COGLUNCH: Paul Kay
		Thursday, May 6th, 12:15 - 1:30
		Cordura Hall, Room 100 (at CSLI)
		with FREE burritos at 12 for the first arrivals

	      Cross-language universals in color naming:
	       Some recent facts and a non-explanation

There have been challenges to the claim that there exist universals in
color naming, based on (1) apparent counterexamples from unwritten
languages, (2) the fact that the original experimental data (Berlin
and Kay. Basic Color Terms. 1969) were heavily weighted toward written
languages and tainted by bilingualism and (3) the fact that the
universal claims were based primarily on visual inspection of data
rather than objective statistical study. Part of the research reported
here establishes the claims of semantic universals in color naming on
the basis of statistical analysis of data from 110 unwritten languages
with a modal number of 24 speakers/language, insofar as possible
monolingual (The World Color Survey, WCS).

Universals established, structured variation has long been observed.
For example, the majority of unwritten languages do not have separate
terms for green and blue.  This phenomenon has recently been claimed
to result from premature darkening of the optical lens (i.e., early
cataract formation), due to excessive exposure to ultra-violet B
radiation in the tropical locales where such languages are mostly
spoken (Lindsey and Brown, Psych. Sci. 13, 506-512).  Research
reported here casts doubt on this "lens brunescence" hypothesis, based
on (1) the WCS cross-language data on "focal" colors and (2)
psychophysical experiment.


About the Speaker: Paul Kay is Professor Emeritus at the Graduate
School at UC Berkeley.  He was previously chair of the Department of
Linguistics.