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Cross-Cultural Research, Vol. 39, No. 1, 39-55 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/1069397104267889

Color Categories Are Not Arbitrary

Paul Kay

University of California, Berkeley

Recent, well-controlled studies in cross-language color naming and cross-language tests of color memory and learning have made important contributions to our understanding of which aspects of cross-language color naming and nonverbal response to colors may and may not be attributed to pan-human properties of color appearance. Valuable as these results are, some studies have led to more relativistic conclusions than their results justify. In particular, these conclusions ignore the issue of whether there exists across languages a statistical tendency toward basing color terminology systems on black, white, and the four Hering opponent hues.

Key Words: color • color terms • color naming • semantics • linguistic relativity • Whorf • linguistic universals • semantic universals


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 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USAHome page
T. Regier, P. Kay, and N. Khetarpal
Color naming reflects optimal partitions of color space
PNAS, January 23, 2007; 104(4): 1436 - 1441.
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