Psychophysiological and Linguistic Components in Russian-language Colour Names

Abstract

The paper examines the problem of generation of colour names that are not associated with objects (e.g., blue, green) and the object-associated ones (e.g., lemon, rose).  Using multidimensional scaling of colour names, a universal semantic space for object-associated and non-object-associated colour names was obtained. Non-object-associated colour names provided a more stable configuration of stimulus points, compared to object-associated ones. The results suggest that generation of non-object-associated colour names is determined by psychophysiology of colour vision, whereas the generation of object-associated ones involves verbal experience.