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In: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. 380–396

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Chapter 12
Divergence and shared conceptual organization

A Points-of-View analysis of colour listing data from fourteen European languages

 | Massey University, New Zealand
 | Tallinn University, Estonia
Published online: 26 November 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.217.12bim
Abstract
To study associations among colour terms, we asked speakers of fourteen European languages to list terms in the order that they came to mind and converted each list into an array of “adjacencies”. Analysis of these pointed to possible differences among languages in the cognitive organization of colour concepts. Based on adjacency arrays, we defined an index of similarity between pairs of lists, within and between languages. Factor analysis identified a shared cognitive framework structuring the colour domain across languages. There is also enough heterogeneity that one can consider two alternative structures or “Points-of-View”, with individuals weighting these extremes in different proportions to yield their personal lists. Moreover, languages differ in the mean weights of their speakers.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Method
    • 2.1Generalization to combined languages
  • 3.Results
  • 4.Interpretation
  • Note
  • References
References (23)
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Lillo, Julio, Lilia Prado-León, Fernando Gonzalez Perilli, Anna Melnikova, Leticia Álvaro, José Collado & Humberto Moreira
2018. Spanish basic colour categories are 11 or 12 depending on the dialect. In Progress in colour studies, ► pp. 59 ff. DOI logo

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