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From: dcs2e@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson)
Subject: Re: Languages: Hard, Harder, Hardest
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Date: Fri, 26 Jul 1996 18:38:02 GMT
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In article <4ta9m6$dck@news.ox.ac.uk>
patrick@gryphon.psych.ox.ac.uk (Patrick Juola) writes:

> Bzzzt.  No such language(s) exist.  Language that have only three "basic
> color terms" have an extensive variety of metaphors to describe shadings;
> e.g. "red like a banana" vs. "red like blood".  If you check the responses
> to Berlin and Kay's admittedly well-done experiment in color perception,
> you'll see that much of the criticism hinges on this very point -- when
> is a word a "basic color term" or not.  For example, Berlin and Kay don't
> consider "mauve" a color word in English, according to their published
> criteria.


OK, "red like a banana" ain't bad, but when it comes to infuriated do
we say "angry like ... something or other," and for tower do we say
"tall-rock-tent," and so on?  At some point this grows tedious.  You
also said nothing about numbers.  For eighteen do we say "four like the
number of seeds in a such and such plant"?  


David

"Heideggerian hope comes into question." J.D.
