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Naming the Rainbow

Colour Language, Colour Science, and Culture

  • Book
  • © 1998

Overview

Authors:
  1. Don Dedrick

    1. Department of Philosophy, University of Victoria, Canada

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Part of the book series: Synthese Library (SYLI, volume 274)

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
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  2. The Foundations of the Universalist Tradition in Colour Naming Research

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. Introduction

      • Don Dedrick
      Pages 3-9

    3. Colour Naming and Whorf’s Hypothesis

      • Don Dedrick
      Pages 10-24

    4. Psychophysics and Colour Naming

      • Don Dedrick
      Pages 25-47

    5. Colour Naming and the Brain

      • Don Dedrick
      Pages 48-58

    6. Language, Mind, and Brain: A Summary

      • Don Dedrick
      Pages 59-74

  3. Colour Naming: Constraints, Cognition, and Culture

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 75-75
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    2. Composite Colour Categories and the Evolution of Systems of Colour Naming

      • Don Dedrick
      Pages 77-107

    3. The Non-Naturalness of Colour Categories

      • Don Dedrick
      Pages 108-132

    4. Culture and Colour Naming

      • Don Dedrick
      Pages 133-152

    5. Conclusion

      • Don Dedrick
      Pages 153-159

  4. Back Matter

    Pages 160-222
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Keywords

About this book

Is there a universal biolinguistic disposition for the development of `basic' colour words? This question has been a subject of debate since Brent Berlin and Paul Kay's Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution was published in 1969. Naming the Rainbow is the first extended study of this debate. The author describes and criticizes empirically and conceptually unified models of colour naming that relate basic colour terms directly to perceptual and ultimately to physiological facts, arguing that this strategy has overlooked the cognitive dimension of colour naming. He proposes a psychosemantics for basic colour terms which is sensitive to cultural difference and to the nature and structure of non-linguistic experience.
Audience: Contemporary colour naming research is radically interdisciplinary and Naming the Rainbow will be of interest to philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, and cognitive scientists concerned with: biological constraints on cognition and categorization; problems inherent in cross-cultural and in interdisciplinary science; the nature and extent of cultural relativism.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Philosophy, University of Victoria, Canada

    Don Dedrick

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Naming the Rainbow

  • Book Subtitle: Colour Language, Colour Science, and Culture

  • Authors: Don Dedrick

  • Series Title: Synthese Library

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2382-4

  • Publisher: Springer Dordrecht

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

  • Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 1998

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-7923-5239-6Published: 31 October 1998

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-90-481-5094-6Published: 07 December 2010

  • eBook ISBN: 978-94-017-2382-4Published: 09 March 2013

  • Series ISSN: 0166-6991

  • Series E-ISSN: 2542-8292

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: X, 216

  • Topics: Philosophy of Mind, Psycholinguistics, Linguistic Anthropology, Philosophy of Science

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