Some Apparent Uniformities Between Languages in Colour-Naming

Abstract

Survey of colour-names in many different languages shows that there is a greater resemblance between them in geographically distant and unrelated languages than can plausibly be explained as the result of chance, borrowing or hitherto unsuspected language relationships. This suggests a universal tendency for there to be a relation between the meaning, the percept and the phonological form which does not operate absolutely but tends to restrict the sounds used and increase the probability that certain patterns of words will be found for certain percepts, particularly where the percepts are sharply defined and uniformly recognized.