“Clothed in triple blues”: sorting out the Italian blues

Bimler, David; Uusküla, Mari

doi:10.1364/josaa.31.00a332

Cited by 20 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…The present study indicates two outcomes specific to Italian color naming: Italian terms azzurro and blu both perform as BCTs dividing the BLUE area along the lightness dimension, with azzurro focals and centroids lighter and blu focals and centroids darker than the corresponding parameters for English blue , thus confirming previous linguistic and recent psycholinguistic studies. The two main Italian terms for “blue,” azzurro and blu , both arrived from French: azzurro , derived from Romance l'azur , is believed to have entered as a heraldic color of the House of Savoy by the beginning of the 14th century, as attested already in Dante's poetry; in comparison, blu , derived from bleu of Germanic origin, emerged in Italian a few centuries later.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…However, numerous linguistic studies provide evidence that more than one name for “blue” is required by Italians . Also several recent psycholinguistic studies argue that to name the BLUE area of color space, Italian speakers require two BCTs, blu “dark blue” and azzurro “azure, light blue” or even three BCTs, blu “dark blue,” azzurro “medium blue,” and celeste “light blue/sky blue” . Notably, performance in a Stroop test with incongruent word/ink pairings of blu and azzurro also indicate the basic status of both …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Color naming in Italian language

Paggetti

Menegaz

Paramei

2015

Color Research & Application

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The present study investigated Italian basic color terms (BCTs). It is an extension of our previous work that explored Italian basic color categories (BCCs) using a constrained colornaming method, with 11 Italian BCTs allowed, including blu for naming the BLUE area. Since a latter outcome indicated a categorization bias, here monolexemic color-naming method was employed, enabling also use of azzurro, deeply entrenched Italian term that designates light blue. In Experiment 1, 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. Consistency was obtained for 12 CTs, including the two blue terms; consensus was found for 11 CTs, excluding rosso 'red'. For each consensus category, color with the shortest RT was considered focal. In Experiment 2, consensus stimuli (N=72) were presented; on each trial, observers indicated the focal color ("best example") in an array of colors comprising a consensus category. For each of the 12 Italian CCs, centroid was calculated and focal color (two measures) estimated. Compared to English color terms, two outcomes are specific to Italian color naming: (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. The findings are considered in the framework of the weak relativity hypothesis. Historico-linguistic, environmental and pragmatic communication factors are discussed that conceivably have driven the extension of the BCT inventory in Italian.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Color naming in Italian language

Paggetti

Menegaz

Paramei

2015

Color Research & Application

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“… Munsell specifications of 51 CAC samples. Light and dark solid circles indicate tiles consistently identified as celeste and goluboj , or as blu and sinij , by Italian and Russian subjects, respectively, and used to define CL index.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Russian word goluboj “light blue” appears to be a BCT, in addition to sinij “blue.” Language‐free (perceptual) tasks point to the existence of a category boundary between them, manifesting as increased dissimilarity (relative to English) between pairs of hues that straddle the boundary, that is, a categorical perception (CP) effect . This boundary was also evident in a two‐dimensional MDS solution derived from sorting data . The subjects were 24 Russian speakers (10 males), recruited in Saint Petersburg.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A similarity‐based cross‐language comparison of basicness and demarcation of “blue” terms

Bimler

Uusküla

2016

Color Research & Application

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To investigate linguistic and perceptual boundaries within the “blue” region of the color gamut, we analyzed sorting data from speakers of six languages who sorted color stimuli by similarity. Two of these languages, Russian and Italian, are thought to have a separate basic color term and category for “light blue,” distinguishing it from “blue,” and the third was English, which lacks this distinction. There has been less study of the possible basicness of “light blue” terms in the other three languages: Lithuanian and Estonian (both spoken in Baltic states) and Udmurt (a linguistic enclave in North Russia). Sorting data from each sample of speakers were analyzed with principal component analysis and multidimensional scaling, reducing them to a pattern of interstimulus similarities. In addition, color‐naming data were collected for five of the languages and confirmed that sorting responses were not simply a reflection of the words used by subjects to label the stimuli. A “clustering index” was created, quantifying the extent of light/dark blue separation and the strength of any category boundary between them; this was low for English‐language participants but high for Russian and Italian. Udmurt and Lithuanian values were also high, whereas Estonian responses were closer to English. Thus, when clustering of blue stimuli is used as an additional indicator of basicness, the results are compatible with earlier evidence that “light blue” is a separate basic color category in Russian and Italian, and further indicate that light blue terms are basic in Udmurt and Lithuanian, but not Estonian. It may be that “blue” categories are especially susceptible to splitting into two under the influence of linguistic contact. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 42, 362–377, 2017

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“…In Italian, for instance, azzurro and celeste 'light blue' are both candidates for basic status, although they are less inclusive than blu 'blue' or 'dark blue' (Paramei & Menegaz 2013;Bimler & Uusküla 2014). Lithuanian and Udmurt are two more examples, with 'light blue' terms žydra and čagyr respectively; contact with Russian may have encouraged their emergence (several strands of evidence support the basicness of žydra: Bimler & Uusküla, in preparation).…”

Section: Mari Uusküla David Bimlermentioning

confidence: 99%

From Listing Data to Semantic Maps: Cross-Linguistic Commonalities in Cognitive Representation of Colour

Uusküla¹,

Bimler²

2016

FEJF

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When a free-listing task is used to elicit verbal concepts from a given semantic domain, it provides two indicators of the salience of each word for that linguistic community. These are the proportion of the subjects who include a word in their lists, and its average ranking priority position across the lists. The data also contain cues about the cognitive representation of the semantic domain, and in particular about the conceptual closeness among words. Closely associated words tend to prime each other and to appear in the lists in close succession. Clusters of mutually associated terms can be recognised, listed in one another's company, although with different priority for different subjects. We applied this approach to the domain of colour terms, converting lists for fourteen European languages into matrices of inter-term similarity, for analysis with multidimensional scaling (MDS) and hierarchical clustering. Two-dimensional MDS solutions or 'maps' were typically required to reflect two competing criteria by which terms were sequenced. Speakers of each language tended to follow a salience gradient, but also made separate clusters of fully-chromatic concepts -colour terms in strictu sensu -and unsaturated or desaturated concepts defined primarily by lightness rather than by hue. This and other features recurred across the languages despite their geographical and phylogenetic diversity, as cross-cultural universals in colour language, in addition to the well-known regularities governing basic colour terms and the stages of colour-lexicon development.

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“Clothed in triple blues”: sorting out the Italian blues

Cited by 20 publications

References 27 publications

Color naming in Italian language

Color naming in Italian language

A similarity‐based cross‐language comparison of basicness and demarcation of “blue” terms

From Listing Data to Semantic Maps: Cross-Linguistic Commonalities in Cognitive Representation of Colour

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