What is it about?
Italian appears to be an exception to Berlin and Kay's (1969) hypothesis of the 11 basic color terms (BCTs) in developed color lexicons since this language is considered to have 2 BCTs for 'blue' -- azzurro 'light blue' and blu 'dark blue'. We used a monolexemic color-naming method. Colors (N=367), sampling the Munsell Mercator projection, were presented on a CRT. Color names and reaction times of vocalization onset were recorded. Naming consistency and consensus were estimated. In addition, observers indicated the focal color (“best example”) in an array of colors comprising a consensus category. Compared to English color terms, two outcomes are specific to Italian: (i) naming of the RED-PURPLE area is highly refined, with consistent use of emergent non-BCTs; (ii) azzurro and blu both perform as BCTs dividing the BLUE area along the lightness dimension.
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Why is it important?
The findings confirm the weak relativity hypothesis. Historico-linguistic, environmental and pragmatic communication factors are discussed that drive and extension of the BCT inventory in Italian and highly probably in other languages with more than 11 BCTs (e.g. Russian, Greek, Turkish, Maltese) .
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This page is a summary of: Color naming in Italian language, Color Research & Application, February 2015, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/col.21953.
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