Color Appearance and the Emergence and Evolution of Basic Color Lexicons

TLDR

Revisions of the Berlin and Kay model of basic color term evolution have been driven by new empirical findings and theoretical efforts to link color appearance to synchronic and diachronic constraints. The paper aims to further investigate both empirical and theoretical aspects of basic color term evolution. The study uses World Color Survey data to test a revised model of color term evolution that incorporates color vision principles. The proposed model accounts for empirical observations and offers color‑vision‑based explanations for the constraints on color naming.

Abstract

Various revisions of the Berlin and Kay (1969) model of the evolution of basic color term systems have been produced in the last thirty years, motivated by both empirical and theoretical considerations. On the empirical side, new facts about color naming systems have continually come to light, which have demanded adjustments in lhe descriptive model. On the theoretical side, lhere has been a sustained effort to find motivation in the vision science literature regarding color appearance for the synchronic and diachronic constraints observed to govern color terminology systems. The present paper continues the pursuit of both of these goals. A new empirical question is addressed with data from the World Color Survey (WCS), and a revised model is proposed, which both responds to recently raised empirical questions and provides new motivation from the field of color vision for the observed constraints on color naming, [ color, evolution, language, perception, semantics, universals ]