Color Me Confused

The information on this page is needed for both problem (C) and problem (D). Otherwise, problems (C) and (D) are not related — you don't need to solve either one in order to solve the other.

Languages and their speakers have many ways of describing colors — sometimes by comparing to well-known materials (copper hair, mustard wallpaper); sometimes using very specific terms (crimson ribbon); and sometimes using very broad terms (gray-blue sky). English has 11 “basic color terms”: white, gray, black, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, and brown. However, other languages can have as few as two or as many as 12.

Below is a table showing eight objects and the basic color word that native speakers of 15 different languages might use to describe them.

In 1969, the anthropologist Brent Berlin and linguist Paul Kay proposed a set of rules about basic color terms. Five of them are given below in a simplified form, with the objects (ripe plum, ripe strawberry, etc.) replaced with the letters (A) to (H). Note that a word is described as unique if it is used to describe only one of the eight objects.

1. Every language has at least two basic color terms, which distinguish between (A) and (B).
2. If it has at least three, it uses different words for each of (A), (B) and (C). If it has only three, the same word is used for both (B) and (D).
3. If it has at least five, it distinguishes between (B) and (D), and also has a unique word for (E).
4. If it has at least six, it distinguishes (D) from (F).
5. A language only has a unique word for (G) if it also has one for (H). If it does not have a unique word for (H), (G) will share a word with at least one of (A), (D) or (F).

Although these rules are no longer believed to be completely true for all languages, they do still describe most languages accurately. In particular, they describe all 15 languages in the table above.

C1. Determine which object each of the letters (A) - (H) refers to. Each of the eight objects corresponds to exactly one letter.

Below is a similar table for six other languages.

C2. For each language, indicate whether its color words follow rules 1-5 (YES) or not (NO).

Below is another similar table, but with one word in each row left blank.

C3. For each of the blanks a. - c., choose all possible words from the list of options that the language might use to refer to that object, while still following rules 1-5. In each case, the options are all the words shown in the table in that language.

• a. nye, wɔ, finge
• b. sõa'ro, ewuro, ya'saro, ñiro, butiro
• c. likañ, walin, minj-kimemb, muk, mosimb, tund

Information on the languages featured in problem (C) and problem (D) is below. Note that this information is not relevant for solving either problem.

Amuzgo, Tlapanec, and Zapotec are clusters of closely related Otomanguean languages spoken in Mexico by around 60,000, 150,000, and 500,000 people, respectively. Apinaye and Karajá are Macro-Jê languages spoken in Brazil by around 2000-3000 people each. Bassa and Bété are Kru languages. Bassa is spoken by around 600,000 people in Liberia, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone. Bété is spoken by several thousand people in Ivory Coast, although the dialect used in this problem had only 50 remaining speakers in 1992. Ejagham and Nafaanra are Atlantic-Congo languages. Ejagham is part of the Bantoid subgroup, and is spoken by around 120,000 people in Nigeria and Cameroon. Nafaanra is part of the Senufo subgroup, and is spoken by around 90,000 people, mostly in Ghana. English is an Indo-European language with around 400 million native speakers, and close to 1.5 billion total speakers worldwide. Guambiano and Tsafiki are Barbacoan languages. Guambiano is spoken by around 20,000 people in Colombia. Tsafiki is spoken by around 2000 people in Ecuador. Hebrew and Lele are Afro-Asiatic languages. Hebrew is from the Semitic subgroup, and was extinct as a spoken language between the 5^th and 19^th century CE, although it continued to be used for religious purposes; now it has around 5 million native speakers, and around 9 million total speakers, primarily in Israel. Lele is from the East Chadic subgroup, and has around 26,000 speakers in Chad. Kalam is a Trans-New-Guinea language, spoken by around 15,000 people in Papua New Guinea. Kwerba is a Greater Kwerbic language spoken by around 2500 people in West Papua. Matsés is a Panoan language spoken by around 2000 people on the Peru-Brazil border. Ocaina is a Huitotoan language, spoken by around 50 people along the Peru-Colombia border. Seri is a linguistic isolate spoken by 700-1000 people in Mexico. Teribe is a Chibchan language spoken by around 3000 people in Panama and Costa Rica. Tucano is a Tucanoan language, spoken by around 12,000 people in Brazil and Colombia. Waorani is a linguistic isolate spoken by around 2000 people in Ecuador; more speakers may be living in uncontacted groups in Peru. Yakan is an Austronesian language, spoken by around 100,000 people in the Philippines. Yucuna is an Arawakan language, spoken by nearly 2000 people along the Miritiparaná river in Colombia.