Order in Spanish colour words
Evidence against linguistic relativity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5266374 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ana R Delgado (0000-0003-0380-8999, Universidad de Salamanca, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 95 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 81-90 |
| Publication date | 2004-02-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | British Journal of Psychology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-1269 • E-ISSN: 2044-8295 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1348/000712604322779479 |
| PMID | 15005869 |
| OpenAlex | W2036364688 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
The hypothesis that the Berlin and Kay (1969) colour sequence would be replicated in Spanish colour-word usage has been corroborated on 131,028 colour words from a representative corpus (N = 188,975,000). The observed sequence of white, black, red, green, blue, yellow, grey and brown is highly consistent diachronically (through current and contemporary Spanish), synchronically (through various countries) and with the expected order. Considering the divergence of Spanish vocabularies among geographical areas in the last centuries, the almost total agreement did not have a high prior probability under hypotheses of culturally arbitrary colour vocabularies. It is difficult to see how linguistic relativity could adequately account for such a robust result. The use of ordinal statistics and non-reactive measures to study cultural products constrained by epigenetic rules, such as colour vocabularies, is presented as an exercise of methodological consilience
Consilience · Divergence (linguistics) · Epistemology · Linguistics · Natural language processing · Order (exchange) · Proposition · Sequence (biology) · Categorization, perception, and language · Chemistry · Computer Science · Philosophy · Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.6 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2021 - 2026 (6) |
| Highly cited | No |