Brent Berlin - Works On Color

Works On Color

In the book, Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution (1969), a collaboration between Berlin and Paul Kay, they used around 100 different languages to see how many basic color terms for each language are universal. The data they present states that there are around 11 universal basic color terms for languages in which there are always terms for white and black present in all languages. They depicted a set of stages which state that if there are 3 color terms presented, this is attributed to include red, also. There are several more steps in which other colors are then added until there are languages with 8 or more basic color terms. In one experiment, they used painted chips with several different color hues and told the speakers in their native language to point out the basic color in the focal point and the outer hues they also connect it to. This helped them gauge what difference in hues of colors people from different languages appropriated with each basic color term. Because of the fact that there are many different names for colors in each society, the data helped note what the basic terms for simple colors were and how many different hues they connected to those basic colors.

Berlin also studied the classifications of color for the Aguaruna people of north-central Peru. In this research, he found out that a majority of these people match up with the stage three color views from the 1969 work,in which the Aguaruna have names for black, white, red, and a color they call grue. In his article, Aguaruna Color Categories (1975), he discusses the findings of how they classify and name colors. When he mentions that they have the color grue, he states that it is a "GRUE ,…it appears to be blue rather than green"(1975). Although the majority of the people he studied matched up with this third stage of color classification and naming, there were others that often had the names to multiple other colors and were attributed to knowing more Spanish than the others. In their native language, it is possible that they did not have words for all of the colors that are available to use in Spanish. During their research, they soon noticed that there was no specific name for the word "color" in the Aguaruna language. Often, they had an easier time when speaking with the bilingual people that also knew Spanish. This helped them compile an early list of 10 color terms in both Spanish and Aguaruna.

Instead of depending solely on the painted chips like they did in the previous experiment, they "began presenting items of natural or artificial object and asking...’what stain does it have’, a question provided us by a bilingual teacher"(1975). He mentioned later that they were able to find objects of all colors except pink and brown and that this type of color naming procedure helped the participants answer more quickly and was more enjoyable during the study. In addition to this way of color questioning, they also brought some painted cards because they could not find painted chips and used those along with the objects.

During the research, they presented the colored objects and asked which types people associated with certain colors, in no particular order, and wrote the results down. After this questioning, they presented cards with different colors and told the participants to choose a focal point for various colors and point out how many cards they attributed to each color. In their findings they noticed how people that were monolingual in Aguaruna only recognized names for the basic white, black, red, and grue while others that spoke a little or were bilingual in Spanish knew the names of many more colors presented. In his findings on the topic of color terminology among the Aguaruna, he noticed that people with access to different languages outside of the community have picked up various names for colors from a different language and brought them in to the community in order for some to have access to multiple color terms they might not have had in their own language.