Conceptualization of Colours in Sign Languages
Hello.
My topic is conceptualization of colours in sign languages.
I'd like to focus on designations of colours in sign languages.
Specifically in CzSL.
What are the sign forms for colours in sign languages?
In the morning, Ms Va?ková explained the meaning of prototypes.
Now, we'll discuss the prototypes of colours in different sign languages.
Do the prototypes in spoken languages differ from those in sign languages?
That's what I'm going to discuss in my talk.
First, I'll make a few general points about research on colours.
The 2 most famous linguists who looked into designations of colours
were B. Berlin and P. Kay, their names are on the slide.
I'm sure a lot of you know these linguists.
They wrote the book Basic Color Terms, as you can see on the slide.
Berlin and Kay focused their research on designations of colours
in different world languages.
They focused on spoken languages and studied the designations of colours.
They looked into designations of basic colours in these languages.
They found 11 basic designations of colours.
Interestingly, not all these languages contain all the 11 colours.
There are also languages with fewer basic designations of colours.
They may have e.g. only 2, 5, 7, it differs from case to case.
Berlin and Kay also established an important classification
that defined the necessary properties of basic colours.
Look at the slide: there is a spectrum with 11 different colours.
As you can see, the 11 colours are divided into 7 different groups.
The first group consists of only 2 designations of colours.
Specifically, white and black.
The languages in this group only contain these 2 basic colours.
The second group consists of languages with designations for black and white,
plus they also contain red colour.
The third group comprises all previous colours plus green and yellow.
This tendency continues till the seventh group.
If a language falls into the seventh group,
it means it has designations for all basic colours.
I think it is very important to mention the conditions set by Berlin and Kay.
Conditions for classifying colours in spoken languages.
The first condition is as follows:
In spoken languages, the designation for a basic colour consists of a single word
and does not rank among compound words. I'll give you an example.
For example "blue".
In Czech, it is a single word so the first condition is met.
But if we consider "light blue" as a designation,
it is not a basic colour, the first condition is not met.
It is not a single word.
The same applies to compounds like "blue-green".
These designations do not meet the first condition.
The 2nd condition says: the designation for a basic colour is a hypernym.
Let's use "red" as an example.
The designation for red colour meets this condition.
But for example "crimson" is not a basic colour, it is subordinate to red.
The 3rd condition set by Berlin and Kay says:
The designation for a basic colour has high collocability with nouns.
For example "yellow": you can collocate the colour with many nouns.
E.g. yellow shoes, a yellow car, a yellow book and many more nouns.
That is why we consider yellow as a basic colour.
Let's consider a different designation, e.g. "blond".
I'll repeat it: the colour "blond".
It is very similar to yellow, but it collocates only with "hair".
"Blond hair".
In Czech, you cannot say "a blond book" or "a blond shirt", it does not exist.
The 4th condition is: the colour has to be psychologically distinct.
It means everybody has known it since childhood.
Children recognize it since early age, they can see it on a regular basis.
In the wild, at home, everywhere, it is a well-known colour to them.
The fifth condition is of great importance.
It says: the designation for a basic colour is an non-motivated word.
I'll give you an example: e.g. "brown".
It meets the condition because we cannot say what the motivation for the word is.
It is not clear at first sight.
But let's consider a different example: "chestnut" colour.
It does not meet the condition because it is clearly motivated by a chestnut.
The last condition is as follows:
The designation for a basic colour is not borrowed from another language.
I'll give you an example from Czech: "orange" colour, look at it here.
In Czech, it is oran?ová ("orange").
You can see it is derived from the English word "orange".
That is why "orange" in Czech cannot be considered a basic colour.
Now, we'll discuss the cognitive linguistics aspect.
We'll look at perception of colours from a different perspective.
First, I would like to mention the researchers applying this method.
It is mainly Ms Va?ková, who gave her talk in the morning.
The others are A. Wierzbicka and R. Tokarski.
In spoken languages, research on colours has been conducted for many years.
It has been trying to find a prototype of colour in language awareness.
Researchers have been looking into our mental associations related to colours.
They examined phraseology and looked for colours in verbal arts,
set phrases and other materials.
The colours they discovered were labelled as prototypes.
We discussed this topic a bit in the morning.
So you know what a prototype means: it is the best example from a category,
the first thought that comes to our minds.
In the morning, we used an example of "fruit", we first think of an "apple".
So the prototype of fruit is an apple.
In sign languages, there are also designations for colours.
Universal nature of colours in spoken and sign languages is not clear.
I prepared this slide for you but I will not go into details.
I only wanted to show you the designation for red colour in Czech.
You can see where it is possible to find this designation.
E.g. in dictionaries, you can look up etymology of the colour.
You can look up phraseology associated with this colour.
But more importantly, we conclude that the prototypes of red in Czech
are blood and fire.
Designations for colours have also been looked into in sign languages.
One of the most important linguists in this field was James Woodward.
He examined 10 different sign languages.
He tried to distinguish the designations for basic colours.
Berlin and Kay had set certain rules but according to Woodward,
it was impossible to meet them.
I have told you that Berlin and Kay said, for example,
that the designation for a basic colour must be non-motivated.
The problem is that sign languages are generally very visual.
So many designations for colours in sign languages are visually motivated
and, therefore, the condition set by Berlin and Kay is not met.
Also, these designations may not be borrowed from another language.
As mentioned before, sign languages use initialization a lot.
So in order to designate a colour, you use the first letter of the word.
For example the colour "yellow" will be signed as "y".
You will use the first letter of the word.
As I have said, the linguist Woodward examined 10 different sign languages.
The disadvantage of sign languages is insufficient amount of source material.
Researching spoken languages is easier because they have a written form.
You can search in phraseology, old books etc.
Sign languages do not have these possibilites.
Therefore, in sign languages research, you need to look for different ways
of examining designations for basic colours.
Prototypes of colours also need to be searched in a different way.
I also conducted research, some of you already know what I'm talking about.
Because those of you who registered for my workshop got a task:
to send me videos with signs for three basic colours.
I was interested in the form of the sign in your sign language.
I also looked into derived signs
and signs whose form was connected to the designation of colour.
I also asked you what you thought the motivation for the designation was
in your sign language.
Now, I'll show you 3 different designations for 3 colours in CzSL.
Specifically "white", "red" and "black" colours.
I will start with the "black" colour.
This is the sign for "black" in the Czech Sign Language.
There are several derived signs related to this sign. E.g. "darkness".
This is the sign for "darkness".
And then the sign for the "night".
This is the "night" in CzSL.
You can see that the "black" colour, signed in this form,
can be related to black people, dark-skinned people.
This is the sign for "Africa", it is also related to black people,
the place where black people live.
When I asked the Deaf what they thought the motivation for the sign was,
they all told me "black" was certainly motivated by "darkness" or "night".
You can, therefore, clearly see the prototypes of the "black" sign.
These are "darkness" and "night".
Interestingly, in CzSL there are also 2 indirect designations,
idioms related to the black colour.
The first one is "black day", meaning a bad day when everything went wrong.
The second one is "black heart", which has two meanings.
First, it means a person is disappointed in love.
For example a couple after a break-up.
One of them decides not to look for anybody else,
because s/he is very sad and doesn't trust anybody anymore.
Second, it means a bad person.
Another colour I looked into in my research was "white".
In CzSL there are three different signs for the "white" colour:
"White", "white" or "white".
There are 2 groups of signs related to the first sign.
The first group comprises e.g. this sign for "snow blanket".
Or this sign for "egg white".
Then a "white person",
"to turn pale",
and "Europe".
You can see that all these signs contain the sign for the "white" colour.
The second group is marked b) on the slide.
It consists of signs which do not contain the sign for "white" itself
but the place of articulation or the movement of the sign
are very similar to those of the basic sign for "white" in CzSL.
E.g. the sign for "flour",
and the sign for "silver".
You can see there are a lot of signs related to the "white" colour.
The question is what the motivation for the sign "white" is.
Most Deaf think that the prototype of "white" is "flour"
because people used to dust it off their clothes.
That's the first opinion. The second possibility is a "shirt".
Because people used to wear white shirts a lot and the sign is very similar.
Therefore, we can't say there is a clear prototype of the "white" colour in CzSL.
The last colour I examined was the "red" colour.
CzSL has two different signs for "red", either the Bohemian one: "red".
Or the Moravian sign for "red": this one.
These are the related signs in the category a):
This sign for "June" or this sign for "June".
I'll show it one more time: "June" or "June".
Also the sign for "July" in 2 variants: "July" or "July".
There is also the sign for "turn red", "blush".
The "rusty" colour might also be linked to "red".
Sometimes, this sign for "rusty" is used.
But the question is whether the connection is clearly there or not.
Not all Deaf use the sign similar to "red".
The next group comprises signs that don't contain the sign for "red" itself.
But the place of articulation is similar to the one for the "red" sign.
The group consists of these signs: "pink",
"orange" colour,
and, interestingly, it could also contain the hypernym "colour"
because it is formed by "red" and "colour".
This sign could also belong to the group.
Therefore, "red" might be the prototype of all colours in CzSL.
I think the motivation for "red" in CzSL is absolutely clear, it's lips.
To conclude, I prepared this table for you.
You can see all 11 designations for basic colours in it.
You can look at it.
There are e.g. the number of variants, motivation and related signs.
There are also the prototype of the specific colours.
It's in the last column.
We'll continue with this topic at my workshop.
Now, I would like to finish my talk.
I'm looking forward to the next part: our workshop.
Thank you for your attention.