Cover not available
Part of
Progress in Colour Studies: Cognition, language and beyond
Edited by Lindsay W. MacDonald, Carole P. Biggam and Galina V. Paramei
[Not in series 217] 2018
► pp. 59–82

Chapter 4
Spanish basic colour categories are 11 or 12 depending on the dialect

| Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
| Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico
| Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay
| Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
| Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain | Anglia Ruskin University, UK
| Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
| Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain

A colour-term elicitation task was used to estimate basic colour terms (BCTs) in three Spanish dialects. In Castilian (spoken in Spain) and Mexican, eleven BCTs were identified, compared to twelve in Uruguayan, including celeste “sky blue”. The six primary BCTs and three derived BCTs appeared identical in all three dialects; however, terms for “brown” and “purple” revealed dialectal variation. An Extremes naming task was used to estimate the equivalence relation between BCT counterparts in the three dialects. A Boundary delimitation task was employed to demarcate boundaries of the basic colour categories in a*b*-plane of CIELAB. The task enabled mapping the denotata of the Uruguayan-specific BCT celeste. Results are discussed in the framework of the debate of universal versus language-specific factors.

Keywords: Spanish, Castilian, Mexican, Uruguayan, basic colour terms, colour transitions, universal factors, language-specific factors
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Experiment 1. Elicitation task
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Materials and procedure
    • 2.3Results
  • 3.Experiment 2. Extremes naming and Boundary delimitation tasks
    • 3.1Method
      • 3.1.1Participants
      • 3.1.2Apparatus and stimuli
      • 3.1.3Procedure
    • 3.2 Extremes naming task : Results
    • 3.3 Boundary delimitation task : Results
  • 4.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 26 November 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.217.04lil
References
Berlin, Brent, and Paul Kay
1969/1991 Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bimler, David, and Mari Uusküla
2017 “A Similarity-Based Cross-Language Comparison of Basicness and Demarcation of Blue Terms.” Color Research & Application 42: 362–377. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
[2018] “Divergence and Shared Conceptual Organisation: A Points-Of-View Analysis of Colour Listing Data from 14 European Languages.” In Progress in Colour Studies: Cognition, Language and Beyond, ed. by Lindsay W. MacDonald, Carole P. Biggam, and Galina V. Paramei, 223–239. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boynton, Robert M., and Conrad X. Olson
1987 “Locating Basic Colors in the OSA Space.” Color Research & Application 12: 94–105. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, Angela M., Abdirizak Isse, and Delwin T. Lindsey
2016 “The Color Lexicon of the Somali Language.” Journal of Vision 16: 14 . DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davidoff, Jules
2015 “Color Categorization Across Cultures.” In Handbook of Color Psychology, ed. by Andrew J. Elliot, Mark D. Fairchild, and Anna Franklin, 259–278. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davies, Ian, and Greville Corbett
1994 “The Basic Colour Terms of Russian.” Linguistics 32: 65–89. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goebel, Michael
2009 “Gauchos, Gringos and Gallegos: The Assimilation of Italian and Spanish Immigrants in the Making of Modern Uruguay 1880–1930.” Past Present 208: 191–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
González-Perilli, Fernando, Ignacio Rebollo, Alejandro Maiche, and Analía Arévalo
2017 “Blues in Two Different Spanish-Speaking Populations”. Frontiers in Communication 2 : 18 . DOI logo
Harkness, Sara
1973 “Universal Aspects of Learning Color Codes: A Study in Two Cultures.” Ethos 1: 175–200. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hunt, Robert W. G., and Michael R. Pointer
2011 Measuring Colour. 4th ed. Chichester: Wiley & Sons Ltd. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ishihara, Shinobu
2006 Ishihara’s Tests for Colour Blindness. Concise Edition (14 plate edition). Tokyo: Kanehara Trading Inc.Google Scholar
Kay, Paul
2015 “Universality of Color Categorization.” In Handbook of Color Psychology, ed. by Andrew J. Elliot, Mark D. Fairchild, and Anna Franklin, 245–258. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kay, Paul, Brent Berlin, Luisa Maffi, William R. Merrifield, and Richard Cook
2009 The World Color Survey. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.Google Scholar
Kay, Paul, and Luisa Maffi
1999 “Color Appearance and the Emergence and Evolution of Basic Color Lexicons.” American Anthropologist 101: 743–760. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kay, Paul, and Chad K. McDaniel
1978 “The Linguistic Significance of the Meanings of Basic Color Terms.” Language 54: 610–646. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuehni, Rolf G.
2016 “How Many Object Colors Can We Distinguish?” Color Research & Application 41: 439–444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuriki, Ichiro, Ryan Lange, Yumiko Muto, Angela M. Brown, Kazuho Fukuda, Rumi Tokunaga, Delwin T. Lindsey, Keiji Uchikawa, and Satoshi Shioiri
2017 “The Modern Japanese Color Lexicon.” Journal of Vision 17: 1 . DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen. C.
2000 “Yélî Dnye and the Theory of Basic Color Terms.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 10: 3–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lillo, Julio, Humberto Moreira, Isaac Vitini, and Jesús Martín
2007 “Locating Basic Spanish Color Categories in CIE L*u*v* Space: Identification, Lightness Segregation and Correspondence with English Equivalents.” Psicológica 28: 21–54.Google Scholar
Lillo, Julio, Lilia Prado, Nicolasa Morales, Delia Majarín, Ignacio Rebollo, and Leticia Álvaro
2012 “Basic Colour Terms (BCTs) in Three Different Versions of Spanish: Similarities and Differences as Measured by Elicited Lists.” Presentation at the 1st BAPS – SEPEX Joint Meeting (Belgian Association for Psychological Sciences and Spanish Society of Experimental Psychology) 10–11 May 2012, Liège, Belgium.Google Scholar
Lindsey, Delwin T., and Angela M. Brown
2002 “Color Naming and the Phototoxic Effects of Sunlight on the Eye.” Psychological Science 13: 506–512. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 “The Color Lexicon of American English.” Journal of Vision 14: 17 . DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacDonald, Lindsay, and Dimitris Mylonas
2014 “Gender Differences in for Colour Naming in Spanish and English.” In Proceedings of the AIC Interim Meeting 21–24 October 2014, Oaxaca, Mexico, ed. by Georgina Ortiz, Citlali Ortiz, and Rodrigo Ramírez, 452–457. Oaxaca: Mexican Association of Color Researchers.Google Scholar
MacLaury, Robert. E.
1997 Color and Cognition in Mesoamerica: Constructing Categories as Vantages. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Paggetti, Giulia, Gloria Menegaz, and Galina V. Paramei
2016 “Color Naming in Italian Language.” Color Research & Application 41: 402–415. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paramei, Galina. V.
2007 “Russian ‘Blues’: Controversies of Basicness.” In Anthropology of Color: Interdisciplinary Multilevel Modeling, ed. by Robert E. MacLaury, Galina V. Paramei, and Don Dedrick, 75–106. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Paramei, Galina V., Mauro D’Orsi, and Gloria Menegaz
2018 “Diatopic Variation in Referential Meaning of “Italian Blues”. In Progress in Colour Studies: Cognition, Language and Beyond, ed. by Lindsay W. MacDonald, Carole P. Biggam, and Galina V. Paramei, 83–105, Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Párraga, C. Alejandro, and Arash Akbarinia
2016 “NICE: A Computational Solution to Close the Gap from Colour perception to Colour Categorization.” PLoS ONE 11(3): e0149538. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Párraga, C. Alejandro, Robert Benavente, Ramón Baldrich, and María Vanrell
2009 “Psychophysical Measurements to Model Intercolor Regions of Color-Naming Space.” Journal of Imaging Science and Technology 53: 31106-1–31106-8. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roberson, Debi, Ian Davies, and Jules Davidoff
2000 “Color Categories Are Not Universal: Replications and New Evidence from a Stone-Age Culture.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 129: 369–398. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sturges, Julia, and T. W. Allan Whitfield
1995 “Locating Basic Colors in the Munsell Space.” Color Research & Application 20: 364–376. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Uchikawa, Keiji, and Robert M. Boynton
1987 “Categorical Color Perception of Japanese Observers: Comparison with that of Americans.” Vision Research 27: 1825–1833. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Uusküla, Mari, and David Bimler
2016 “From Listing Data to Semantic Mapping: Cross-Linguistic Commonalities in Cognitive Representation of Color.” Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore 64: 57–90. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Witzel, Christoph, and Anna Franklin
2014 “Do Focal Colors Look Particularly “Colorful”?” Journal of the Optical Society of America A 4: A365–A374. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 5 other publications

Bimler, David & Mari Uusküla
2018. Chapter 12. Divergence and shared conceptual organization. In Progress in Colour Studies, ► pp. 223 ff. DOI logo
Del Viva, Maria Michela, Serena Castellotti & Galina V. Paramei
2023. The Italian colour lexicon in Tuscany: elicited lists, cognitive salience, and semantic maps of colour terms. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 10:1 DOI logo
Lillo, Julio, Fernando González-Perilli, Lilia Prado-León, Anna Melnikova, Leticia Álvaro, José A. Collado & Humberto Moreira
2018. Basic Color Terms (BCTs) and Categories (BCCs) in Three Dialects of the Spanish Language: Interaction Between Cultural and Universal Factors. Frontiers in Psychology 9 DOI logo
Paramei, Galina V., Mauro D’Orsi & Gloria Menegaz
2018. Chapter 5. Diatopic variation in the referential meaning of the “Italian blues”. In Progress in Colour Studies, ► pp. 83 ff. DOI logo
Xu, Mingshan, Jingtao Zhu & Antonio Benítez‐Burraco
2023. A comparison of basic color terms in Mandarin and Spanish. Color Research & Application 48:6 ► pp. 709 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.