An online colour naming experiment in Russian using Munsell colour samples

摘要

Russian colour naming was explored in a web-based psycholinguistic experiment. The purpose was threefold: to examine (i) CIELAB coordinates of centroids for 12 Russian basic colour terms (BCTs), including two Russian terms for ‘blue’, sinij ‘dark blue’ and goluboj ‘light blue’, and compare these with coordinates for the 11 English BCTs obtained in earlier studies; (ii) frequent non-BCTs and (iii) gender differences in colour naming. Native Russian speakers participated in the experiment using an unconstrained colour-naming method. Each participant named 20 colours, selected from 600 colours densely sampling the Munsell Color Solid. Colour names and response times of typing onset were registered. Several deviations between centroids of the Russian and English BCTs were found. The two Russian ‘blues’, as expected, divided the BLUE area along the lightness dimension; their centroids deviated from a centroid of English blue. Further minor departures were found between centroids of Russian and English counterparts of ‘brown’ and ‘red’. The Russian colour inventory confirmed the linguistic refinement of the PURPLE area, with high frequencies of non-BCTs. In addition, Russian speakers revealed elaborated naming strategies and use of a rich inventory of non-BCTs. Elicitation frequencies of the 12 BCTs were comparable for both genders; however, linguistic segmentation of colour space, employing a synthetic observer, revealed gender differences in naming colours, with more refined naming of the “warm” colours from females. We conclude that, along with universal perceptual factors, that govern categorical partition of colour space, Russian speakers’ colour naming reflects language-specific factors, supporting the weak relativity hypothesis.