English Colour Terms L12 2 PDF

English ColourTerms L12 2  Colour Vision Colour vision is something that we often take for granted, but it has become so intrinsic to the way we perceive the world that it has permeated our culture and language. Did you know that objects do not possess colour?...

English ColourTerms L12 2  Colour Vision Colour vision is something that we often take for granted, but it has become so intrinsic to the way we perceive the world that it has permeated our culture and language. Did you know that objects do not possess colour? They reflect wavelengths of light that are seen as colour by the human brain. When light hits an object, the object absorbs some of that light and reflects the rest of it. That reflected light enters the human eye. In PDE (Present-Day English), the word colour is used principally (and almost exclusively) of hues (hue – tonalità, tinta), that is the range of observed impressions on the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. English speakers use BCTs such as red, green, yellow and blue to denote these hues, as well as a range of non-basic terms such as turquoise, scarlet, violet and crimson. For the majority of English speakers, the words colour and hue are synonyms, but in the technical language of colour studies colour denotes all the elements which combine to create a particular colour experience, including hue. Apart from hue, a colour can be described by means of its tone or saturation, the amount of black or white which is perceived as being involved with a hue in a visual impression. Although we tend to believe that our own colour system is the only sensible and possible one, a quick look at other languages of the world shows that there are many different ways to classify colours. In fact, colour terminology varies widely in languages. There are 11 Basic Colour Terms (BCTs) in NB Do not confuse Basic Colour Terms (vocaboli che Present Day English: white, black, red, descrivono I colori principali in una lingua) with Primary yellow, green, grey, blue, brown, purple, Colours and Non Basic Colour Terms with Secondary and Tertiary Colours. There are three Primary Colours: Red, orange, pink. There are many more Non Yellow, Blue, three Secondary Colorus: Orange, Green, Violet Basic Colour. and six Tertiary Colours: Red-Orange, Yellow-Orange, Yellow- Green, Blue-Green, Blue-Violet, Red-Violet, which are formed by mixing a primary with a secondary.  Colour? Colour is an attribute of things that results from the way they reflect light. The colour spectrum is a physical continuum, and also a visual continuum: any colour shades gradually and imperceptibly into its neighbours. For example, blue shades into green, green shades into yellow, and so on. From the point of view of human perception, colours are identified according to three main parameters —hue (green, red, etc.), saturation (deep/pale) and brightness (light/dark). Languages differ in the way in which they divide up the colour spectrum. Not all languages distinguish all four focal colours red, green, yellow, and blue. In fact, it is not uncommon among languages to have a single basic colour term that includes both blue and green, a colour category called grue  Colour Various unexpected aspects of colour semantics can be found in the historical records of English, showing that not only have the words used for colours often changed over the centuries, but so has the way in which English speakers have used those words. In PDE, the word colour is used principally (and almost exclusively) of hues (hue – tonalità, tinta), that is the range of observed impressions on the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. English speakers use BCTs such as red, green, yellow and blue to denote these hues, as well as a range of non-basic terms such as turquoise, scarlet, violet and crimson. For the majority of English speakers, the words colour and hue are synonyms, but in the technical language of colour studies colour denotes all the elements which combine to create a particular colour experience, including hue. Apart from hue, a colour can be described by means of its tone or saturation, the amount of black or white which is perceived as being involved with a hue in a visual impression.  The Pantone Matching System In printing, graphic design etc. most industries around the world use a kind of universal colour matching system, Pantone, in which each colour corresponds to a number.  Colours in Different Languages and Cultures Although everyone with normal vision knows the visible hues, the basic categories differ in both number and nature between speech communities and in many cases even between individual speakers of the same language, e.g. between the young and the old, between men and women, and between monolinguals and bilinguals. Moreover, BCCs also differ between the various periods of a society's history, as shown by their changing BCTs. Speakers of some languages (including OE and ME) interpret some or all of the purple, pink, orange or brown hues as areas of their red category, rather than as categories in their own right. Similarly, speakers of some languages regard yellow and green (and other combinations) as areas of a single category. Basic categories such as these, which seem so extensive to ModE speakers, are referred to as macro-categories or composite categories. Although macro- categories may seem quite alien to speakers of ModE, they were present in older forms of English and their speakers did not feel the need to have eleven BCTs denoting eleven basic categories as in ModE.  What “Colours”? We take for granted that “red” is a colour and so is “yellow” and we have names for these colours. But there are no such things as “colours” because colour is a spectrum. Why do we choose those particular “colours” and not others along the spectrum? Why do different peoples around the world choose to name some “colours” but not others? In the 1960s anthropologists thought that peoples chose those “colours” at random. But in 1969 Brent Berlin and Paul Kay published their research about colour that contradicted that.  Berlin and Kay Berlin and Kay (1969) had speakers of different languages name colour categories on the Munsell colour chart (so named after the American painter and scholar Albert H. Munsell who invented it). They focused on focused on basic colour terms (BCT), i.e. terms that: are monolexemic (e.g. black, not reddish-brown) are not hyponyms of other terms (e.g. red is basic, but scarlet is a hyponym of red) are widely applicable (e.g. yellow, but not blonde) are not extensions of something manifesting the colour (e.g. gold and fawn are excluded) They discovered that: - There is a recurrent pattern in colour naming across cultures - Colour names begin to be used by individual cultures in a relatively fixed order. Berlin and Kay discovered the existence of a hierarchy of basic colour names which began to be used by individual cultures in a relatively fixed order. According to this observation, Basic Colour names can be organized into a coherent hierarchy around the universal basic colours black, white, red, green, yellow, and blue always appearing in this specific order across cultures. The origin of the observed hierarchy is still partly unexplained. Their work was criticised (and rightly so!) for a number of reasons. But the data gathered in the World Colour Survey (2009) which extended their work provided further evidence for the existence of universals in colour categorization. Since then many studies confirmed the existence of such universals and attempted to explain it.  Universal Trends in Basic Colour Names Numbers of colour terms in a language: Two: white and black* (light and dark) Three: red, white, black Four: yellow or green, red, white, black Five: yellow, green, red, white, black Six: blue, yellow, green, red, white, black Seven: brown, blue, yellow, green, red, white, black Eight +: purple/pink/orange/grey + above Examples: Dani (New Guinea): only 2 terms, one meaning broadly light, the other dark; Pomo (Ca, USA): 3 terms; Tamil (India): 6 terms; Lebanese Arabic, English: 10/11 terms *the terms black and white appear in this hierarchy with a meaning close to the general panchromatic (sensitive to all visible colours) English terms dark and light or dull and brilliant rather than equivalent to the specific achromatic (without colour) terms black and white. The Development of Basic Colour Terms in English (pp. 122-129) English BCCs and BCTs have changed over the centuries and non-basic colour vocabulary has grown. These changes inevitably affect how the modern reader understands historical texts. For example, he or she must consider how much of the modern concept of PINK lies behind earlier uses of words meaning 'red', 'pale red', or 'the colour of the rose'; whether an earlier use of a 'grey' word could mean 'dull blue' or 'dull green' rather than 'grey'; and whether an earlier use of a 'brown' Word could mean 'shining, flashing' rather than 'brown'. The basic (cognitive) colour categories (BCCs) of OE, ME and ModE are: OE: (1) WHITE/BRIGHT, (2) BLACK/DARK, (3) RED+, (4) YELLOW, (5) GREEN, (6) GREY ME: (1) WHITE, (2) BLACK, (3) RED+, (4) YELLOW, (5) GREEN, (6) GREY, (7) BLUE, (8) BROWN ModE: (1) WHITE, (2) BLACK, (3) RED, (4) YELLOW, (5) GREEN, (6) GREY, (7) BLUE, (8) BROWN, (9) PURPLE, (10) ORANGE, (11) PINK The BCTs of OE, ME and ModE are: OE: hwit, blæc/(sweart), read, geolu, grene, græg ME: whit, blak, red, yelwe, grene, grei, bleu, broun ModE: white, black, red, yellow, green, grey, blue, brown, purple, orange, pink  Italian and English Colour Terms The two languages present asymmetries owing to the different categorization of the spectrum, in particular in the blue, brown and purple areas. There are also differences in colour idioms. Can you think of any? Black: black and blue, black sheep Blue: feel blue, out of the blue Green: to be green, green with envy Red: red tape, to be in the red White: white as a ghost, white lie  Colour Idioms Colour terms may take on figurative (symbolic or metaphorical) meanings, which are often culture–specific. In English, blue may mean ‘depressed’ (I’m feeling blue), ‘indecent’ (blue jokes) or ‘pornographic’ (blue films). In Italian, blu does not express any of these additional meanings; but consider azzurro in squadra azzurra, where it refers to the Italian national team, and giallo in romanzo giallo, where it refers to the detective novel.  WEB RESOURCES Why colour is in the eye of the beholder, The Guardian, 8 May 2023 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/may/08/the-big-idea-why-colour-is-in-the-e ye-of-the-beholder Article on the Merriam Webster website "10 Words for Uncommon Colors Color names taken from paintings, flowers, fleas & more" https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/top-10-words-for-unusual-colors?utm_ca mpaign=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=wotd&utm_content=peoplear ereading-upperleft&utm_email=97c1b11bd4635ef0b8ca4dc6cc813f11 Colour words in Various Languages https://www.omniglot.com/language/colours/multilingual.htm Colour Studies Association http://language-of-colour.aic-colour.org/ The Surprising Pattern of Colour Names around the World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMqZR3pqMjg Colour Research and Application https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/15206378 All The Colours, Including Grue: How Languages See Colours Differently