An Experimental Study Of Basic Color Terms In Chinese

Berlin and Kay’s study of basic color terms in1969has forged a long-standing tradition of researching on basic color lexicons of world languages among linguists and anthropologists. Modeling on Berlin and Kay’s methodology and based on the framework of the fuzzy set theory, the current paper provides an experimental study of basic color terms in Chinese in an attempt to explore the basic Chinese color lexicon within the framework of universality and evolution of basic color terms. The experiment consists of elicitation of Chinese basic color terms and mapping foci and ranges of the basic categories among67native Chinese speakers. The current research has made an advance in that a computer program is developed and serves as the platform incorporating all necessary research tools and procedures. It is found that the basic Chinese color lexicon contains all the eleven basic color terms, as shown by experimental data from the group of Chinese speakers in this study. This finding suggests that the basic Chinese color lexicon should not be positioned at Stage V as proposed by Berlin and Kay (1969) but has reached the more advanced Stage VII. Meanwhile, a further observation is made that "linguistic saliency" and "referential prominence" are not necessarily in consistence with each other. Finally, the research results are interpreted in terms of the fuzzy set theory and data from this study show that color categories bear continuously graded degrees of membership instead of a finite, discreet number of members and that absolute boundaries are the foci of the adjacent basic color categories.