Summary
In order to distinguish between the relativistic and the universalistic sematics in color terms, formal models in the framework of fuzzy-set theory are developed. These models can be used to generate empirically testable hypotheses about response latencies and the distribution of color terms in the visual spectrum.
In Experiment I subjects had to name 20 colors in the blue-green area of the spectrum and 20 in the yellow-red area. Although the relative frequency data did not favor either model, the decision time data favored a specific universalistic model.
Experiment II was intended to clarify the behavioral effects of “basicality” by investigating the differences in color naming of users and non-users of derived color terms as “turquoise” and “orange”. For users frequency data as well as response latencies from the unrestricted color-naming task conformed well with the predictions derived from the specific universalistic model, whereas the data for the non-users fell in between this model and the MIN-rule model. These results can be accounted for by a continuous model for basicality with a basicality parameter ‘r’.
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I want to thank J. Freyd/Stanford, P. Kay/Berkeley, and C. Freksa/Munich who have read earlier versions of this paper and have made many valuable suggestions concerning the theoretical framework, the readability and the style in general. The discussion about the experimental results in L. Zadeh's seminar in Berkeley has stimulated me to work further on a unified theory of color naming. The motivating critique of two anonymous reviewers has helped me to express the results more clearly and to rethink the arguments more thoroughly
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Zimmer, A.C. What really is turquoise? A note on the evolution of color terms. Psychol. Res 44, 213–230 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00308421
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00308421