Recent progress in understanding the origins of color universals in language

Publication date: December 2019Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 30Author(s): Delwin T Lindsey, Angela M BrownAlthough color lexicons vary greatly in the number of color terms they contain, there are also striking regularities in how people around the world name colors. In spite of 50 years of research since Berlin and Kay’s seminal monograph, there is still no clear understanding of the processes that underlie these regularities. We review current advances in four prominent directions of research into this question. First, we examine the classical view that universal perceptual landmarks – related to either the focal colors or the Hering elemental sensations – constrain the domain of possible color naming systems. Second, we briefly review recent studies of the neurophysiological bases of these landmarks. Third, we examine recent information theoretic approaches to the universality question that are predicated upon the need for “efficient communication” within a language community. Finally, we discuss recent work suggesting that natural image statistics favor a warm/cool bias in the evolution of basic color naming systems.
Source: Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research