Direktive]] -- [[Echo question]] -- [[Equivalence]] -- [[Ergativität]] -- [[Exclamative sentence]] -- [[Experiencer]] -- [[Expressive]] -- [[Homonymy]] -- [[Illocutionary force]] -- [[Imperative]] -- [[Implication]] -- [[Implicature]] -- [[Irrealis]] -- [[Jussiv]] -- [[Kāraka]] -- [[Kohortativ]] -- [[Kommissiv]] -- [[Konditional(is)]] -- [[Konjunktiv]] -- [[Kutscherimperativ]] -- [[Modality]] -- [[Mutuant]] -- [[Negation]] -- [[Optativ]] -- [[Predicate]]<br>

'''Situation semantics'''<br>
[[Alethische Modalität]] -- [[Epistemische Modalität]] -- [[Event time]] -- [[Internally caused situation]] -- [[Modality]] -- [[Mutual situation]]<br>

| style="vertical-align:top;" |

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Major approaches to semantic analysis</div>''' ==

'''Cognitive semantics'''<br>
[[Base (in Cognitive Grammar)|Base]] -- [[Cognitive grammar]] -- [[Cognitive semantics]] -- [[Construal]] -- [[Conceptualization]] -- [[Frame Semantics]] -- [[Mental space]] -- [[Profile (in Cognitive Grammar)|Profile]] -- [[Ambiguity, Polysemy and Vagueness]] -- [[Metaphors in Politics]]<br>

'''Formal semantics'''<br>
[[Generalized Quantifier Theory]] -- [[Generative Semantics]] -- [[Intensional logic]] -- [[Katz-Fodor-semantics]] -- [[Logical semantics]] -- [[Model (semantics)|Model]] -- [[Model theory]] -- [[Montague Grammar]] -- [[Predicate logic]] -- [[Proof theory]]<br>

'''Structuralist semantics'''<br>
[[Componential analysis]] -- [[Conceptual Structure]] -- [[Semantic feature]] -- [[Sense relation]]<br>

'''Prototype semantics'''<br>
[[Basic category]] -- [[Family resemblance]] -- [[Gestalt psychology]] -- [[Prototype]] -- [[Prototype theory]] -- [[Focal Colors]]

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Lexico-grammatical domains</div>''' ==

'''Nominal semantics'''<br>
[[Abstract noun]] -- [[Attributive use]] -- [[Bare plural]] -- [[Collective noun]] -- [[Concrete noun]] -- [[Conservativity]] -- [[Count noun and mass noun]] -- [[Definite]] -- [[Definite description]] -- [[Definite description]] -- [[Determiner]] -- [[Dvanda compound]] -- [[Endocentric compound]] -- [[Existential interpretation]] -- [[Exocentric compound]] -- [[Generic interpretation]] -- [[Inalienable possession]] -- [[Mass noun]]<br>

'''Adjectival semantics'''<br>
[[Absolute|Absolute adjectives]] -- [[Attributive adjective]] -- [[Comparative]] -- [[Extensional adjective]] --[[Intensional adjective]] -- [[Predicative adjective]] -- [[Relational|Relational adjectives]] -- [[Superlative]]<br>

'''Verbal semantics'''<br>
[[Aspect]] -- [[Aspectual classes]] -- [[Absentive]] -- [[Collective predicate]] -- [[Completive aspect]] -- [[Distributive predicate]] -- [[Factive predicate]] -- [[Inchoative]] -- [[Konjunktiv]] -- [[Optativ]] -- [[Portal:Tense and aspect|Tense and aspect]]<br>

'''Semantics of function words'''<br>
[[Adversative coordination]] -- [[Anaphoric pronoun]] -- [[Antecedent]] -- [[Conjunction]] -- [[Connective]] -- [[Deictic pronoun]] -- [[Deixis]] -- [[Donkey anaphora]] -- [[Downward monotonicity]] -- [[Focus particle]] -- [[Generalized quantifier]] -- [[Negative polarity item]]<br>

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Associations</div>''' ==

[http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/asw/gfs/ Gesellschaft für Semantik]

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Journals</div>''' ==

[http://jos.oxfordjournals.org Journal of Semantics]<br>
[http://semprag.org/ Semantics and Pragmatics]

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Book series</div>''' ==

[http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/seriesbyseries.asp?ref=EISZ Explorations in Semantics] (Blackwell)<br>
[http://info.emeraldinsight.com/products/books/series.htm?PHPSESSID=gnvm7k2va3i4s6srrjqamovk44&id=0092-4563 Syntax and Semantics] (Emerald)

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Other ressources</div>''' ==

[http://www2.let.uu.nl/Uil-OTS/Lexicon/ Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics]
[http://www.semanticsarchive.net Semantics archive]<br>
[http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/asw/gfs/deutsch/onlinewb/frames.html Online-Wörterbuch zur Semantik und Pragmatik]

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Biographical articles</div>''' ==

[[Gottlob Frege]] - [[John Lyons]]

|}

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<div style="font-size:100%; text-align: center; margin-top:10px;">
This portal is maintained by [[Volker Gast]]. Please use the discussions tab or
[mailto:v.gast@fu-berlin.de Email] to enter your comments, critical remarks, or suggestions. Thank you.
</div>
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[[Category:En]]
[[Category:Portal|Semantics]]
[[Category:Semantics|!]]

Portal:Semantics

2010-05-19T12:23:56Z

Vicente: /* Major approaches to semantic analysis */

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[[Image:Zenon_of_citium.jpg]]
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Semantics<br>
This portal presents the most central topics in the study of meaning.
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=='''<div style="font-size:80%;">Fundamental issues</div>'''==
'''Meaning and use'''<br>
[[Arbitrariness of the sign]] -- [[Context dependence]] -- [[Cooperative Principle]] -- [[Descriptive meaning]] -- [[Emotive meaning]] -- [[Felicity condition]] -- [[Fixed-context assumption]] -- [[Gricean maxims]] -- [[Implicature]] -- [[Meaning]] -- [[Meaning postulate]] -- [[Meaning theories]] -- [[Non-descriptive meaning]] -- [[Use-mention distinction]]<br>

'''Denotation and reference'''<br>
[[Binding]] -- [[Cataphoric relation]] -- [[Connotation]] -- [[Cumulative reference]] -- [[Denotation]] -- [[Extension]] -- [[Equivalence]] -- [[Icon]] -- [[Iconicity]] -- [[Individual constant]] -- [[Individual term]] -- [[Individual variable]] -- [[Intension]] -- [[Koreferenz]] -- [[Reference]] -- [[Symbol]]<br>

'''Interpretation and truth'''<br>
[[Analytic truth]] -- [[Assignment]] -- [[Axiom]] -- [[Compositionality Principle]] -- [[Contingent truth]] -- [[Covert category]] -- [[Dual (semantics)]] -- [[External negation]] -- [[Idiom]] -- [[Internal negation]] -- [[Interpretation]] -- [[Interpretive rules]] -- [[Katz-Postal-principle]] -- [[Left downward monotonicity]] -- [[Left upward monotonicity]] -- [[Meaning postulate]] -- [[Modal logic]] -- [[Monotonicity]] -- [[Name]] -- [[Narrow scope]] -- [[Necessary truth]] -- [[Opaque context]] -- [[Rigid designator]] -- [[Truth]]<br>

'''Semantic metalanguage'''<br>
[[Atomic formula]] -- [[Aussagenlogik]] -- [[Boolesche Operatoren]] -- [[Formula]] -- [[Funktionale Applikation]] -- [[Interpretation function]] -- [[Lambda-abstraction]] -- [[Lambda-operator]] -- [[Metalanguage]] -- [[Meta-variable]] -- [[Predicate logic]]<br>

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Major branches of semantics</div>''' ==

'''Lexical semantics'''<br>
[[Ambiguity]] -- [[Antonym]] -- [[Cohyponym]] -- [[Complementary]] -- [[Converses]] -- [[Equipollent antonyms]] -- [[Holonym]] -- [[Hyperonym]] -- [[Hyponym]] -- [[Kohyponym]] -- [[Lexical ambiguity]] -- [[Lexical semantics]] -- [[Meronym]] -- [[Opposition]] -- [[Overlapping antonyms]] -- [[Reversives]] -- [[Synonymy]]<br>

'''Sentence semantics'''<br>
[[Affected object]] -- [[Agent]] -- [[Anomaly]] -- [[Argument]] -- [[Arity]] -- [[Beneficiary]] -- [[Case relation]] -- [[Case role]] -- [[Conditional sentence]] -- [[Contradiction]] -- [[Declarative sentence]] -- [[Direktive]] -- [[Echo question]] -- [[Equivalence]] -- [[Ergativität]] -- [[Exclamative sentence]] -- [[Experiencer]] -- [[Expressive]] -- [[Homonymy]] -- [[Illocutionary force]] -- [[Imperative]] -- [[Implication]] -- [[Implicature]] -- [[Irrealis]] -- [[Jussiv]] -- [[Kāraka]] -- [[Kohortativ]] -- [[Kommissiv]] -- [[Konditional(is)]] -- [[Konjunktiv]] -- [[Kutscherimperativ]] -- [[Modality]] -- [[Mutuant]] -- [[Negation]] -- [[Optativ]] -- [[Predicate]]<br>

'''Situation semantics'''<br>
[[Alethische Modalität]] -- [[Epistemische Modalität]] -- [[Event time]] -- [[Internally caused situation]] -- [[Modality]] -- [[Mutual situation]]<br>

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== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Major approaches to semantic analysis</div>''' ==

'''Cognitive semantics'''<br>
[[Base (in Cognitive Grammar)|Base]] -- [[Cognitive grammar]] -- [[Cognitive semantics]] -- [[Construal]] -- [[Conceptualization]] -- [[Frame Semantics]] -- [[Mental space]] -- [[Profile (in Cognitive Grammar)|Profile]]<br>

'''Formal semantics'''<br>
[[Generalized Quantifier Theory]] -- [[Generative Semantics]] -- [[Intensional logic]] -- [[Katz-Fodor-semantics]] -- [[Logical semantics]] -- [[Model (semantics)|Model]] -- [[Model theory]] -- [[Montague Grammar]] -- [[Predicate logic]] -- [[Proof theory]]<br>

'''Structuralist semantics'''<br>
[[Componential analysis]] -- [[Conceptual Structure]] -- [[Semantic feature]] -- [[Sense relation]]<br>

'''Prototype semantics'''<br>
[[Basic category]] -- [[Family resemblance]] -- [[Gestalt psychology]] -- [[Prototype]] -- [[Prototype theory]] -- [[Focal Colors]]

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Lexico-grammatical domains</div>''' ==

'''Nominal semantics'''<br>
[[Abstract noun]] -- [[Attributive use]] -- [[Bare plural]] -- [[Collective noun]] -- [[Concrete noun]] -- [[Conservativity]] -- [[Count noun and mass noun]] -- [[Definite]] -- [[Definite description]] -- [[Definite description]] -- [[Determiner]] -- [[Dvanda compound]] -- [[Endocentric compound]] -- [[Existential interpretation]] -- [[Exocentric compound]] -- [[Generic interpretation]] -- [[Inalienable possession]] -- [[Mass noun]]<br>

'''Adjectival semantics'''<br>
[[Absolute|Absolute adjectives]] -- [[Attributive adjective]] -- [[Comparative]] -- [[Extensional adjective]] --[[Intensional adjective]] -- [[Predicative adjective]] -- [[Relational|Relational adjectives]] -- [[Superlative]]<br>

'''Verbal semantics'''<br>
[[Aspect]] -- [[Aspectual classes]] -- [[Absentive]] -- [[Collective predicate]] -- [[Completive aspect]] -- [[Distributive predicate]] -- [[Factive predicate]] -- [[Inchoative]] -- [[Konjunktiv]] -- [[Optativ]] -- [[Portal:Tense and aspect|Tense and aspect]]<br>

'''Semantics of function words'''<br>
[[Adversative coordination]] -- [[Anaphoric pronoun]] -- [[Antecedent]] -- [[Conjunction]] -- [[Connective]] -- [[Deictic pronoun]] -- [[Deixis]] -- [[Donkey anaphora]] -- [[Downward monotonicity]] -- [[Focus particle]] -- [[Generalized quantifier]] -- [[Negative polarity item]]<br>

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Associations</div>''' ==

[http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/asw/gfs/ Gesellschaft für Semantik]

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Journals</div>''' ==

[http://jos.oxfordjournals.org Journal of Semantics]<br>
[http://semprag.org/ Semantics and Pragmatics]

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Book series</div>''' ==

[http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/seriesbyseries.asp?ref=EISZ Explorations in Semantics] (Blackwell)<br>
[http://info.emeraldinsight.com/products/books/series.htm?PHPSESSID=gnvm7k2va3i4s6srrjqamovk44&id=0092-4563 Syntax and Semantics] (Emerald)

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Other ressources</div>''' ==

[http://www2.let.uu.nl/Uil-OTS/Lexicon/ Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics]
[http://www.semanticsarchive.net Semantics archive]<br>
[http://www.phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/asw/gfs/deutsch/onlinewb/frames.html Online-Wörterbuch zur Semantik und Pragmatik]

== '''<div style="font-size:80%;">Biographical articles</div>''' ==

[[Gottlob Frege]] - [[John Lyons]]

|}

{| border="0" style="margin-top:1em; padding:0.2em; border:solid 1px #000080; background-color:#f0f0f0;" width="100%" cellspacing="10"
|-
| valign="top" width="66%" colspan="4" |

<div style="font-size:100%; text-align: center; margin-top:10px;">
This portal is maintained by [[Volker Gast]]. Please use the discussions tab or
[mailto:v.gast@fu-berlin.de Email] to enter your comments, critical remarks, or suggestions. Thank you.
</div>
|}

[[Category:En]]
[[Category:Portal|Semantics]]
[[Category:Semantics|!]]