Re: defining colour terms in conlangs

[cbmvax!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan (John Cowan)]

la .and. rostas. cusku di'e
(And Rosta writes:)

> Bruce Gilson asks how conlangs are to define colour terms. My proposed
> solution is to state which Munsell Colour [Color] Chips correspond to
> the senses of the colour terms. 

So far in the conlang/lojban-list discussion, nobody has made a clear
distinction between defining colors by their >boundaries< vs. defining them
by their >centers< (although several people have hinted at it).  My feeling
is that the former undertaking, exemplified by deciding exactly which colors
are "crino" (Lojban for "green") and which are "blanu" (Lojban for "blue")
is hopeless for a conlang designer.

The main studies of color terms in natural languages seem to indicate that
native language speakers disagree widely on where to set the boundaries
in all languages.  Agreement is much better, though, on the center of the
color range:  "the greenest green" and "the bluest blue".  It should be
possible for Lojban (or any conlang) to define the central points of its
color terms in this way.  This makes the conlang independent of all natural
languages, and even makes it fairly independent of the particular color
system chosen, since for specific colors every system can be mapped into
every other.

As a matter of interest, I will note the 12 Lojban color words here:

blabi 'white'		xekri 'black'		grusi 'gray'
xunre 'red'		crino 'green'		blanu 'blue'
pelxu 'yellow'		cicna 'cyan'		nukni 'magenta'
narju 'orange'		bunre 'brown'		zirpu 'purple'

The first nine should be easy to define by any system.
My unofficial intuitions say that:
	narju is 100% red, 50% green, 25% blue
	bunre is 50% red, 25% green, 0% blue
	zirpu has two centers, namely:
		50% red, 0% green, 100% blue
		100% red, 0% green, 50% blue

(This use of the RGB system is purely for convenience, because I have an RGB
color tool handy, and does not reflect any Lojban standard.)

There are also two color modifiers, carmi 'bright, intense' and kandi 'dim',
which roughly reflect the amount of "value" on the HLS system; e.g.
carmi xunre 'pink'.

-- 
cowan@snark.thyrsus.com		...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban