A Basic Course in Anthropological Linguistics (Studies in Linguistic ...

144 A BASIC COURSE IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS
The chart shows how languages overlap, contrast, and coincide with
each other. In Tenino and Chilcotin, for example, a part of the range of English
green is covered by a term that includes yellow. In Wishram and Takelma, on
the other hand, there are as many terms as in English, but the boundaries are
different. In still other cases, there are more distinctions than in English. Ray
concludes as follows (1953): “Color systems serve to bring the world of color
sensation into order so that perception may be relatively simple and behavioral
response, particularly verbal response and communication, may be meaningful.”
Shortly after, in 1955, Harold Conkh examined the four-term color system
of the Hanunoo of the Philippines. He found that the four categories into which
the Hanunoo grouped colors were interconnected with light and the plant world
(the prefix ma- means “having” or “exhibiting”):
ma-biru (“darkness, blackness”)
ma-lagti (“lightness, whiteness”)
ma-rara (“redness, presence of red”)
ma-latuy (“greenness, presence of green”)
The ma-biru category implies absence of light, and thus includes not only
black but also many deep shades-dark blue, violet, green, gray, etc. The ma-
lugti category implies the presence of light, and thus includes white and many
lightly pigmented shades. The other two terms derive from an opposition of
freshness and dryness in plants- mu-ruru includes red, orange, and yellow,
and ma-lutuy includes light green and brown. The Hanunoo language can, of
course, refer to color gradations more specifically than this if the need should
arise. But its basic system encodes a reality that is specific to the Hanunoo’s
environment.
In 1969 American anthropological linguists Brent Berlin and Paul Kay
decided to study the relation between color systems and perception more
extensively than had ever been done in the past. Their study has become a
point of reference in discussing the WH ever since, because it apparently
shows that differences in color terms are only superficial matters that conceal
universal principles of color perception.
On the basis of the judgments of the native speakers of twenty widely
divergent languages, Berlin and Kay came to the conclusion that there were
“focal points” in basic (single-term) color vocabularies, which clustered in
certain predictable ways. They identified eleven universal focal points,
corresponding to the English words black, white, red, yellow, green, blue,