Fig 1. The Berlin and Kay model of color term acquisition
Source: Berlin and Kay 1969: 7
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Humanistinen tiedekunta |
Englantilainen Filologia |
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Author |
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Tuomas Tanner |
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Title |
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Same but different – comparing basic color terms in Finnish and English |
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Proseminar paper |
April 25th, 2001 |
21 |
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Abstract |
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This proseminar paper examines basic color terms in Finnish and English using the methods of comparative typology when evaluating the two languages. The goal of this paper is to determine the differences in the two sets of basic color terms. The implications of these differences and the effect that these differences have on cross-cultural communication are also discussed. The theory section of the paper traces the development of color term theories. The two most influential works, Berlin and Kay 1969 theory and developments to this theory by Kay and McDaniel in 1978, are discussed in detail. The methods presented in these theories are then applied to both Finnish and English. The basic color terms for both languages and their stage of development in acquiring additional basic color terms is evaluated. After this evaluation, the color term sets are compared and the effects of the differences found are reviewed. According to the study, English has 11 basic color terms and is therefore a complete stage VII language. The set of basic color terms is also very fixed, since the last color terms to achieve basic status, have done so already in the 17th century. Finnish, on the other hand, has only recently reached stage VII with 8 basic color terms. The stage of development in Finnish is quite different from English, since Finnish seems to be rapidly gathering new color terms in order to get the full set. The conclusions of the study affirm the theory of color universals to hold true today. Even so, the difference in the two sets causes ambiguity when communicating between these languages. This ambiguity also explains the rapid acquisition of new basic color terms into Finnish. However, as Finnish acquires new basic color terms, ambiguity is diminishing and may completely disappear once Finnish acquires the full set of 11 basic color terms. |
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Keywords |
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color, basic color terms, comparative typology |
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Additional Information |
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2.1. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
2.2. Berlin and Kay theory of color universals
2.2.1. Basic Color Terms
2.2.2. Defining color categories
2.2.3. Evolution of basic color terms
2.3. Developments in the theory by Kay and McDaniel
2.3.1. Basic color categories originating from perceptual physiology
2.3.2. Fuzzy set theory
2.3.3. Fuzzy set theory in color term acquisition
3.1. Basic color terms in English
3.2. Stage of development in basic color term acquisition
4.1. Basic color terms in Finnish
4.2. Stage of development in basic color term acquisition
The theory of color universals is widely accepted throughout the scientific community and has become a very popular research topic. Although a considerable amount of material has been written on this subject and quite a number of books and articles dealing with the implementations of this theory in different languages are available, relatively few of these concern color terms in Finnish.
In this proseminar paper, I intend to trace the development of the theories on color universals. After this overview, I will look at color terms in English and Finnish through the theoretical framework described. Finally, I will compare these two sets of color terms. The differences that this comparison shows will be discussed focusing on the implications of the differences and how these differences affect meaning when communicating across the two languages.
One of the observations that Berlin and Kay made when formulating their theory of color universals was that color terms translated quite easily among pairs of unrelated languages (1969: 2). Although I consider this observation true, in my opinion different sets of basic color terms in two languages do affect the translation of color concepts between these languages. This should be taken into consideration when preparing to translate between Finnish and English.
Two major scholarly traditions have influenced the way color theory (and the study of linguistic semantics in general) has developed. The first tradition, radical linguistic relativity, was formed in the early 20th century as a reaction to the 19th century condescending attitudes against unwritten languages (Kay and Kempton 1984: 65). In the 1970's relativism was replaced by a theory of linguistic universals.
The two most famous proponents of radical linguistic relativity, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, stated that we observe the world by organizing it into linguistic categories and that these categories are unique to each language (Whorf 1956: 213). These formulations became known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. In color term theory this meant that each language coded color differently and that these systems varied without constraint (Kay and Kempton 1984: 66).
In 1969 Brent Berlin and Paul Kay devised their seminal theory of color universals that refuted the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and proved the existence of semantic universals in color vocabulary. Even more importantly, this theory also mapped out the evolutionary development of color terms in all languages (1969).
Some scholars like Barbara Saunders have contested this theory claiming that it over-simplifies the relationships between language and color (1992: 221). Despite this criticism, most scholars have accepted this theory making it a "benchmark" in cross-cultural color study that still provides the basic framework that recent studies build on (Özgen and Davies 1998).
Berlin and Kay formulated their theory on extensive experimental data collected from 20 languages representing samples of all major linguistic families. They gathered their data in two stages. In the first stage, the basic color words of an informant were singled out by asking him/her to name colors while trying to avoid using any other language. After this, the informant was given a stimulus board consisting of 329 color chips with equal hue distribution. For each color name the informant named in the first stage, he/she was asked to indicate all chips he would under any conditions call that particular color and also indicate the best exemplar for the color name (1969: 5).
Berlin and Kay performed two conceptual maneuvers that allowed them to overcome the problems with large variation in the amount of color terms between languages and the seeming irregularity of color space which a color term represented (1969). In the two following sections I will discuss these maneuvers in detail.
Berlin and Kay used very strict criteria to define what is to be called the "basic color terms" in a language. A basic color term had to exhibit the first four criteria to be considered basic. In unclear cases, criteria (v-viii) were used to determine whether a color term in fact was or was not basic. The criteria go as follows:
(i) It is monolexemic; that is, its meaning is not predictable from the meaning of its parts.
(ii) Its signification is not included in that of any other color term.
(iii) Its application must not be restricted to a narrow class of objects.
(iv) It must be psychologically salient for informants. Indices of psychological salience include, among others, (1) a tendency to occur at the beginning of elicited lists of color terms, (2) stability of reference across informants and across occasions of use, and (3) occurrence in the ideolects of all informants.
(v) The doubtful form should have the same distributional potential as the previously established basic terms.
(vi) Color terms that are also the name of an object characteristically having that color are suspect, for example, gold, silver, and ash.
(vii) Recent foreign loan words may be suspect.
(viii) In cases where lexemic status is difficult to assess [see criterion (i)], morphological complexity is given some weight as a secondary criterion (1969: 6).
By narrowing down the field of study so radically, Berlin and Kay were able to discover a very limited and universal set of color terms in all languages that they studied. They found out that all languages drew their color terms from a set of only eleven color categories. (1969: 2). The data also showed that the foci of these basic color categories were the same for all languages (1969: 10).
When Berlin and Kay tested the informants on color foci, the responses were very quick and accurate. When informants were asked to define the boundaries of a color, the task proved to be very difficult and resulted in considerable variation between informants and also varied with repeated tests on the same informant (1969: 13).
This caused Berlin and Kay to narrow the scope of the theory to include only the foci of a color. With this maneuver the apparent arbitrariness in the way color terms represented actual color space gave way to universal color categories (1969).
When Berlin and Kay had singled out the eleven universal color foci, they were able to apply this theory to many languages using color names found in literature for analysis. With this technique they were able to increase the number languages mapped to 98. When studying these languages, they reached their second important discovery: All languages acquired their basic color terms in a fixed sequence of evolutionary stages (1969: 14).
This sequence of acquiring color terms could be divided into seven stages with the chronological stages of development shown below,
Fig 1. The Berlin and Kay model of color term acquisition
Source: Berlin and Kay 1969: 7
This graph shows the seven stages of acquiring basic color terms. The color terms acquired at each stage are shown vertically. The stages are numbered from the leftmost stage I to the rightmost stage VII. According to Berlin and Kay, these stages of evolution were very strict. If a language encoded a color, all colors from the previous stages had to be encoded (1969: 14).
Paul Kay and Chad McDaniel in their 1978 article "The linguistic significance of the meanings of basic color terms" developed the Berlin and Kay theory by incorporating the study of perceptual physiology to explain the universality of basic color categories. Fuzzy set theory and the formalism of fuzzy logic were used to explain the way in which languages acquired their basic color terms (1978).
Kay and McDaniel argued that the universal basic color terms derive from neurophysiological processes that are common to all humans (1978: 611). They drew their conclusions based on DeValois et al. study of perceptual physiology.
This study described a three-cone system in the retina, which transformed the sensory input of light into code that indicated the distribution of input between these cones. This code was further re-coded beyond the retina into two opponent neural response pairs that directly determined the perceived hue and its saturation (1978: 617).
These opponent response pairs were red-green and yellow-blue. In addition to these two opponent pairs DeValois et al. found an additional non-opponent pair black-white. When the two opponent pairs determined the hue and saturation for all colors, the black-white pair determined the brightness of a color (1978: 628).
According to Kay and McDaniel, these three response pairs showed an inherent structure in the human perception of color, which was not deductible from the physical properties of light alone (1978: 621). From these three response pairs Kay and McDaniel formulated the six fundamental neural response categories (1978: 625). These six categories directly referred to the basic color terms in all stage V languages and were called the primary basic color categories (1978: 626).
Languages at earlier stages of development formed their basic color terms from these primary basic color categories through the means of fuzzy unions. Later stage languages used fuzzy intersections to form new color terms where two primary basic color categories intersected (1978).
Fuzzy set theory is a theory of classes with unsharp boundaries. When in standard set theory a specimen either is or is not a member of a group, fuzzy set theory represents the specimen having different degrees of membership (Zadeh 1994: 78). For a mathematical representation of the theory, please see Zadeh 1994.
When Berlin and Kay tried to define the boundary of a color term, they found that the informants had considerable difficulty determining the color boundaries. Also, the results varied when the same informant redid the assignment (1969).
Kay and McDaniel applied the fuzzy set theory to color categories producing a continuing and accurate description of members admitted to a color category while at the same time preserving the original idea of foci (a member with a fuzzy set value of 1.0) and boundary (members with a fuzzy set value of 0.0) found in the Berlin and Kay theory (1978: 624). This resulted in a more accurate representation of color space and allowed for the membership functions to be derived directly from the neural response functions.
The following illustration represents our perceived color space. In this illustration, the six primary color categories are mapped to the end points of a three dimensional sphere. Any perceived color can be described as a point inside this sphere. The cluster of dots illustrates the changing degree of membership that members have in the color category green. The density of dots represents the strength of membership. The data was derived from neural responses, and it shows that the axis of brightness also affects the degree of membership in a color category, a fact overlooked by the earlier theory (Kay and McDaniel 1978: 627).
Fig 2. Strength of membership in the color category green
Source: Kay and McDaniel 1978: 628
Kay and McDaniel used two operations of fuzzy logic to create the new model of color term acquisition. A fuzzy union of two or more primary color categories forms a composite category. This composite category is formed of all the colors that have a positive degree of membership in any of the fundamental response categories of the union (1978: 630).
Kay and McDaniel stated that all languages belonging to stages I-IV include at least one composite color category. In a stage I language, both color categories are composite color categories. The early development of a language into stage V consists of the decomposition of the two composite color categories into the six primary basic color categories (1978: 631).
The further development of a language in stages V-VII is caused by fuzzy intersections. In a fuzzy intersection a new category breaks away at the intersection of two categories to form a new one. The members of the new category previously had a degree of membership in both categories from which the new category was formed. For example, when the color category orange enters the picture, all of its members previously had a degree of membership in both yellow and red (1978: 632).
The following graph shows the new model of color term acquisition according to Kay and McDaniel. This model builds on the original Berlin and Kay model (See Fig. 1) but incorporates the new theories. The word "or" represents a fuzzy union and the symbol "+" a fuzzy intersection.
Fig 3. The Kay and McDaniel model of color term acquisition
Source: Kay and McDaniel 1978: 639
This graph shows the different stages of development in color term acquisition according to Kay and McDaniel. In stages I-IV color terms are acquired through the decomposition of composite color categories. In stages V-VII new color terms are formed through fuzzy intersections. The dotted line illustrates the wildcard status of the color gray. It can be acquired in stages III-VII.
Although this graph maps the development of color categories up to only 11 colors, there is nothing in the Kay and McDaniel theory that suggests this is the definite upper limit of basic color terms a language may have (1978: 640). In fact, all fuzzy intersections apart from those of opposite neural response pairs red-green and yellow-blue are equally feasible according to the theory (1978: 620). According to Kay and McDaniel, the fact that no language has more than 11 basic color terms (with the possible exception of Russian with two terms for blue) is more an accident than a rule (1978: 640).
In this section I will briefly outline the basic color terms in English and the stage of development that English is currently at. In the next section the same description will be done to Finnish.
Berlin and Kay concluded in their 1969 study that English has 11 basic color terms and is therefore a complete stage VII language (1969). The basic color terms for English are white, black, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange and gray. These terms were also used by Berlin and Kay in glosses for basic color terms in other languages (1969).
English has a relatively fixed set of basic color terms. According to the OED, the color orange (one of the last color terms to achieve basic status) achieved a basic status already in the early 17th century (1989). If these 11 terms are viewed through the Berlin and Kay theory, the development has been completed and no other basic color terms would be acquired into the language (1969).
The Kay and McDaniel theory however offers the possibility of new derived categories emerging at the intersections of fundamental response categories. Berlin and Kay hypothesize that some currently non-basic color terms used to name these intersecting color may acquire a basic status or even be currently used as basic color terms by some speakers of English (1978: 640). The list of possible basic color terms is: aqua/turquoise (green + blue), maroon/burgundy (black + red) and chartreuse/lime (yellow + green).
Mauno Koski, in his book Värien nimitykset suomessa ja lähisukukielissä, presents a detailed description of color terms used in Finnish and other Finno-Ugric languages (1983). In his book, Koski also maps the development of Finnish color terms and their claim for basic status according to the Berlin and Kay theory with the additions made by Kay and McDaniel. The ideas discussed in this section are based mainly on Koski's work.
Finnish is a stage VII language just as English (Koski 1983: 266). However, Finnish is just barely at stage VII with its 8 basic color terms (1983: 266). Koski lists the basic color terms in Finnish with their English glosses as being: valkoinen 'white', musta 'black', sininen 'blue', punainen 'red', keltainen 'yellow', vihreä 'green', harmaa 'gray' and ruskea 'brown' (1983: 265).
The fact that harmaa 'gray' appeared in Finnish before ruskea 'brown' reflects the wild card status of gray which Kay and McDaniel described in their theory (See Fig 3.) (1978: 640). This means that gray can appear at various stages of basic color term development and is illustrated in the graph of the new model by a dotted line signaling the possible stages of acquiring gray (1978: 639).
Even though both Finnish and English have reached stage VII in their basic color term development, there are differences in these two sets. This also shows that the two languages are in quite different stages of development with regarding the acquisition of new basic color terms.
Finnish only acquired ruskea 'brown' as the eighth basic color term during the past few decades. Although the color term ruskea is quite old, its current meaning 'brown' became fixed only when a standard variety of Finnish was formed. Before this, the meaning of ruskea was 'red' in some dialects (c.f. taivaan rusko). Also, in some dialects the word pruuni was used to denote 'brown' (Koski 1983).Acquiring the eight basic color term raised Finnish to level VII, a stage common to all languages of culture (Koski 1983: 266). This acquisition of ruskea began only after a standard variety of Finnish was formed and began to be used nationwide (Koski 1983: 266). The new standard Finnish started a development in Finnish color vocabulary which is still under way.
This development in Finnish color vocabulary has brought two very strong contenders for basic color terms representing purple and orange (Koski 1983: 266). Violetti 'purple' and oranssi 'orange' have established themselves as basic color terms in most forms of standard Finnish and some regional varieties. These two color terms are spreading quite rapidly and it can be said that Finnish has nearly acquired a basic color term inventory of 10 (Koski 1983: 266).
The development seems to be continuing even further. Turkoosi 'turquoise, green + blue' may be on its way to becoming a basic color term (Koski 1983: 266). The term is not yet very firmly established, but there seem to be no restrictions on its application (criterion iii for a basic color term) (Koski 1983: 242).
Interestingly Finnish lacks a basic color term for denoting pink. It also seems that there are no real contenders for this term in Finnish. The two non-basic color terms used quite often are pinkki and roosa (vaaleanpunainen is not a basic color term since it is not monolexemic, criterion i for a basic color term). These two terms are quite straightforward loans from other languages. Their use, however, is restricted to urban and consumer culture. Furthermore, these color terms do not belong to the active vocabulary of all speakers of Finnish (Koski: 1983: 242).
Koski wrote his book in 1983 and since then, Finland has had more contact with other cultures than ever before. The emergence of the new information society and Finland's strong role in its development has almost certainly also reflected in the color term vocabulary of Finnish. The development with violetti, oranssi and turkoosi has most likely continued its course.
Since consumer culture in the past decade has rapidly expanded to encompass all age and social groups of Finns, it would also be quite feasible that one of the loan words used for translating pink has gained dominance among Finnish speakers.
The current state of these color terms in Finnish would require an up to date study, but even the somewhat dated findings of Koski indicate that Finnish is rapidly increasing its basic color term inventory. The stage of basic color term development in Finnish is quite different from English. While English has reached its 12 basic color terms some time ago and is quite content with these, Finnish seems to be frantically trying to gather the full set.
If we take the theory of universal color categories to hold true, the two basic color term sets should both match universal color categories that they represent. I did not have the possibility of conducting an experiment in Finnish, but the Berlin and Kay experiments show that basic color terms across languages reflect the universal color categories very accurately (1969). There is no reason to suspect that Finnish basic color terms should be any different in this respect.
The possible differences lie in the differences of the two sets. Since Finnish has not fully developed its color term vocabulary, some vagueness and variation on what color a certain term represents will appear (Koski 1983). The terms that have almost reached a basic color term status have higher consensus than the clearly non-basic color terms (Koski 1983).
Violetti 'purple' is commonly seen as the intersection between blue and red (Koski 1983: 228) For most speakers of Finnish violetti represents the same color as the English purple.
The term oranssi is a newer acquaintance to Finnish than violetti (Koski 1983: 236). Because of this, its claim for basic color term status is weaker and more variation occurs in the use of this term. While the term denotes the intersection of red and yellow to most Finns, Taina Jyrinki noted in her Pro-gradu thesis that many translators translated orange as punakeltainen 'red yellow' and kellanpunainen 'yellow red' (1997: 59). This would indicate that the status of oranssi and the color category it represents has not yet become fixed in Finnish.
Finnish has no real equivalent for the English basic color term pink. According to Jyrinki three terms are used in translation. Pinkki and vaaleanpunainen were common while roosa was considered antiquated (1997: 58). It seems that there is a lot of variation on what actual color these three translations represent, as is the case for all non-basic color terms (Brent and Kay 1969: 6).
Davies and Gorbet conducted a cross-cultural study of color grouping. They studied three languages: English, Russian and Setswana (Setswana is the official language of Botswana and is spoken by 95% of the population of which 70% spoke it as their mother tongue) (Grimes 1996).. Of the languages English and Russian were stage VII languages with 11 and 12 color terms. Setswana was a stage IV language with four basic color terms including a composite category (green or blue) (1997). The results of their tests showed that while the behavior of all the languages was broadly similar, Setswana speakers featured least consensus in color grouping. This reflected the lack of basic color terms in a language that all speakers agreed on (1997).
These results with the comparisons of English and Finnish color terms show, that the number of basic color terms a language has, does have an effect on how the speakers of a language associate colors with color terms. A language with a full set of basic color terms has high consensus on what the basic color terms represent. A language with fewer basic color terms features more ambiguity when determining colors outside its set of basic color terms.
In her Pro-gradu thesis, Jyrinki stated that there was ambiguity with Finnish non-basic color terms (1997: 55-59). She also hypothesized, that this would cause some difficulty when translating texts. Her conclusions state that her hypothesis was wrong and that translating to Finnish non-basic color terms did not pose a problem, as translators generally just translated the original color term into what in their mind was the closest equivalent term, even if the target term was non-basic (1997: 107).
The translators had no trouble in translating English basic color terms such as pink into Finnish by using the closest loanword pinkki (1997: 58). While this may very well be true, I think that there are more issues that should be looked into aside from the apparent ease of translation. Translating a source color term simply by using the closest loanword creates ambivalence in the target text. To native speakers of the target text, using an unfamiliar term to describe a color will create ambivalence on the exact meaning of the word. However, the readers of the original text have had no trouble in understanding the exact meaning of the color term, since it was basic in that particular language. The use of an uncommon loan word also reveals the text to be a translation more easily.
Although this ambivalence may not have any effect on the meaning or message of the text, the translator should be aware of the fact and its consequences.
The original intuition of Berlin and Kay, that color terms translate too easily to be totally arbitrary, still holds true today. The speakers of Finnish and English share the common ground of our neurophysiological impulses when viewing color. Therefore, the basic color terms we use to describe these impulses translate without problem, we are after all speaking about the same process in our brain.
Yet, language does shape the way we think. The difference of the basic color term vocabulary in English and Finnish is a source of ambivalence and confusion when communicating across these languages. Without a fixed term to describe a phenomenon, variation occurs even if the phenomenon itself were the same in both languages.
I believe that this is one of the reasons Finnish is complementing its collection of basic color terms at such a rapid pace. The increased interaction with other languages that have a more complete set of Basic color terms and the requirements that new technologies bring us compel the language to develop.
Even with the development of basic color terms in Finnish, marked differences in the basic color term sets and their use in the two languages still exist. However, these differences are diminishing as Finnish acquires more Basic color terms and may eventually disappear once Finnish acquires its 11 basic color terms.
Basic color terms in Finnish and English are the same but the sets differ -for the time being.
Berlin, Brent and Kay, Paul (1969) Basic color terms: their universality and evolution. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Davies, Ian R.L. and Gorbet, Greville G. (1997) A cross-cultural study of colour grouping: Evidence for weak linguistic relativity. British Journal of Psychology, 88 (3), 493-519
Grimes, Barbara F. (1996) Ethnologue: Botswana. Summer Institute of Linguistics (13th ed.) [http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/countries/Bots.html]
Jyrinki, Taina (1997) A comparative study of selected aspects of English colour expressions and their translations into Finnish. A Pro-gradu thesis. Helsinki: University of Helsinki.
Kay, Paul and Kempton Willet (1984) What is the Sapir-Worf hypothesis? American Anthropologist 86, 65-79.
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Özgen, Emre and Davies Ian R. L. (1998) Turkish color terms: tests of Berlin and Kay's theory of color universals and linguistic relativity. Linguistics 36-5, 919-956.
Saunders, Barbara A. C. (1992) The Invention of Basic colour terms. Utrecht I.S.O.R.
Simpson, John and Weiner, Edmund (eds.) (1989) The Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Oxford: Oxford University Press (2nd ed.)
Whorf, Benjamin Lee (1971) Language, thought, and reality: selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Cambridge: MIT Press (8th pr.)
Zadeh, Lofti A. (1994) Fuzzy logic, neural networks and soft computing. Communications of the ACM 37 (3) ,77-84