How To Catch A Russian Spy

Dec 6, 2011 by

How To Catch A Russian Spy

One interesting way in which a person’s (native) language reveals itself is the so-called Stroop effect, which can be illustrated with the image below (from Wikipedia). If you look at the first set of words, it’s not that...

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It’s not all black and white

Nov 30, 2011 by

It’s not all black and white

As was discussed in earlier postings, the cross-linguistic range of color terms is quite complex and languages differ as to how the treat the color spectrum (e.g., see how Hanunoo does it). But interestingly, not all uses of color...

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Name your color

Jul 8, 2011 by

As was discussed in earlier postings, the cross-linguistic range of color terms is quite complex and languages differ as to how the treat the color spectrum (e.g., see how Hanunoo does it). No surprise then that children have much...

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Grue? Bleen? Rellow?

Mar 18, 2011 by

In the previous posting, I mentioned the concept of “grue”, a color that extends to include both shades of green and shades of blue. The term itself is a blend of “green” and “blue” (I personally...

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Hanunoo Color Categories

Mar 16, 2011 by

In an important paper published in Southwestern Journal of Anthropology in 1955, Harold Conklin presented a description of the color categorization system of Hanunoo, a Philippine language spoken in the southern part of the Mindoro...

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