GENERAL LINGUISTICS TUTORIALS

Benjamin J. Molineaux
Language and Brain Lab, 37 Wellington Sq.
benjamin.molineaux@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk

Colour Terms: A Case Study of the Relationship between Concepts and Words
Week Five, Michaelmas Term
Thursday, 11 November

TUTORIAL:
What is the relationship between language and thought? An enormous amount of speculation, both
philosophical and linguistic, has been concerned with the question of whether languages drive the
existence of concepts, or whether there is a pre-linguistic code (mentalese) which is ultimately
borne out in different ways by the worlds languages. A particularly fecund area in this discussion
has been the semantics of colour, for it seems that the physical spectra we see are not represented
univocally by the world’s languages. We will focus on this domain, since it allows us to exemplify
the core of three important perspectives on the relationship between thought and language: the
theory of linguistic relativism (i.e. the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), Prototype Theory, and the theory
of language universals.

ESSAY TITLE:
Based on the different repertoires and representations of colour terms in the world’s languages,
compare and contrast the relationship between concept and word within TWO of the following
theories: the theory of linguistic relativism, Prototype Theory, and the theory of language
universals.

REFERENCES

Berlin, Brent & Paul Kay (1969) Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley:
University of California Press.

Evans, Vyvyan & Green, Melanie (2006) Cognitive Linguistics: An Introduction, Mahwa, NJ:
Laurence Erlbaum. (See “Whorf and the linguistic relativity principle” pp. 95-105).

Gumperz, John J. & Levinson, Stephen C. (eds) (1996), Rethinking Linguistic Relativity.
Cambridge: CUP.

Hardin, C.L. & Maffi, Luisa (eds) (1997), Colour Categories in Thought and Language.
Cambridge: CUP.

Leech, Geoffrrey (1985) Semantics: The Study of Meaning - Second Edition. Harmondsworth:
Penguin.
(See chapter 12: “Colour and kinship: two case studies in ‘universal semantics’”)

Taylor, John R. (1989) Linguistic Categorization: Prototypes in Linguistic Theory. Oxford:

Clarendon Press.
(See pp 10ff on responses to Berlin & Kay)

Wierzbicka, Anna (1990) “The meaning of color terms: semantics, culture and cognition.”
Cognitive Linguistics, 1, 99-150.