On contrastive perception and ineffability: assessing sensory experience without colour terms in an Amazonian society

Abstract

Based on ethnographic material relating to the Candoshi, an indigenous people from the Upper Amazon, this article explores how they evaluate sensory experiences pertaining to colours without one of the main descriptive tools used for this purpose: colour names. After a review of the research concerning ineffability and colour naming, the article shows that the Candoshi do not have any terms for colours in their language. It then describes how, through a range of practices referred to as ‘contrastive perception’, they manage to communicate sensory experience, including that relating to colours, with accuracy. The last section concludes by discussing some of the theoretical implications of these findings in the light of previous research into the issue.

Candoshi Color Terms

“…Another example, kantsirpi , was the term chosen to name the color ‘black’ and is composed of three parts, kansi/ar/pi, that mean tar/have/towards, something like ‘is similar to tar’, according to the dictionary (Tuggy 1966:26). (Surallés , 5).…”

“…Granted that these two Candoshi color terms are polymorphemic (though neither syntactically analyzable nor semantically compositional) it does not follow, as implied by S, that the remaining Candoshi color terms are similarly morphologically complex. In the following paragraph S writes, “ kavabana (green/blue) refers to the supra‐generic category of parrots and in particular to the blue and yellow macaw ( Ara araurana ); chobiapi (red) refers to ‘ripe fruit’; kamachpa (green) means ‘unripe fruit’; pozani (an unusual supposed color term used to refer to desaturation of color) is said to mean ‘dry,’ synonymous with lifeless” (Surrallés , 5). S gives no indication that any of these terms is morphologically complex, let alone semantically compositional, and each is accorded a unique and unanalyzed color‐term gloss in Tuggy's () dictionary of Candoshi, except for the WCS non‐basic term tarika , for which the dictionary has only a non‐color‐term gloss.…”

“…This can be verified by means of a simple experiment: if a Candoshi‐speaker is asked what ptsiyaromashi or kantsirpi means, he or she will never answer ‘yellow’ or ‘black’, but make reference, for instance, to a bird and a resin (tar) used to coat peashooters and as fuel for torches. (Surrallés , 5)…”

“…S says he will show later why the notional motivation of the Candoshi color words is different from that of European color words:

In the next section, we will look at the exact nature of these references and show that the phenomenon at work is not the same as the use of sources such as ‘ orange’ in English or ‘ marron ’ in French. (Surrallés , 5).

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“…In the next section, we will look at the exact nature of these references and show that the phenomenon at work is not the same as the use of sources such as ‘ orange’ in English or ‘ marron ’ in French. (Surrallés , 5).…”