Focal colors are universal after all

Abstract

It is widely held that named color categories in the world's languages are organized around universal focal colors and that these focal colors tend to be chosen as the best examples of color terms across languages. However, this notion has been supported primarily by data from languages of industrialized societies. In contrast, recent research on a language from a nonindustrialized society has called this idea into question. We examine color-naming data from languages of 110 nonindustrialized societies and show that (i) best-example choices for color terms in these languages cluster near the prototypes for English white, black, red, green, yellow, and blue, and (ii) best-example choices cluster more tightly across languages than do the centers of category extensions, suggesting that universal best examples (foci) may be the source of universal tendencies in color naming.

Fig. 1.

The WCS stimulus array. The rows correspond to 10 levels of Munsell value (lightness), and the columns correspond to 40 equally spaced Munsell hues, from R2.5 in column 1 to RP10 in column 40. The color in each cell corresponds approximately to the maximum available Munsell chroma for that hue-value combination.

Fig. 2.

Contour plot of WCS best-example choices compared with best examples of English color terms. Berlin and Kay reported more than one best-example choice for several of the English color terms; all best-example choices are displayed here.

Fig. 3.

WCS best-example choices, compared with those of Berinmo.