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Color Dictionaries and Corpora

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Encyclopedia of Color Science and Technology

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Definition

In the study of linguistics, a corpus is a data set of naturally occurring language (speech or writing) that can be used to generate or test linguistic hypotheses. The study of color naming worldwide has been carried out using three types of data sets: (1) corpora of empirical color-naming data collected from native speakers of many languages; (2) scholarly data sets where the color terms are obtained from dictionaries, wordlists, and other secondary sources; and (3) philological data sets based on analysis of ancient texts.

History of Color Name Corpora and Scholarly Data Sets

In the middle of the nineteenth century, color-name data sets were primarily from philological analyses of ancient texts [1, 2]. Analyses of living languages soon followed, based on the reports of European missionaries and colonialists [3, 4]. In the twentieth century, influential data sets were elicited directly from native speakers [5], finally culminating in full-fledged empirical corpora of color...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Optometry, Department of Optometry, Ohio State University, 338 W. 10th Ave, 43210-1240, Columbus, OH, USA

    Angela M. Brown

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  1. Angela M. Brown
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Correspondence to Angela M. Brown .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Design University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom

    Ronnier Luo

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Brown, A.M. (2015). Color Dictionaries and Corpora. In: Luo, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Color Science and Technology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27851-8_54-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27851-8_54-1

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-27851-8

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