Robert E. Mac Laury

Linguistic Relativity and the Plasticity of Categorization: Universalism in a New Key

Series A: General & Theoretical Papers ISSN 1435-6473 Essen: LAUD 1998 (2nd ed. with divergent page numbering 2007) Paper No. 452

Universität Duisburg-Essen

Robert E. Mac Laury

University of Pennsylvania

Linguistic Relativity and the Plasticity of Categorization: Universalism in a New Key

Copyright by the author Reproduced by LAUD 1998 (2nd ed. with divergent page numbering 2007) Linguistic Agency Series A University of Duisburg-Essen General and Theoretical FB Geisteswissenschaften Paper No. 452 Universitätsstr. 12 D- 45117 Essen

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Robert E. MacLaury

Linguistic Relativity and the Plasticity of Categorization: Universalism in a New Key

Introduction Boas, Sapir, and Whorf together asserted that language influences thought, each expressing at different times strong and weak versions of this "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis." They attributed the influence to the putative capacity of lexical and grammatical categories to shape worldview. But subsequent tests of the hypothesis yielded negative results for the most part. Then discovery of perceptually based universals in the categories of color and folk biology thwarted further testing for the next twenty-five years. Finally, Gumperz and Levinson (1996) coordinated a renewed investigation of linguistic relativity among the effects of context and deixis on discourse meaning. With that performance still unfolding, we shall dissect the reasons for the early shortcomings through the lense of an equally recent development, vantage theory (MacLaury 1995, 1997a). This program of research has mainly produced an account of color categorization, although efforts are afoot to apply its tenets to categorization in general, including the contribution of categories to discourse. Vantage theory links invariant perceptions with mutable cognitive processes in order to model how a person actively constructs any category as one or more points of view. But the method of construction is inborn, automatic, and neurally expedited. It frees people from having to make fundamental decisions about construction, while it affords them vast latitude to exploit remaining variables. The combination of infrastructure, flexibility, and human agency makes it unlikely that any form of language will shape the way people categorize. It is equally unlikely that discourse process will prove less flexible. This new universalism may antiquate the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.1

1 Failed tests of linguistic relativity include not only those that failed statistically but those that produced

no numbers. The later are not tests. They further comprise those that failed to be conclusive, even though their results seem promising. Support of this point would require an appendix or separate study that reviews the worthy probes. Pending that exercise, Lucy provides an inventory, although, perhaps, from a more charitable view than the opinion expressed here. After setting forth standards of evaluation, he finds "an almost complete absence of direct empirical research through most of the present century-perhaps half a dozen studies up to a decade ago (Lucy 1992a)" (Lucy 1997a: 294); he attributes strongest valuation to Whorf s (1956) study of Hopi time. Garro (1994) favorably reviews strengths and problems in Lucy's (1992b) own comparison of English and Yucatec pluralization and attendant cognition. Fishman (1960: 330) holds out hope for following up Carroll and Casagrande's (1958) inconclusive study of Navaho and English response to shape versus color in triad sorting. Krauss (1968: 269-270) sympathetically interprets Brown and Lenneberg's (1954) correlation of codeability and memory, and he is equally positive about the different correlations in recognition and codeability determined for Yucatec and English by Stefflre, Castillo Vales, and Morley (1966). Lenneberg and Robert's (1956) finding of differential codeability among monolingual Navaho versus bilingual Navaho and English speakers is due merely to separate naming of orange by the latter two. Maratsos and Katis (1998) find that English, Italian, and Greek speakers agree on their ratings of verbal agency in spite of

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As background for the main discussion, we shall introduce the relation of color terms to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, sketch the early universalist counter-argument, substantiate why this perceptual universalism needs a cognitive agent, and suggest what this might be.

Color and Relativity

Boas delivered his first words on linguistic relativity after conferring with his colleague, Robert S. Woodworth (cf. 191 Ob: note 5), who was President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1900. This eminent psychologist visited the 1904 St. Louis Fair where some 300 members of diverse ethnic groups had assembled. He vaguely describes them as Ainus, Eskimos, Filipino Negritos, Igorots, Patagonians, Africans, and many others (1906, 1910a-b).2 His intent was to topple claims of evolutionists, especially those of W. H. R. Rivers (1901) following the acclaimed Torres Straits Exhibition, 1898-1900, that color categories differ because vision varies between pigmented and fair-skinned peoples. After Woodworth published the outcome of his modest color matching test, a new generation was ready to agree that "the color sense is probably very much the same all over the world" (1910b: 179).

Perhaps the change was triggered as much by Woodworth's stature as by the cumulative evidence he reviewed. But elimination of the racial question cleared way for Boa's pronouncement.

Boa's issued his first statement of record on linguistic relativity orally in a lecture delivered, September, 1909, to honor the twentieth anniversary of Clark University, which was promptly printed (1910: 377)3 and, from that, slightly revised (1911: 190):

"The behavior of primitive man and of the uneducated demonstrates that such linguistic classifications never rise into consciousness, and that consequently their origin must be sought, not in rational, but in automatic mental process. In various cultures these classifications may be founded on fundamentally distinct

the different voices and attendant grammars by which these languages habitually express the tested selection of verbs. Lucy (1997a: 301) rightly commends cross-linguistic work on cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. It appears to shed light on issues concerning universal and specific elaborations of language along lines adumbrated by Bickerton (1988). But regarding the influence of language on thought, it shows people name and grammaticalize what they think and do not express what they do not think, which does not verify that influence. As far as this author can tell, none of us who entertain the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis consider the potential of word fields to influence thought, most literature on which is in German. Certain associations of words in a network are so multiple and dense that they might tempt some to postulate a language-to-thought constraint. For example, Reuning (1941) shows how German and English lexically elaborate different poles for pleasurable emotions on dimensions of depth, intensity, and kinesthesis, alluding cautiously to contrasting traits of national character.

2 Among them were Hanunoo (Conklin 1953: 108), whose color terms are discussed below. 3 This is the earliest of Boa's self-inspired statements on linguistic relativity this author could discover,

although Koerner (1992: 176) finds Boas (1904) reporting with apparent approbation on Heymann Steinthal's thought: "The intimate ties between language and ethnic psychology were expressed by no one more clearly than by Steinthal, who perceived that the form of thought is modeled by the whole social environment of which language is a part."

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principles. A knowledge of the categories under which in various cultures experience is classified will, therefore, help to an understanding of early psychological processes. Differences of principles of classification are found in the domain of sensations. For instance: it has been observed that colors are classified in quite distinct groups according to their similarities, without any accompanying difference in the ability to distinguish shades of color. What we call green and blue is often combined under a term like "gall-color," or yellow and green are combined into one concept which may be named, "color of young leaves." In course of time we have been adding names for additional hues which in earlier times, in part also now in daily life, are not distinguished. The importance of the fact that in speech and thought the word calls forth a different picture, according to the classification of green and yellow or green and blue as one group can hardly be exaggerated."

Boas formulates the independence of sensory abilities and classification, the unconsciousness of linguistic thought, its intimate tie with categorization, and its development by addition of names in course of time from earlier, less distinguishing psychological processes. He introduces this American imprimatur of the language-thought relation by invoking specifically color terms as an example. Apparently, he did not expound so forcefully on linguistic relativity until the next decade: "... the categories of language compel us to see the world arranged in certain definite conceptual groups which, on account of our lack of knowledge of linguistic processes, are taken as objective thoughts" (1920: 320). At sixty-two years of age, Boas was at the acme of his titanic command in American anthropology. The views on language and thought that Sapir and Whorf elaborated should be properly recognized as the Boasian protocol. The subsequent association of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis with color categorization was hardly fortuitous:

Bloomfield (1933:140,280) Physicists view the color-spectrum as a continuous scale of light-waves of different lengths, ranging form 40 to 72 hundred-thousandths of a millimetre, but languages mark off different parts of of this scale quite arbitrarily and without precise limits, in the meanings of such color-names as violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, and the color-names of different languages do not embrace the same gradations .... If we went outside the European culture-sphere, we should find entirely different distributions. For most of our meanings we have not even this approach to an external standard.

Kleinberg (1935:144) We have made our classification entirely on the basis of hue, with no regard for intensity or saturation. Other groups have chosen to make their classification differently.

Geddes (1946:35) The Fijian is as capable of discerning the hue as we are of discerning the intensity. The difference is merely one of emphasis upon one or the other of the two qualities.

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Hjelmslev (1953:33) Behind the paradigms that are furnished in the various languages by the designations of color, we can, by subtracting the differences, disclose such an amorphous continuum, the color spectrum, on which each language arbitrarily sets its boundaries. While formations in this zone of purport are for the most part approximately the same in the most widespread European languages, we need not go far to find formations that are incongruent with them. In Welsh, 'green' is gwyrrd or glas. 'blue' is glas, 'gray' is glas or llwyd. 'brown' is llwyd. That is to say, the part of the spectrum that is covered by our word green is intersected in Welsh by a line that assigns a part of it to the same area as our word blue while the English boundary between green and blue is not found in Welsh. Moreover, Welsh lacks the English boundary between blue and gray, and likewise the English boundary between gray and brown. A schematic confrontation shows the lack of coincidence between the boundaries ... Similarly Latin and Greek show incongruence with the chief modern European languages in this sphere.

Ray (1953:102-104) Let us now return to the chart... Tenino, Atka, Chetco, and Kalapuya exhibit what has been called "blue-green" confusion. Only the Chilcotin draw the line where we do ... the Atka perceive broad bands of blue and green as one color just as the Sanpoil perceive orange and yellow to be unitary; the Chilcotin, blue and violet; the Chetco, red and orange; and the Americans ba'ami and tski'lkwu (Santiam). We designate the latter two colors by the unitary term yellow. This is so called ba'ami-tski'lkwu confusion.... I conclude that there is no such thing as a "natural" division of the spectrum. The color systems of man are not based upon psychological, physiological, or anatomical factors. Each culture has taken the spectral continuum and has divided it upon a basis which is quite arbitrary... Color systems serve to bring the world of color sensation into order so that perception may be relatively simple and behavioral response, particularly verbal response and communication, may be meaningful.

Gleason (1955: 2-5) Linguistics is the science which attempts to understand language from the point of view of its internal structure.... What then is this structure? Language operates with two kinds of material. One of these is sound.. . .The other is ideas, social situations, meanings... expression and content. A true picture of language can only be had by seeing languages more objectively. Such a view will emphasize the immense complexity, the arbitrariness, and the high degree of adequacy for their purposes - features which are shared by all languages in spite of their divergences. The dual structure of language can best be made clear by an example. Consider the rainbow or a spectrum from a prism. There is a continuous gradation of color from one end to the other... Yet and American describing it will list the hues as red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, or something of the kind. The continuous gradation of color which exists in nature is represented in language by a series of discrete categories. This is an instance of structuring of content. There is nothing inherent either in the spectrum of the human perception of it which would compel its division in this way. The specific method of

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division is part of the structure of English. By contrast, speakers of other languages classify colors in much different ways. In the accompanying diagram.. . The Shona speaker divides the spectrum into three major portions. The conception of dividing the spectrum into three parts instead of into six does not indicate any difference in visual ability to perceive colors, but only a difference in the way they are classified or structured by the language. The Bassa speaker divides the spectrum in a radically different way: into only two major categories.4

The discussants of linguistic relativity in color naming share five themes. (1) people perceive color identically (Woodworth, Boas, Geddes, Ray, Gleason) and (2) perceive it as a continuum (Bloomfield, Hjelmslev, Ray, Gleason); speakers of different languages (3) categorize, classify, mark off, impose boundaries on, or divide (Boas, Bloomfield, Kleinberg, Geddes, Hjelmslev, Ray, Gleason) the continuum (4) differently (Boas, Bloomfield, Kleinberg, Hjelmslev, Ray, Gleason) and (5) arbitrarily (Bloomfield, Hjelmslev, Ray, Gleason). Kleinberg and Geddes speak of choice. Boas attributes to the unconsciousness of linguistic classifications their capacity to call forth, or even to compel, different pictures of the world. Ray credits the classificatory ability with bringing the sensory world into order, making behavioral response meaningful. Indeed, the notion of language ordering thought is an aspect of the behaviorist doctrine, which was contemporary with these writers and with which more of them than Ray may have sympathized. Gleason alludes to Saussure's concept of language comprising internal structure, a closed system of expression and content in which complex but arbitrary language-specific categories are adequate for speakers' purposes. On the extreme, we may detect the view that language boxes people in so as to condition their minds at whatever state the system imposes. Bloomfield adds that color meanings are measurable by an external standard, which may further explain their common appeal.

Perceptual Universals

Berlin and Kay argue that basic color terms are universally focused on the same colors but may number from two to eleven in a language; their meanings are predictable from their number, which implies they evolve in a constrained order in any language (1969; Berlin and Berlin 1975; Kay 1975; Kay and McDaniel 1978). Thus, they deprive the relativist paradigm of themes (2) and (5), color is a continuum and categorized arbitrarily, although they certainly agree that (3) colors are categorized. They concur with (1), normal people perceive color in the same way, but they attribute (4), cross-cultural differences in categorization, to the progression of basic color-category development through predictable stages. The sequence is driven by the need to communicate ever more precisely as society becomes increasingly complex; the order is guided by locations of neurally determined unique colors in perceptual space, pure exemplars that segment the spectrum. People who 4 Berlin and Kay (1969: 159) quote Nida (1959: 13) and Bohannan (1963: 35-36) in the same spirit.

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choose best examples or "foci" of basic color categories will place their choices at white and black poles of brightness, on the purest points within unique hues, or on maximal sensations of categories composed of hue blends. Berlin and Kay replace the doctrine of language conditioning thought with panhuman visual physiological constraints. Any language that adds basic color terms eventually names precisely the major distinctions that all people see.

Since 1978, Berlin and Kay's universalist account of color categories accrued certain improvements. For example, Figure 1 upgrades their original diagram of foci (1969: fig. 3) with foci collected by the World Color Survey (Kay et al. 1997). These are exclusively the foci confined to single chips, not foci that cover two or more adjacent chips. Part (a) represents the ethnographic Munsell array of 330 chips (1976 issue, used since in the World and Mesoamerican Color Surveys [WCS and MCS] and in other fieldwork). Its levels of saturation are merely the highest achievable by 1976 pigment technology, not the highest perceivable. Part (b) displays 15,186 color-term foci placed by 2478 speakers of 107 of the 110 WCS languages (3 language await review of data processing). Foci are of all terms volunteered during chip naming, regardless of what they mean or whether they are basic. Darkened cells mark plurality peaks of foci on white (2105), black (1983), red (472), yellow (537), green (194), and blue (169), the six densest noncontiguous clusters on single chips. Part (c) represents the frequency of foci that distribute

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Figure 1 (see prior page), (a) Specifications of Munsell color chips constituting the ethnographic array, simplified at left and top or complete at bottom (hue), right (value), and within each cell (chroma). Heavy lines distinguish chroma at /6 and below from /8 and above. The left column represents achromatic white-grey-black, (b) Foci (N = 15,186) of color terms collected by the WCS from 107 minor and tribal languages. Data include only the foci confined to one color chip, excluding foci covering adjacent chips. Each number totals the individuals who focused a term on the corresponding chip. Plurality peaks on extremes of value and different hues are marked by dark background, (c) Frequency distribution of 10,644 WCS color-term

foci across the hue columns of the ethnographic Munsell array (First appearance in MacLaury 1997b).

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across just the 40 hue columns in the ethnographic array (excluding the achromatic column at left in [a-b]). There are four ascents to an apex in the single columns that intersect the purest examples of red, yellow, green, and blue. The four favored columns contain 2543 of the 10,644 chromatic foci, 24%. Perfect chance would be 10%. Equally important, the frequencies pattern by building in steps to the four columns from troughs between. Apparently, speakers of 107 languages have responded to a perceived structure.

Comparing parts (a) and (b), we find influence of the arbitrarily curtailed saturation levels: chip C9 manifests the highest saturation in yellow, /16, and it attracts the plurality peak, which is even higher than that of red at G1. However, the red, green, and blue peaks at, respectively, G1, F17, and F29 occur on chips of a saturation equal to that of their neighbors; yet the difference between highest and surrounding numbers is almost as pronounced as the difference seen in yellow. Chip E5, intense orange, is also saturated to /16 but attracts only 65 foci. Although the unevenness of saturation in the ethnographic array is influential, it does not cause the frequencies shown in part (c). Probably the distribution of foci as well as its stepped contour reveal a widely recurrent response to perceiving the closest approximations to unique hues attainable with chip pigments. Indeed, people everywhere perceive four unique hues and often include them in the meanings of color terms, allowing that red is never quite unique under other than laboratory conditions.

Among other benefits, the data in Figure 1 allow us to distinguish unique hues from elemental colors. The former, as specified by the Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage, are bands of hue without reference to brightness levels, approximated by the entirety of each of columns 1,9, 17, and 29. Various neural models of unique-hue perception have been proposed (De Valois and De Valois 1975, 1993; cf. Kay and McDaniel 1978). In contrast, elemental colors are defined statistically as just the plurality peaks at A0, J0, G1, C9, F17, and F29. Elemental hues comprise G1, C9, F17, and F29 (MacLaury 1997a: 466-467; 516). Figure 1, in addition to precluding saturation as a cause of focus peaks, debars brightness as a cause: different elemental hues occur on separate levels of brightness. No neural model accounts for the focus peaks within unique hues. Yet this demonstration of their existence will help us to interpret anthropological data, whether arguments come from relativists or universalists.5

As a second aid to interpretation of data, the large-scale perceptual distances among

5 Rosch and others called elemental colors "focal colors," ignoring that most foci land elsewhere (Heider

1971). Failing to seek principled reasons for this variation (e.g., Heider 1972: table 1), Rosch (1973) worked her reduced version of color focality into the now-famous experiment that lead directly to her prototype concept (a term borrowed from Black [1959: 238] that she uses therein [1973: 113] for the first time). After this work and drawing from it, Rosch (1974) wrote her universalist critique of Sapir-Whorf, which is not the analysis advanced herein. Vantage theory, discussed below, was conceived as an explanation of categorical dynamics after Rosch1 s inflexible prototype model failed to account for most observations of color categorization collected by the MCS, as expounded in MacLaury (1997a). For this reason, the prototype epoch of categorization research is by-passed here, although it will be mentioned in the conclusion as an important step (cf. MacLaury 199la).

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elemental hue pairs are specified as blue and red showing greatest difference, red and yellow showing second greatest difference, yellow and green differing slightly less, and green and blue differing least (Boynton and Olson 1987: fig. 5). All the evidence known to this author is reviewed in MacLaury (1997a: §4.1), where a neurological model of perceptual difference is set forth. Finally, as a third assistance to interpretation, hue perception is initiated by cone cells that are principally situated at the center of the retina. Two of the three types of cone cell are concentrated at the very center in the fovea centralis, a maximally sensitive narrow pit, and are distributed with less concentration in the area immediately surrounding the fovea, the macula lutea. In contrast, brightness perception is initiated by rod cells, which are distributed throughout the periphery of the retina, that is, outside the fovea and macula lutea. Neural processes that produce hue and brightness perception are triggered by photons (particles of light) when they are absorbed by the respective retinal cells.

Universal Cognitive Dynamics

In spite of these physiological underpinnings, Berlin and Kay's universalist account of color categorization lacked a cognitive mainspring.6 By what dynamic mental method do people categorize color, alter their categories, and revise their color-term system from one stage to another over time? How does this process interact with the neurally determined perception? The most useful dynamic would seem to be the reciprocal degrees of attention that people devote to the similarity and difference of color perceptions as they group the colors into categories. Psychologists long have recognized the contribution of these judgments to the composition of categories (Medin, Goldstone, and Gentner 1990: 64, citing Hollingworth 1913). Judgements of similarity and difference would indeed account for many of the observed universals if they were coupled with the known perceptual regularities. Moreover, people will shift the balance of strength between emphases on similarity and difference as a cognitive adjustment to ambient change; and, especially, the balance will shift toward stronger emphasis on difference as people are thrust into ever more complex situations by globalization, population growth, and diminishing resources. Routine emphasis on differentiation is prerequisite to enhanced analyticity, a cognitive aid to physical and social survival in ever more demanding surrounds.

This sweeping principle contributes to various explanations. For example, in the 1975 evolutionary sequence of hue naming (Berlin and Berlin 1975; Kay 1975), the warm category always divides into separate categories of red and yellow before the cool category 6 Critics noted the deficiency: "And it is surprising nonetheless to find anthropology conspiring with a

certain cognitive psychology to collapse the problem of meaning into the act of pointing, that is, the act of naming objective differences present to the senses.... And as Saussure himself foresaw, when language is thus taken for a mere nomenclature rather than a differential system of meaningful values, cognition will be reduced to recognition, concept to percept, sign to signal - and in the end, culture to nature" (Sahlins 1976: 8-9).

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divides into green and blue. A cognitive shift in attention from similarity to difference would foster separate categorization of the hues perceived to be more distinct, such as red and yellow, before it would separate the hues perceived to be most similar, green and blue. The perceived distances would likewise preclude from all color naming a category of only the maximally distinct hues, red and blue. But none of the perceptual properties would have any bearing on categorical regularities if people did not engage their perceptions with their emphases on similarity and difference.

As a second example, consider categories of apparent brightness perception. They are called brightness categories because they include three or four elemental colors, some of them as contrasting as yellow versus blue. Although we do not know exactly what perceptions people favor when they name color in this manner, surely they attend to qualities of the light sense other than hue. We suspect brightness predominates among the selections. Many cases have been reported verbally (e.g., Bartlett 1928: 4; Spencer and Gillen 1928: 552), elicited with Munsell chips (Kay et al. 1997), and otherwise published (e.g., MacLaury 199Ib, 1992, 1997a: figs. 2.27-32). So called brightness categories are not properly part of Berlin and Kay's 1975 hue sequence. Rather, as time elapses, certain people who name categories of brightness reconfigure such systems into one of the predicted stages of hue categories, transforming brightness naming into hue naming (MacLaury 1992: figs. 11-19).7 The reverse change of hue naming to brightness naming has not been observed. Peralta (1985), who studied brightness naming in Philippine I'waak, argues that cognitive concentration directs more photons into the fovea centralis, where most hue-sensitive cones are lodged. Concentration and attention to difference are one and the same. In keeping with this relation, people will favor hue over brightness and revise their color naming accordingly as they strengthen their attention to difference. Thus, a second categorical regularity, too, depends on the engagement of this specific cognitive process with perception.

Linguistic Categorization Perceptual universals by themselves are insufficient to explain regularities of color naming, as are the mentioned cognitive dynamics in and of themselves. An explanatory model must link the two kinds of experience. As will be shown, the engagement of perception and cognition will have implications for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that could not have been considered prior to proposing this linkage. First, we shall review data regarding variability

7 The merger is shown in the evolutionary sequence proposed by MacLaury (1992: fig. 19), which

preserves at its core Berlin and Kay's 1975 hue sequence. This merger is opposed to Kay, Berlin, and Merrifield's (1991: fig. 3) sequence, which combines hue and brightness categories into a multilineal scheme. The combination ignores the unidirectionality of the merger, while it introduces multiple origins into the core (cf. Dedrick 1996: 512). Brightness systems merge with hue stages without chronological predictability because the sense of brightness is continuous and, thus, is not as tightly constrained as is recognition of the point-like elemental hues (cf. Fig. 1b-c).

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between and within languages, because these data so blatantly call for a model of categorical plasticity. Next, we shall incorporate the aforesaid perceptions and cognitive dynamics into a such a model, which will allow us to examine implications for Sapir-Whorf that stem form it. Last, we shall appraise in terms of this model a couple of the celebrated and long-standing arguments in favor of Sapir-Whorf.

Figure 2. Color terms and foci in (a) Lillooet, (b) Ocaina, and (c) English; (a) m 89, Mt. Currie, B.C., Canada, 1988; (b) f 55 Puerto Nueva Esperanza, Loreto, Peru, 1977 (WCS 24), (c) m35, U.S.A., 1980 ([a]

Salishan, Interior Salish; [b] Witotoan).

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Variation

Figure 2 depicts data from two languages, (a) Lillooet and (b) Ocaina, that classify color in the distinct manners that Boas cited, "in speech and thought the word calls forth a different picture, according to the classification of green and yellow or green and blue. "A depiction of (c) English color naming guides the comparison.8 Each system predominantly names hue. The Ocaina and English systems fit Berlin and Kay's hue naming sequence, Stages IV (perhaps IIIa) and VII, respectively. They predict the green-with-blue category, such as that which Ocaina names moxoosoh. will be the sole composite category in any language that names only one grouping of two unique hues. And, as was later added, their prediction will obtain because green and blue look more alike than any other hue pair.9 The cool category occurs in many languages. But the Lillooet yellow-with-green category traverses the predictions; yellow and green look more distinct than green and blue. The coupling of perception with cognitive dynamics does not explain why yellow-with-green persists as the only composite category in Lillooet. This hue category is very rare among investigated languages; only Lillooet and other languages of the Pacific Northwest name it with such abundance, consistency, and inter-speaker agreement (MacLaury 1987,1991b: fig. 1, 1997a: fig. 2.33; Saunders 1992).10

8 Color naming systems are elicited from each informant, who alone (1) names 330 separate Munsell

color chips in random order one by one and (2) finds foci for the names on an array of the same chips. Equipment comprises two arrays, red-centered and green-centered. An additional procedure of mapping the ranges of names on the arrays is described in conjunction with Figure 9. Methods are treated in full by MacLaury (1997a: Chapter 3 and Appendix VII). Hatching in figures represents the application of names to Munsell chips, data having been derandomized in the format of an array. Each informant focuses the names, those volunteered during (1), by (2) picking from an array a best example of each, which is represented in figures by a cross in an oval when focus and name match or by hatching in an oval when they mismatch. They mismatch if, during (2), an informant focuses a term on a chip that was named by another term during (1).

9 If this Ocaina speaker names a warm category with boora - as suggested, for example, by her naming of chips F34 or H36 - still her warm category is closer to dividing than is her cool category.

10 Kopp and Lane (1968) compare discrimination judgements by speakers of two languages between color chips in the green-to-blue range: judgements concern pairs of chips widely spaced within the range of English green or blue categories and chips closely spaced but on opposite sides of this categorical boundary. English speakers judged the latter to be most distinct; whereas two speakers of Tzotzil Mayan (Southern Mexico), a language that names green and blue with one word, judged the former to be most distinct, which was in keeping with real perceptual distances (measured by other research). Kay and Kempton (1984), unaware of Kopp and Lane, repeat this experiment and its result with five subjects in English and four in Tarahumara (Uto Aztecan, Northern Mexico) that, as Tzotzil, names green and blue with one term. Both teams find minor Whorfian effects. This influence of categorical boundaries on stimulus discrimination is a facet of categorical perception, the cover term for several related observations systematically verified by psychologists (Hamad, ed. 1987). Categorical perception opposes Weber's Law that equally spaced stimuli will be judged as such. An effect of categorical perception like the one twice found in Mexico - if an experiment of that design were repeated - would conceivably emerge among the categories of Figure 2. That is, Ocaina speakers would conceptualize greater similarity between green and blue chips and less between green and yellow chips while Lillooet speakers would conceptualize the opposite for the same chips, even though green and blue are sensorially less distinctive than green and yellow. Or, indeed, would they? This test is stronger than that conducted in Mexico because it involves two different pairs of elemental hues. If Lillooet speakers did

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Berlin and Kay's predictions, when combined with the cognitive model that accounts for them, allow us to separate common, explicable cases, such as those of Ocaina and English, from rare, unexplained cases, such as that of Lillooet. Whereas Boas, in his day, could merely note such differences and profess that they call forth different pictures, the present state of data and theory directs us toward specific questions that bear precisely on the hypothesis of linguistic relativity. Why do Lillooet speakers depart from the nearly universal pattern of color naming? Why do they override commonplace practice of naming separately the hues that differ most before separately naming hues that differ least? Does some cultural value motivate Lillooet speakers to call forth a picture different from that maintained by almost everyone else who names a singular category of two hues?11 Even if we knew, though, we would have a case of culture determining categorization over and above the influence of physiology and its interaction with a universal cognitive process, which is not the same as Sapir and Whorf s idea of language constraining thought. Boas did not have the means to separate ordinary from extraordinary color naming, which imbued his fiat of linguistic relativity with sketchy misconceptions about arbitrary categorization, equal likelihood among options, and the shaping force of language.

Figure 3 shows that language does not constrain thought sufficiently to stabilize categorization. Here a second Lillooet speaker is on the verge of dividing her yellow-with-green category by innovating a term for only green, qax. An Ocaina speaker in on the verge of dividing her green-with-blue category by focusing it in purplish blue and, too, by innovating a term for only green, jamiivihinh. Both speakers resemble English color naming more than do either of their cohorts in Figure 2. In Lillooet, even if some cultural value motivates formation of yellow-with-green, the category can divide in spite this inspiration or divide when the value is lost.

In Figure 3, the straightforward use of language to name current thinking is plain. This counter-Whorfian practice need to be less latent among the individuals whose categories appear Figure 2.

not conceptualize oppositely (vis à vis Ocaina or other Stage IV language), we would confirm why yellow-with-green categories are rare and would acutely need to explain the few that occur.

11 It is easy to speculate on cause: Throughout the Pacific Northwest, natives valued copper as the prestigious symbol of royalty and treasured commodity of potlatches; copper is golden when polished and green when tarnished. But we do not know what motivates this category. Kinkade (1988) uses linguistic techniques to reconstruct its origin as an apparent brightness category of yellow-green-blue, of which MacLaury (1991b: figs, 1a-d, 3-4a, 5-8a, 10b) finds vestiges in living Salishan systems. These findings still do not explain why Salishan yellow-green-blue did not merge into the 1975 Berlin-and-Kay hue sequence as do brightness categories in other languages (MacLaury 1992).

13

Figure 3. Color terms and foci in (a) Lillooet and (b) Ocaina; (a) f 57, Mt. Currie, B.C., Canada, 1988; (b) f 43,

Puerto Isango, Loreto, Peru, 1977 (WCS 4).

Figure 4 shows that, in spite of a common language, individual Ocaina speakers categorize elemental green (G17) in different ways. In (a), a woman focuses boora in olive (F15) and extends its range in a moderate pattern of brightness naming.12 In (b), a man names a yellow-with-green category with boora, although not as broadly as does the Lillooet speaker in Figure 2a. In (c), boora names yellow and moxoosoh names green-with-blue, as is standard for Stage IV (adding tsipi 'purple'). In (d), jamiivihinh sparsely names green, not as fully as in Figure 3b. The individuals reside in three villages, while the two form Puerto Isango show as much variation. Variable types recur in all Ocaina communities visited by the WCS. The data depicted here are merely those that most starkly contrast the differences. Each individual uses the same words to express different thinking, showing no sign these lexemes influence cognition in a particular way.

12 Apparent brightness naming occurs more markedly in other languages (MacLaury 1992, 1997a: figs.

2.25a, 27, 28d, 29a-b, 30a, 6.13)

14

Figure 4. Color terms and foci in Ocaina, Loreto, Peru, 1977; (a) f 65 Puca Urgillo, (b) m 29 Puerto Isango,

(c) m 21 Puerto Isango, (d) m 54 Avahusan Albert (WCS 16, 12, 7, 14).

15

Vantages

Categorization is notably plastic, even in a domain that harbors neurally determined elemental colors at different fixed perceptual distances from each other. The guiding neurology has previously been cited in arguments against the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (e.g., Rosch 1974). Now we find that people categorize with considerable freedom within those constraints. The freedom, however, does not tilt the argument back in favor of Sapir-Whorf, but rather it further inveighs against the influence of language on thought. Vantage theory offers a model of categorical plasticity that supplants the need to postulate such influence. The theory holds that a person constructs a category by analogy to the method by which he makes sense of his own position in space and time. The analogy is not of the conscious sort, such as "an atom is like a tiny solar system." Rather, it is deeply unconscious and probably neurally expedited such as to allow the rapid formation of one category upon another as quickly as a person can think and speak. A person draws the analogy on the level of fixed and mobile coordinates, as between spatial landmarks and elemental colors or between the continuum of slow-to-fast and the continuum of judgements regarding similar-to-different. Landmarks and elemental colors are inherently fixed; they constitute isolated points. Whereas, selections of points on a continuum are inherently mobile because they can move along the axis in relation to each other, as, for example, any movement is fast to extent that is not slow or a judgement of similarity is strong to the extent that it is not a judgement of difference. A judgement of difference is the inescapable reciprocal of any judgement of similarity; a balance of strength obtains among the pair as each member presupposes the other.

Figure 5 depicts basics of vantage theory, featuring (a) the model of a warm color category focused in red and including yellow. Vantage theory assumes that a person can concentrate on only one relation at a time between a fixed and a mobile coordinate, that is, he can hold foremost in awareness at any instant only one relation of ground to figure. Since any category will be constituted by more than one such relation, the relations between fixed and mobile coordinates are arranged hierarchically as levels of concentration, levels 1, 2, and 3.13 A person manages this complexity by concentrating upon only level 1 in a normal state of affairs, a default state that does not demand unusual attention to detail. The person keeps the other levels out of concentration. But, nevertheless, what is left out of concentration is constantly presupposed and can be concentrated upon by "zooming in." Zooming means that a mobile coordinate is treated as fixed by assuming it to be background information, while a new mobile coordinate is related to it. In (a), attention to similarity is treated as mobile on level 1 but as fixed on level 2, where elemental yellow is introduced as mobile. On level 3, yellow becomes fixed background while attention to difference is introduced and treated as mobile. Although attention to similarity is inherently mobile, it is treated as fixed on level 2. And on level 2, inherently fixed yellow is treated as mobile 13 The simplest category, say, red, would require two levels (e.g., MacLaury, Almási, and Kövecses 1997:

fig. 13): level l(Red Sim), level 2 (Sim Dif).

16

because its introduction highlights it. In vantage theory, although some coordinates are inherently fixed while others are inherently mobile, they may exchange their fixed and mobile roles during the zooming process-as long as each kind assumes its inherent role on an adjacent level. In (a), Red and Distinctiveness fulfill only one role each on levels 1 and 3, respectively, which fulfills their proper capacities as, respectively, inherently fixed and inherently mobile.

Figure 5. Categories of two elemental hues constructed as vantages; (a) warm, (b) yellow-with-green, (c) cool,

(d) abstract.

At right in (a), entailments are listed. Whereas the coordinates and their arrangement (as a zooming hierarchy) constitute the cognitive construction of this warm category, the entailments consist of the surface behavior seen in a person's use of this category as he applies it to objects in the world, such as Munsell chips. The position of elemental red as the fixed coordinate on level 1 - the "primary fixed coordinate" - entails that the category will be focused in reference to elemental red. Also on level 1, coordination of elemental red with attention to similarity entails a category range at a certain breadth; attention to similarity ensures that various stimuli will be included beyond elemental red by virtue of their

17

similarity to it. The strength at which similarity is emphasized will entail the number of stimuli included: the stronger the emphasis, the broader will be the category. On level 2, the broad range encompasses elemental yellow, entailing the range of a warm category.14 On level 3, yellow is coordinated with attention to difference, which entails the category boundary. Both the range and the boundary pertain to the entire category, because the balancing of emphases on similarity and difference binds the arrangement of coordinates into a singular point of view.

Other entailments are not listed in (a). For example, strong emphasis on similarity will pull the focus to a color between elemental red and yellow, to an orange, such that the focus will match neither elemental hue; conversely, strong emphasis on difference will pull the focus to the margin of the category, say, to maroon or magenta, where, again, the focus will not match an elemental hue. Such dynamics account for some foci in Figure 1b that do not match elemental red, some of the 76% therein. It also accounts for the stepped pattern of frequency shown in Figure 1c by which choices appear to be oriented toward unique red while not coinciding with it.15 In the same way, the models in Figure 5b-c account for some foci of the 76% among colors other than red.

In Figure 5, each modeled category is a vantage because an individual selects inherently fixed coordinates from among options - the alternatives being choices among hues, levels of brightness, or degrees of saturation-ascribes a balance of emphases to inherently mobile coordinates, and places all coordinates in an particular arrangement: this arrangement, too, is an option, as opposed, for example, to starting with yellow instead of red in (a). An individual constructs the category as a single point of view to make sense of a certain gamut among all his diverse sensations. But he may change this particular viewpoint if he has occasion, for example, over the years he may shift the balance of strength in favor of difference so as to view the world more analytically. Moreover, family, cohorts, and descending generations my select different coordinates, place different emphases on them, and arrange them differently, while everyone applies a common name to his personal composition. This much is suggested by the variation seen in Figures 2-4 within Lillooet and Ocaina, say nothing of the differences between these languages. Vantage theory stipulates that category construction is too flexible and too improvisational to allow names to influence this process or its outcome. This could be the reason experiments exploring

14 Encompassing blue instead of yellow is only a theoretical option because no language maintains a red-

with-blue category. However, the choice between, say, yellow or blue, is attested when one language focuses in green a green-with-yellow category (Saunders 1992: fig. 12.1) while another focuses in green a green-with-blue category (Figure 2b herein)

15 There are many other reasons that most foci in Figure 1b do not match elemental colors. Some categories do not pertain to hue, such as brightness categories. An example appears in Figure 3a, focused at F14. Other categories cover a range only between elemental colors, such as that focused on H34 in Figure 3b. Yet others are nonbasic, such as that focused in columns 18-19 of Figure 3d. Further influence on focus placement is discussed in connection with Figure 15. With so many kinds of color categories focused under such dynamics, it is astounding that the foci of Figure 1b pattern as they do.

18

linguistic relativity in categorical domains have resulted negatively or, in generous terms, inconclusively. Such might be said almost as well without deferring to vantage theory, although the theory states the issue analytically and systematically.

Figure 6, however, shows a pattern of categorization that, perhaps, only the vantage model can address. Figure 7 – 8 show how the model does this, while they elaborate further on its capacity to incorporate categorical plasticity.

Figure 6. Color terms and foci in (a) Mam and (b) Buglere; (a) f 60 Tacaná, San Marcos, Guatemala, 1979

(Mayan, Mamean); f 30 Rio Luís, Veraguas, Panama, 1978 (WCS 5; unclassified).

19

Figure 6 is a reverse display, representing red at center. It shows naming and foci from speakers of Mam and Buglere. The Mam speaker names a warm category focused at F1 in reference to red. The focus is not precisely on elemental red at G1 but somewhat centrally placed between elemental red and elemental yellow, C9 (see Fig. 1b). The model of Figure 5a pertains perfectly to this vantage, kyaq. Many languages name the warm category only from such a red-focused point of view (e.g., MacLaury 1992: figs. 15-16, 18; 1997a: figs. 2.14, 17a, 22a-c, 24b-d, 25c, 28). However, the Mam speaker also names her warm category from the vantage of q'an, which she focuses on elemental yellow, C9; she uses (j'an to name fewer colors than she names with kyaq. That is, across the red and yellow colors, kyaq shows more use and a central focus, q'an less use and a less central focus. Yet the uses of q'an are widely dispersed, 133 to B12. The correlations are typical of the dominant-recessive pattern of coextensive ranges - kyaq being dominant and q'an recessive-which is statistically significant across languages and recurs within different categories, having been quantified in all coextensively named warm and cool categories of the MCS and WCS (MacLaury 1997a: tables 6.1 and 11.2-5,485n3). Universal physiology does not determine which among any pair of coextensive ranges will be dominant. Thus, in Figure 6b-d, molinre is dominant but focused in reference to yellow; debere is recessive and focused in reference to red.16 The dominant-recessive pattern of coextensive naming need not be learned socially. This is shown by speakers of single languages who ascribe it with patterns that are inverse of each other (e.g., Figs. 13-14; MacLaury 1997a: table 6.1), as do the Mam and Buglere speakers in different languages. Nor does proof of coextension correspond with sex, age, or visual acuity.17 In sum, the pattern appears to reflect the underlying method by which people everywhere construct a category of any color or colors. The method itself does not seem to be a product of social learning, as would occur between a child and caregivers or a child and peers. Rather, the method appears to be a procedure that people are born with, that is, a very specific but versatile instinct for category construction.18

Figure 7 displays the vantage model of the dominant-recessive pattern of coextension, (a) as in the Mam warm category and (b) as in Buglere. In (a), the dominant vantage is modeled as is the red-focused warm vantage in Figure 5a (the sole vantage therein). The recessive vantage is modeled as the inversion of all coordinates, placing elemental yellow in primary fixed position on level 1. The recessive vantage is derived from the dominant arrangement by means of this inversion. That is, every recessive vantage ever to be observed

16 Reference of foci in Buglere is established by all data from 25 WCS interviews, including applications

of molinre to only yellow versus debere to only red. In Figure 6, molinre is named more broadly than kyaq; the focus of molinre (E1-5) is centralized by two Munsell rows darker than elemental yellow (C9) whereas the focus of kyaq (F1) is is centralized by one Munsell row lighter than elemental red (G1).

17 The particular patten of coextension, say, with the red-focused range dominant, too, shows no correlation with age, sex, or ability to see.

18 Instinct is the proper word. Such an instinct for category construction would constitute the crux of human ability to produce language and culture, the ability to behave has humans.

20

exists in the company of a dominant counterpart. Only a dominant vantage may exist by itself (as in Fig. 5).19 The consequence of deriving a recessive vantage is to place attention to difference on level 1. This means that attention to difference is zoomed to level 2, where it resides as a fixed coordinate among presuppositions, as shown at right in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Coextensive vantages on the warm category, (a) dominant vantage focused in reference to red, and (b)

dominant vantage focused in reference to yellow.

Any inherently mobile coordinate that occurs on two levels of a vantage has a stronger

19 Historically, the dominant vantage develops before the recessive vantage, although over time they may

swap roles such that the older term ends up naming the recessive vantage, as has happened in French between currently dominant marron and recessive brun (Forbes 1979), or between piros and vörös in Hungarian (MacLaury, Almási, and Kövecses 1997).

21

effect on the organization of the vantage than does an inherently mobile coordinate that occurs only on one level. That is, a twice-occurring inherently mobile coordinate has a reinforced strength.

Thus, Figure 7 shows that attention to similarity has a stronger effect on the dominant vantage than on the recessive vantage, while attention to difference has a stronger effect on the recessive vantage than on the dominant vantage. This difference of effect is symbolized as S2 D versus D2 S (the exponent standing for reinforcement) which, although not in accord with conventions of mathematics, provides a formal way of specifying the dynamics of dominant versus recessive points of view. The inherently fixed coordinates of elemental red and yellow cannot be reinforced by double occurrence in the arrangement of a vantage precisely because of their fixity. Elemental red and yellow are already the most intense examples of these respective colors that a person can imagine and, therefore, cannot be enhanced beyond those thresholds. This principle applies to all inherently fixed coordinates, which is the critical reason for distinguishing them from coordinates that are inherently mobile.20

Figure 7a lists the entailments of dominant S2 D versus recessive D2 S. In the dominant vantage, S2 will contract cognitive distance between stimuli, allowing more of them to fit in the purview of the vantage. The enhanced emphasis on similarity will motivate the viewer to centralize the focus so as to evenly and equally represent all stimuli. But S2 will also contract distance between the viewer's vantage point and the stimuli, which will increase his subjectivity and, further, will stabilize the broad purview such that the viewer will project it in about the same manner each time he names a stimulus within its scope. We find all of these manifestations in Figure 6a, as reviewed above, including concentration of the abundant naming of kyaq over fewer Munsell columns than sparsely named but widely dispersed q'an. Conversely, in the recessive vantage, D2 will protract cognitive distance between stimuli, allowing fewer of them to fit in the purview of the vantage. This enhanced emphasis on difference will motivate the viewer to marginalize the focus so as to contrast the referential elemental hue against the other hues. But D2 will also protract the distance between the viewer's vantage point and the stimuli, which will increase his objectivity and, further, will destablize the recessive purview such that the viewer will project it far and wide from his removed standpoint, like the beam of a spotlight, each time he names a stimulus within its scope. This is why q'an is more widely dispersed than kyaq.21 Appendix I enlarges on how S2 D and D2 S explain the dominant-recessive pattern in data.

Figure 8 models the chronological consequence of major differences in the strength at

20 Only attention to similarity and difference can constitute the inherently mobile coordinates of a

category, which without them would amount to a noncategorical vantage. The presence of specifically these two coordinates in a vantage defines categorization; other cognition can be distinguished from categorization by their absence, including other kinds of cognitive viewpoint.

21 In Figure 6 (b-d), we do not find the widely scattered recessive manifestation, as we do in (a). The difference could result from stronger emphasis on similarity in the Buglere system than in the Mam system..

22

which similarity and distinctiveness are emphasized in categories that are conceptualized from two vantages. The effect of S2 is to maintain width of a purview even as the strength of S2 diminishes, whereas the effect of D2 is to narrow a purview straightaway as the strength of D2 increases. These dynamics entail that a dominant vantage will slowly shrink while a recessive vantage will rapidly shrink as the balance of strength shifts from S to D. Although both will shrink, their sizes will become progressively unequal. Therefore, the dominant-recessive pattern will change through a trajectory of surface relations whose ideal forms are near synonymy, coextension, and inclusion, with intermediate forms between the ideals. As the change progresses to inclusion, foci will randomly polarize while only the size differential keeps the pattern.22

22 No examples of random polarization of foci are shown in subsequent figures; all maintain the dominant

recessive pattern. Randomization is attested by MacLaury (1997a: table 7.1). However, randomly polarized foci in relations of inclusion partially account for the distribution in Figure 15b.

23

Figure 8. Three types of semantic relation. They share their organization but differ by the emphases placed

on (S) similarity and (D) difference, represented by sizing.

Figures 9-14 show examples of the predicted progression from near synonymy to inclusion. Complementation is the separate categorization of elemental hues, as seen in English of Figure 2c or the red and yellow categories of the Ocaina speaker in Figure 3b. Figures 9-14 depict mappings, data that result when an informant places grains of rice on chips of the array in response to repeated requests to cover all chips that can be named by a particular term.

24

Shading and numbers show mapping steps, successive responses to the requests. During the elicitation, overlapping terms are separated widely in sequence as the terms of a system are mapped one after another. Rice is removed from the array after each mapping is completed.

Figure 9. Near synonymy, Jicaque, Montaña de la Flor, Hoduras, f 25 (Hokan); (a) naming and foci, 1977

(WCS), (b-c) mappings, 1981 (MCS).

In Figure 9, a Jicaque woman names the warm category with only her recessive term, he, but she demonstrates near synonymy by mapping her dominant term, lu (the sole example for near synonymy in the MCS). She might have used only her recessive term to name chips because she felt the interview to be a marked occasion calling for sustained exactitude, but no explanation was sought from her. Lu was used by other speakers, most of whom confined the term to only yellow.

25

Figure 10. Coextension in an early phase, Tzeltal, Tenejapa, Chiapas, Mexico, m 65, 1980 (Mayan,

Tzeltalan); (a) naming and foci, (b – c) mappings.

Figure 10 – 14 show data from Tzeltal speakers who inhabit Paraje Nabil, a hamlet of greater Tenejapa. The small community yields the gamut of types from the early phase of

26

Figure 11. Coextension, Tzeltal, Tenejapa, m 65, 1980; (a) naming and foci, (b – c) mappings.

coextension almost to complementation. The unfolding of types roughly corresponds to age and to proliferation of mapping steps, the latter evidencing stronger emphasis on difference. In Figures 10-13, k'an names the dominant range, while in Figure 14 cah is dominant. In Figures 11-13, the focus of recessive cah is polarized to the darkest

27

Munsell row, another sign of strong emphasis on difference. As yet a further corollary of emphasis on difference, the names in Figures 12 and 13 include loan words. Figure lid shows the distribution of qualifiers, solel- and sol-, modifying designations focal to each vantage while alel- and al- qualify marginal designations. The ratio of focal-to-marginal qualifiers is 17:27 on dominant k'an versus 8:34 on recessive cah (p

Figure 13. Inclusion in a late phase, Tzeltal, Tenejapa, f34, 1980; (a) naming and foci, (b – c) mappings.

29

Figure 14. Coextension in a late phase, Tzeltal, Tenejapa, f 60, 1980; (a) naming and foci, (b – c) mappings.

The MCS found 51 warm categories, 32 of which exhibit coextension while 18 show a relation of inclusion. Figure 15 contrasts their foci, (a) coextension versus (b) inclusion. Vertical lines mark the outsides of unique red and yellow, separating central from marginal chips. Foci show a central-to-marginal ratio of 69:13 for coextension, 22:16 for inclusion (p

Figure 15. Foci of warm categories composed by (a) coextension and (b) inclusion.

The forgoing data pertain to points of view, a critical construct in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Sapir and Whorf assert that speakers of different languages view the world differently because they name it differently. But in the Tzeltal cases, speakers of one language in a small community view the world differently but name it with the same terms. Construction of viewpoint comes from within the individual as part of his or her cognizance of the environment and in keeping with the method by which all people are, so it seems, innately predisposed to accomplish categorization. Vantage theory specifies these processes, which place the locus of thought within the people who actively use categorization as a means to make sense of their surrounds. In a principled way, vantage theory denies that words shape thought or are related to thought in any manner other than providing symbols for its expression. People are genetically endowed with a method of categorizing that is fundamentally malleable, adaptable, and independent of words that name categories. People actively shape their categories in accord with the extent to which they are inclined to subject the world to broad or constricted points of view.

mismatches are patterned, and the dynamic posed by the vantage model explains the pattern. If foci merely matched elemental hues, none would suggest cognitive processes. Whorf (1956 [1940]: 214) proposes, "We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can be calibrated." The data in Figures 10-14 strip him of his disclaimer (italics added), supplanting it with "not even if their linguistic backgrounds derive from one small, rural community."

31

Polysemy

Perhaps a word with more than one related meaning would influence points of view if a speaker associates the meanings whenever he uses the word to convey one of them. Language would, then, influence thought in cases of exotic polysemy specific to a particular language. Figures 16-18 explore further categorical flexibility as modeled by vantage theory in three languages that incorporate into color categorization coordinates other than those selected from the light sense. The model offers why polysemy need not influence thought.

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Figure 16. Polysemy of parrot name; (a – b) cool category in Mam, f 29, San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán, Huehuetenango, Guatemala, (a) naming and foci, (b) mappings; (c) the green-yellow parrot, (d) the color of parrot green-yellow, (e) green in reference to parrot green-yellow, (f) green-with-blue without reference to

green-yellow.

In Figure 16, a Mam speaker names the cool category coextensively with a panMayan basic color-term cognate, čaʔs, and with č'el (Sp. 'chocoyo'), the name of a small green-yellow species of parrot and a common pet in Guatemala (Speakers of Quiche Mayan, too, name all of

33

the cool category with cognates of both terms [MacLaury 1997a: fig. 11.8a]). Although the parrot is always green-yellow, people apply its name to blue, as shown in (a), columns 24-33. The problem, then, is to guess what people think when they apply č'el to blue and purplish blue, since č'el should, at least, invoke the image of the bird's color, if not of the whole bird. The question is compounded in (a-b) by the focus of č'el at D13 in precisely green-yellow and (b) by the mapping of č'el, which is properly confined to green-yellow. Apparently, the image of green-yellow is retained when focusing and mapping č'el, but it is forgotten or overridden during chip naming or, at least, while naming some chips. Parts (c-f) show how vantage theory models a hypothesis of the polysemy of č'el. Part (c) represents the bird-species meaning as a simplest vantage, consisting of only the prototypical image of the parrot coordinated with attention to similarity and difference. This image would include the characteristic green-yellow. Part (d) models the image adapted to naming a shade of green, just the range that is mapped for č'el in (b). Elemental Green is the primary fixed coordinate, the principal point of reference, but the image of the parrot - or at least the green-yellow attribute of the image-is coordinated directly with Green, restricting this vantage of green to only the yellow side of column 17 of unique green (see Fig. Ic). Since this vantage takes a restricted purview on a broader category, it is recessive. Thus, attention to difference (Dif) is repeated on two levels of concentration. Dif is directly coordinated with the image to further model the confinement of the mapping to precisely green-yellow; the confinement suggests the Mam speaker keeps the image in awareness, which is why the image occurs on level 1. Very strong Dif further models the small purview as well as its pronounced polarity: in (a), the focus of č'el is polarized to the outside of its naming range. Part (e) builds a bridge between (d) and (f). In (e), Dif is weaker and Sim stronger than they are in (d). While Dif is promoted so as to be directly coordinated with Green, the image is demoted to the level of presupposition; there it can be forgotten or remembered intermittently. This arrangement of coordinates enables application of č'el to green colors that are not the least bit yellow, those in columns 17-22. In (f), the image has been replaced by the coordinate of elemental Blue, perhaps during one of the aforesaid lapses of memory. Dif is further weakened while Sim is further strengthened. These dynamics enable č'el to be treated as a recessive vantage whose purview covers the cool category, as shown in (a), independently of the forgotten image and even as a name for the blue part of the range.24

More than one vantage is required to account for the data in (a-b). The model of polysemy poses a succession of vantages (c-f): a metonymic transfer from (c) to (d), demotion of the image in (e), its replacement in (f), and shift in strength of Sim and Dif throughout (d-f). Vantage theory offers a hypothesis of how the meaning of a word can be flexibly organized and reorganized through transformed points of view, the final version of which entirely sheds the initial image such as to sanction usages that have no resemblance to

24 English "orange" as a color term may share with the hypothetical Mam vantage in (f) complete shedding

of the original metonymic image, of the citrus fruit in this case. But steps in the polysemous history of chromatic "orange" should have been fewer than arrangements (c-f).

34

that original sense. The meaning of a lexeme, then, even a meaning so salient as the green-yellow of a popular pet, may exert no hold on cognition when polysemy develops. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis finds no support in polysemy.

Figure 17. Polysemy of Hanunoo color terms, Parfn village and the Yagaw area, Mindoro, The Philippines, 1953 (Conklin 1954: figs. 1-2; Malayo-Polynesian); (a) Munsell-based simulation of Conklin's (1955) verbal

description, (b) warm category, (c) green category.

35

In Figure 17, part (a) is an attempt to diagram Conklin's (1955: 342-343) description of Hanunóo color naming, as though he had interviewed a speaker with Munsell chips.25

... the focal points ...can be limited more of less to black, white, orange-red, and leaf-green...mabiru includes...black, violet, indigo, blue, dark green, dark grey, and deep shades...;malagtiʔ, white and very light tints...; mararaʔ, maroon, red, orange, yellow ...; malatuy, light green, and mixtures of green, yellow, and light brown.... this ...classification appears to have certain correlates beyond.. .chromatic differentiation... associated with.. .the external environment... .there is an opposition between dryness or desiccation and wetness or freshness (succulence) in visible components of the natural environment which are reflected in the terms raraʔ and latuy respectively.. .To eat...raw, uncooked food, particularly fresh fruits or vegetables, is known as pag-laty-un (

Conklin implies that raraʔ names a warm category while latúy names a green category; latúy would probably be included within dark-cool bíru, a Stage II system with secondary terms. Parts (b-c) represent the color categories raraʔ and latúy as incorporating coordinates, respectively, of dry and wet (as if they really do).27 This in itself is no different than the

latúy (1) raw, uncooked; e.g., latúy wáya ‚raw’. latúy (2) green or bluish green color. malatúy green or bluish green (163); green, bluish green, and many intermediate

shades or blends of these colors (185). The definitions make no reference to desiccation, succulence, or similar notions. Elsewhere in the 1953

dictionary, related concepts are: mamará "dry, parched, of something which is usually moist or damp, as the throat, ground, skin, etc." (186), as reported in 1955; mará "dryness" (190; cf. 22, 49, 114, 186, 218); maláyaʔ "wilt, dry up, as of plants which are cut" (185; cf. 162); lava? "dried out, as of wood" (164); (ma)2rJn ahut "hot and dry, not sultry, as of the weather" (176; cf. 34); paȠ áraw, turuȠún "dry season" (212, 285; cf. 34); túpus "wet" (285).

The 1955 description repeats almost verbatim Conklin's dissertation (1954: 141-145), which, in turn, offers no further evidence for the polysemy of raraʔ and latuy. Throughout this exhaustive 471-page work, he mentions "dryness or desiccation and wetness or freshness (succulence).. .reflected in the terms rara7 and latuy" in only one passage (pp. 142-143), which consists of seven sentences plus an etymological note (p. 170). He excludes dryness and wetness from the ten "Attributes of General Contrast" by which taxa are distinguished, such as "1. leaf shape, 2. color, 3. habitat. . .9. taste, 10. smell" (p. 131). Describing qualifiers that denominate the ten categories (pp. 131-159), he makes no reference to dryness or wetness. In his list of 1643 "Hanunóo Plant Types" (pp. 271-377, independent count), no use of mamaraʔ or other reference to dryness occurs, and no reference to wet, fresh, of succulent occurs. The list shows abundant use of color terms, however, which appears to contrast plant varieties by their chromatic properties, for example, bated malagtiʔ / mabíru / mararaʔ Andropogon sorghum (L.) (p. 296). At least, Conklin implies the purely chromatic contrast: "in plant names, color attributes may refer to whatever part of the plant is known to differ from.. .other types of the same basic plant segment.. .it is not surprising that malatúy is not used to distinguish 'divergent1 plant types from more 'basic' ones, while malagtiʔ, mabíru, and mararaʔ collectively occur in more than 80 per cent of the plant names containing color attributes" (145-146). He lists six synonyms for these three color terms used in the context of plant naming, and he lists the plant parts differentiated by color (146-147). "Although 15 separate plant name color attributes are recorded, 143 of the total number of 170 occurrences are either malagtiʔ(61), mabíru(48), or mararaʔ(34). Most of the other terms occur in cultigen names and may be subsumed under one of these three broader color categories" (p. 136). Malatúy occurs in only one of the 1643 botanical terms (p. 313).

None of the lexical data demonstrate that desiccation or succulence, dry or wet, or like meanings, are integral to the intentions of mararaʔ, or (ma)latúy. which Conklin (1953, 1954) reports as only color terms, adding "raw, uncooked" for (ma)latúy. Associations of these terms with desiccation or succulence are seemly etymological, as elaborated by Bartlett.

27 The botanist Bartlett (1928: 8, 29, 31-33) provides etymological discussion of Malayo-Polynesian roots of 'red' and 'green,' among them ra and rata: "The writer believes that the words for red have the most ancient lineage of any Indonesian color words and probably were taken in the first place from the word for sun. The latter would naturally give rise to the words for dry, and also to a color word, indicating red, orange, yellow, brown (31-32). . . . The word for green. . . also means flat (of leaves not crinkled by wilting). Fresh meat.. .cognate forms are widely spread but generally mean only flat, fresh, or the like" (32-33)." Lucy (1997b: 334-335) adduces, "Presumably, when shown Munsell chips, Hanunóo speakers would use the terms [e.g., (ma) raraʔ, (ma)latúy]... because colorific information is part of their referential potential. I seriously doubt, however, that the other meanings that Conklin first turned up in the course of analyzing descriptions of the plant world would have ever been discovered." Although it is uncertain whether (ma) raraʔ or (ma)latúy

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Mam color category of Figure 16e that incorporates as a coordinate the image of parrot green-yellow or of the entire parrot. How would the Hunanóo apply raraʔ or latúy to warm-colored or green objects that were not dry or wet, say, raraʔ to flowing blood or latúy to thread or yarn?28 Perhaps they could ignore the nonchromatic coordinates, as the Mam speaker apparently forgets the green-yellow parrot image when applying her parrot name to blue. Or at any time they could forget dry or wet permanently. Conklin's example of polysemy has been considered from time to time in support of the language-thought relation (Hymes, ed. 1964: 169; Juillerat 1978: 514; Eco 1985: 169-171).29

Deactivated versus Productive Morphology Newman's characterization of Zuni color terms has also entered discussion of linguistic relativity (Lenneberg and Roberts 1956: 23-24; Lucy 1992a: 168). After brief mention of Whorf, Newman (1954: 82, 90) ventures only that methods of semantic description will enable linguists to contribute to the "thought-world concept." Then he offers examples, including this:

have these other meanings, Bartlett and his predecessors had no difficulty in plotting word histories. The actual 'parrot' meaning of ´c'el turned up during Munsell interviews with no trouble at all. People tend to volunteer such information, and, besides, such questions are easy to ask, like "What else does ´c’e1 mean"? Interviews are conducted by curious investigators and talkative informants, not by robots.

28 Conklin's (1953) dictionary includes various terms for wet red items and dry green items, which would counter the proposed associations of warm-dry and green-wet if someone were to name their colors. For potential reference of ram?, we find blood (107), betel juice (108, 186), rainbow (66), mouth (80, 235), fruits (69, 82, 139, 289), cock's comb (118, 208), red fish (74, 79, 207), and egg yoke (290); for latúy: green snake (108), red and green bird (42), green bird (259), green grasshoppers (33, 170), "very green maize beetle" (266), and, although green is the least favored color of the Hunanóo, they weave (121, 124) and accept trade items, such as thread and yarn (91), beads (87, 95), bottles and other glass (215, 236), ornaments, and various goods (Conklin 1954: 52-57), which nowadays must comprise many things, some of which are green.

29 Kay (1998) cites recent discussants of Conklin (1955), including Lucy (1997b), who evaluates Conklin's claim about Hunanóo color semantics as exemplifying adequate methodology vis á vis what he sees as the less illuminating approach of universalists, such as Berlin and Kay (1969). Whereas Lucy considers Hunanóo meanings to be vague, Kay argues they are ambiguous. Ambiguity is common in color semantics, including those of English. For Hunanóo, Kay dissects latúy but not raraʔ. He disputes Lucy's slant on Newman's analysis of Zuni color semantics by noting Zuni and English express inherent versus inchoative color by different morphological means. Kay's universalism differs slightly from that posed via vantage theory, which characterizes speakers' capacity to take any view they wish. This will consist, at least, of a mundane view and possibly one or more ratified views in addition. The recurrence of that pattern, as exemplified in Figure 16a-b, is why Conklin's apparent assertion of solely an exotic vantage on warm color - and of an equally lone but embellished vantage on green - warrants the meticulous scrutiny expressed in prior notes. Stemming from what Conklin stated forty-three years ago, we find a trilogy of approaches encapsulated by the current discussion: The relativist Lucy applauds the alleged exotica without investigating the evidence (His acceptance of Conklin [1955] is shared by Kay, John Lyons and Anna Wierzbicka [who Kay cites], Humberto Echo, Dell Hymes, and Bernard Juillerat). Kay, representing vintage universalism, reduces the exotica to pedestrian terms. The present writer, a former student of Berlin and Kay and proponent of that school (cf. Berlin 1970), expands on their universalism with a cognitive theory which allows points of view that, indeed, are exotic but that derive from, and alternate with, a usual, unremarkable viewpoint.

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"As an example of discriminated meanings, Zuni has two lexemes expressing the literal notion of the color "yellow." Lexeme A would be used in contexts such as "yellow shirt, yellow paint." Lexeme B is employed in combinations such as "yellow skin, yellow leaves." The difference is not one of hue. Rather, lexeme A covers many shades of yellow characterizing an object, while lexeme B refers only to an object that has become yellow.. .as a result of ripening or aging... .an investigation of color terms must recognize that such terms may express discriminations other than those involved in the color spectrum. The semantic range of lexeme B.. .indicates the manner in which certain concepts are linked in terms of Zuni cultural associations. In its singular form lexeme B refers to any ripened or aged yellow object. In the plural it is specialized to refer to pollen or corn meal, a culturally important linkage for other related meanings of this lexeme. When it is preposed to an element meaning "stretching across," it forms the prayer term for "road" and, by extension, "the road of life." Reference here is to the ceremonial sprinkling of corn meal to form a path, symbolizing the sacred road" (87-88).

One of the two Zuni views on yellow - that encoded by lexeme B-is, at very least, uncommon across languages, if, indeed, it finds a parallel in any other language. Figure 18 depicts the Zuni vantages on yellow. The dominant vantage incorporates attention to similarity on two levels of concentration, which engages the viewer closely with the scope of the vantage and discourages analysis; the nonanalytic construction entails a prosaic application, as to a shirt or paint. The recessive vantage, in favoring attention to difference, sets apart the viewer from the scope, encourages analysis, and entails poetic and sacred applications. The recessive arrangement, however, is otherwise simple, involving a single nonchromatic coordinate of "become." Among its entailments is a notion of process, as with aging, wilting, or even a route of travel, which the Zuni have elaborated as a cultural value. The analytical recessive vantage would encourage attention to the meanings of suffixes and qualifiers, while the dominant vantage would foster semantic bleaching of any such morphology and would discourage its elaboration.

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Figure 18. Zuni vantages on the yellow category described by Newman (1954:87-88), who refers to their

names as lexeme A and lexeme B (language isolate).

Lexeme B is lhupzʔi ‘be or become yellow’ (Newman 1958: 107, cf. 1965: 35), which is adapted to static referents by suffixing -nna. Newman's gloss is ambiguous. Lexeme A is not identifiable in his sources. He glosses ʔoneyanne as 'yellowed.' (1958). Lenneberg and Roberts (1956: 24-25, 27-29) elicited two lists of Zuni expressions for color, List 1 "without help of stimulus materials" and List II "given by ten informants for twenty-four selected stimulus colors" from Munsell chips. Only List II tallies individuals who volunteered each expression, shown in Table I. The table extracts from both lists all expressions that mainly mean 'yellow.' Since Lexeme A is unidentified, the table includes all candidates. Lhupzʔi-nna is placed among them because -nna adapts the lexeme to static color chips, which do not age, wilt, or adorn the path of life.30 In free recall, lhupzʔi-nna and je:lhupzʔiqananne (without -nna) occur in equal proportion, one form each. But in chip naming, lhupz?i-nna occurs in at least 8 expressions volunteered by 16 individuals while lhupzʔi (without -nna) occurs in 3 forms from 4 individuals, leaving aside the three expressions prefixed with yu- that incorporate -na in combination with other suffixes, -ti or both -ti and -n; -na has two meanings.31 Those are all the published data. From them, we might infer that lhupzʔi-nna is 30 To this writer, a lexeme is a root or stem plus all its derivations, which would define lhupzʔi- and

lhupzʔi-nna as one lexeme. But some investigators would call any such different forms separate lexemes. We cannot be sure what Newman meant.

31 "The fundamental grammatical distinction is that between those terms which are basically verbal. . .and those based on nouns and particles (which Newman groups as substantives). . .. Most of the verbs are in class (10b) which, generally have reference to change of state, i.e., becoming [Note 15:... be/become angry, be/become chapped, be/become winter, be/become sore, be swung around]. For identifying color samples, these are usually in a form with static suffix (-na, -nna). naming an apprehended color state. With other common affixes, e.g. the indefinite yu- 'sort of, approximately and inchoative –ti 'beginning to be’, used singly or together, these verbs afford a degree of flexibility in reference to variations in hue

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the basic color term; eight individuals used it in a manner that warranted the simplest gloss, "yellow." In no case does lhupzʔi name color without qualification, and -nna appears to be among the simplest of qualifiers.32 Lhupzʔi-nna is the most plausible candidate for Newman's Lexeme A, which would name the dominant vantage in Figure 18. In this use, lhupzʔi-nna would eschew the meaning of "become" to assume the meaning of "be," taking only the first option of Newman's two-part gloss. Another qualification of lhupzʔi, without -nna. would constitute Lexeme B, perhaps lhupzʔin plus any of its postposed modifiers. Some languages name coextensive vantages with one root versus its qualifications (MacLaury 1997a: 324-338, figs. 10.25-28, p. 499n9) or with opposing qualifications of one root (fig. 2.20); both cases are called qualifier coextension (§10.4).

Lhupzʔi-nna may act as a default form when naming the dominant vantage, with its suffix and the sense of "become" semantically bleached. Burgess, Kempton, and MacLaury (1983: 142-143, table 1) report on Tarahumara (Uto-Aztecan) speakers who designate high or low membership in the cool category by qualifying its root name, siyó-, respectively as siyókame or siyóname. However, although qualifying the color-term root is obligatory in Tarahumara, some individuals neutralize the semantic value of qualification by qualifying all uses of the root with only -kame. Such would disclaim whatever Whorfian effect we might attribute to the obligation to postpose qualifiers in Tarahumara. To this writer, then, the qualification lhupzʔi-nna in Zuni does not suggest particular thought over and above merely categorizing yellow.

The present interpretation leaves loose ends among the Zuni data, namely the other lexemes, such as ʔoneyanne and ʔateyanne. A fuller model appears in Appendix II.

or shade.... most color terms, however, are derived nouns with a suffix -na 'be on the surface of. . . .jeli 'paint, clay', a noun. . .occurs. . .in ielhupzʔiqananne... color words form a significant part of the Zuni lexicon [Note 16:.. .5% of the entries in Newman's dictionary], are of frequent occurrence in texts (both myths and texts.. .of daily life), and that color symbolism is pervasive in Zuni art and ritual" (Hickerson 1975: 326-327). Newman