color classification of some central canadian eskimos

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Color Classification of Some Central Canadian Eskimos Author(s): Albert C. Heinrich Source: Arctic Anthropology, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1974), pp. 68-72 Published by: University of Wisconsin Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40315836 . Accessed: 14/06/2014 06:36 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . University of Wisconsin Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Arctic Anthropology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 195.78.109.66 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 06:36:26 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Color Classification of Some Central Canadian Eskimos

Color Classification of Some Central Canadian EskimosAuthor(s): Albert C. HeinrichSource: Arctic Anthropology, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1974), pp. 68-72Published by: University of Wisconsin PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40315836 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 06:36

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of Wisconsin Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to ArcticAnthropology.

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Page 2: Color Classification of Some Central Canadian Eskimos

COLOR CLASSIFICATION OF SOME CENTRAL CANADIAN ESKIMOS1

ALBERT C. HEINRICH

ABSTRACT

In summer 1972, nine middle-aged Eskimo- speaking persons (three female and six male) of Rankin Inlet, N.W.T. were interviewed for color terminology. Testing materials were the Berlin- Kay Color Chart, the Munsell Books of Color and the Ishihara Color Blindness Test. Results indi- cate that:

(a) Not all Central Eskimos have the same color systems. Their systems differ in some significant details.

(b) There is a generic similarity among these systems, however, as well as a generic similarity with the color systems of the Bering Straits Eskimos.

(c) The Sapir- Whorf formulation, for color

among these people, is very seriously challenged.

(d) Both the universality and the evolutionary formulations of Berlin and Kay receive tentative support.

(e) Though several differences in color naming were discovered, all informants produced essentially the same sorts of color maps and generally used the same linguistic processes for performing the mapping.

The data from the nine informants were proc- essed in terms of four factors: native terminology, hue, chroma and light value and were classified into five systems.2

SYSTEM A

Two people from Chesterfield Inlet, one person from Wager Bay and one from Baker Lake were the informants. These people have terms for Black, White, Red, Yellow, Green/Blue, and Brown.3 They do not have Grey as a named category but use vari-

ous derivatives of the morphemes for Black and White to designate both chromatic and achromatic Greys. They are very much more prone than the other in- formants to using combination terms, e.g., Whitish- Red, Red-Brown, etc.

SYSTEM B

One person from the Garry Lakes served as the informant source. This man has the same color map as System A, but he has a distinct term, aqsialuq, for Grey. This term is used for both chromatic and achromatic Grey.

SYSTEM C

A middle-aged man born at Coral Harbor and raised at Iglulik was the informant. This man has Black, White, Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, Brown and Grey. His Green and Brown are "poorly developed";

financial support was provided by Canada Council Grant S72-0165, "Systematics of Canadian Eskimo Color Terminology. "

2Typed version of field notes, data manipula- tion and conclusions are on file with Canada Coun- cil, 151 Sparks Street, P.O. Box 1047, Ottawa, Canada, KIP 5V8. The present paper is intended to be primarily a data presentation paper. Theo- retical conclusions are to be published in a later paper.

3Color words here subsume the primary terms and derived terms such as Blackish, Pale Red, Off- Yellow, etc.

68

Arctic Anthropology XI-1, 1974

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Page 3: Color Classification of Some Central Canadian Eskimos

Heinrich: Color Classification of Central Canadian Eskimos 69

he makes responses for these colors very seldom, but when he does, they are in the right places. He has a distinct term, siangnaq for chromatic Grey, and for achromatic Greys uses off-White and off- Black terms. In addition, he says that light Greys are kutyuq-like; kutyuq is a term he uses for very light RP.4 He also has a distinct term, aqsyialuq, that he uses (only) for very dark chips in the Y and GY hue range. This system would be early stage VII in the Berlin-Kay scheme.

SYSTEM D

Information for System D is derived from two persons from the Queen Maud-Prince William area. This system has very much the same shape as Sys- tems A and B. It differs from both of them in that it has distinct terms for Green and Blue, using sunga- and tungu- bases respectively for these colors. It differs from Systems B and C in that it has no dis- tinct term for Grey.

SYSTEM E

Information for this system was derived from a man who spent all of his youth and young adulthood in the interior, in the Palei area. This man employs the morphemes for Black, White, Red, Yellow, Blue, Green and Brown, but whether he has seven or six or five domains cannot definitely be established. He uses the sunga- and tungu- that Eskimos usually use for Green and Blue, but he does not have them completely differentiated. His sunga- responses more frequently refer to Green and Greenish chips, but sometimes refer to Bluish chips as well. His tungu- responses tend to show a marked tendency toward Blue but include a large number of Greenish chips as well. Both of these are not completely separated from Yellow - a feature also found in Systems C and D, which are also bimorphemic for Green/Blue. He gave very few responses, and un- certain ones at that, for Brown. He had no term for Grey.

AREAS AND FOCI

Primary Black is called qiqnixtuq by all inform- ants. This term is usually restricted to chips truly

and completely Black, or so nearly completely Black that the observer considers it the functional equiv- alent of real Black. Real, pure, genuine Black is called qiqnaxiqtuq , or some similar formation con- taining the non-final -iq- postbase. Blackish chips, those that are nearly Black but contain some de- tectable chroma or light, are given off-terms such as qiqnayuxtuq , qiqnangayuq , etc. The situation is the same, but in mirror image, with White. White and Black can be said to have: (a) a primary area. This includes the focal (real Black, real White) area and the area over which functional Black (White) prevails; (b) within the primary area there is a focal, nucleus area which is real, completely Black (or White); (c) shading away from the primary area (along the neutral axis of the color solid as well as into the chromatic hues) there is a peripheral area where Blackish (Whitish) terms have their domain, or domains.5

The situation is much the same for Red and Yellow as well as for Blue and Green where those colors are differentiated. For those systems that have only one term for Green/Blue, there are two foci within the domain, both of which may take the focal term (see Fig. 1). Coding of the choices for the good (ideal, best, prettiest, etc.) tungu- chips for the monomorphemic systems (Green through Blue range all called by words of a tungu- base) produced these two focal areas. These fall in the same two areas as the focal areas (also derived by coding the informants1 choice of chips) that bimorphemic sys- tem informants chose for sunga- and tungu- (Green and Blue). The Sapir-Whorf postulation that lin- guistic categories impinge on perception seems to be contradicted here.

Brown actually is two things - unsaturated (usually), low light value RP, and low light value, saturated (or nearly saturated) YR and Y. Informants readily give a term for ideal (focal) Brown, but they have difficulty in pinpointing what is representative of it, a difficulty not encountered with the other chromatic hues. The two allomorphs for Brown are not differentially applied to the two (slightly over- lapping) Brown areas.

ANALYSIS OF COLOR TERMS

Terms for White and Black are monolexemic ac- cording to the Berlin-Kay definition, but the terms for chromatics are not. They are very "transparent": auk, blood, Red; quqt urine, Yellow; tunguq, liver, Blue, Green/Blue; sungaq, bile, Green, qayuq, blood soup, Brown. Terms for primary areas are: Red: ^unsell hue designations are R, YR, Y, GY, G,

BG, B, PB, P & RP. When giving hue designations, I use these symbols. For (my perception) of the English color categories, I use the ordinary English terms.

5For those systems who have a morpheme for Grey, it is much the same with that term.

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Page 4: Color Classification of Some Central Canadian Eskimos

jO Arctic Anthropology XI- 1

aupalluktuq or aupayaaxtuq; Yellow: quqsuxtuq; Blue (and Green/Blue in systems that do not dis- tinguish terminologically): tunguxtuq and/or tun- guyuxtuq; Green: sungaxtuq or sunguyaxtuq; Brown: qayuxtuq.

These terms show a gradation which is sup- portive of the evolutionary formulation of Berlin and Kay. The base for Red is not simply auk, but either aupallu- or aupayaax-, apparently auk (with loss of k) plus -pa- (augmentative of some sort) plus another non-final suffix plus the -tuq/-yuq ending. Yellow has the base, quq, plus the non-final suffix (which usually is realized as -u-) plus -tuq/-yuq. The Green and Blue terms sometimes appear without the non-final suffix and sometimes with it. The term for Brown is qayuxtuq, qayuq plus -tuq/-yuqt i.e., without the -u- non-final suffix. Terms used specifically for Grey sometimes have the -tuq/ -yuq ending, and sometimes do not, e.g., siangnaq. This progression from etymological obscurity (of terms for Black and White) to morphological simplicity (in case of Brown and Grey) does not prove the order in which the terms were added, or the order in which the categories were established, but it does make the evolutionary formulation seem reasonable.

COLOR AREAS AND TERMINOLOGY

For Black, White, Red, Yellow, Green/Blue (for the systems that have only one term for this area), Blue and Green (for the systems that are bimorphemic for this area), Brown and Grey (for the systems that have a separate term for it), there is always a term that designates what I call the primary area. The term for this area is always the simplest of the terms constructed on that base: Black, qiqnixtuq; White, qaquxtuq/ qualluxtuq; Red, aupalluktuq/ aupayaaxtuq; Yellow, quqsuxtuq; Green/Blue, tun- guyuxtuq;6 Green, sungaxtuq; Brown, qayuxtuq; Grey, siangnaq and aqsianaq/ aqsialuq. For Red, Yellow, Green and Blue the primary term designates a comparatively small range within which certain neighboring hues are considered by the informants to be good, valid representatives of this color. (See Fig. 1.) The area is perceptually constant, i.e., the informant exhibits very little hesitation or ambivalence in selecting the chips that belong in the category, and he will make the same or very nearly the same selections if retested. There is also a very good consistency between informants and between systems. For these four colors the primary areas are always located on the surface of the color solid and are peaks of chroma.

In systems that have only one term for Green/ Blue, there are two primary areas, one where Green and the other where Blue are located in the bi- morphemic systems. Sometimes the chips of the two Green/Blue primary areas are termed by the same, and sometimes by different, primary terms derived from the tungu- stem (see footnote 6).

Black and White follow the same terminological pattern, but the primary areas are small areas around the "South" and "North Poles" of the color solid. In one of the systems where Grey is a named cate- gory, it is localized around 5 light value on the Neutral axis and extends to most 4 and 5 light value chromatic chips of chroma value 1 and 2. In the other system that has a term for Grey, it is ap- plied only to chromatic chips of 4 and 5 light value that have chroma values 1 and 2, and the achromatic Greys are, as in Systems A, B, D and E, given off- White and off-Black terms.7

Brown is a special case. It is two things: un- saturated, low light value RP and saturated low light value YR and Y. The terminology for Eskimo Brown follows the same pattern as the other color terms, but informants have some difficulty in saying what is good Brown and what is off-Brown, i.e. there is no consensus as to a focal area, nor are there the statistically definable two focal areas. There are just two overlapping primary areas, to which the two allomorphs for Brown are, rather indiscriminately, assigned.

The primary terms were usually the ones first elicited on a spontaneous recitation of color terms. Where the informants were presented with the Books of Color (or a pile of chips removed from them) and asked to begin giving color terms (without being directed to specific chips), these primary terms and chips tended to be the ones informants focused on first.

Within each chromatic primary area there are a very few, perhaps no more than four, chips that can be called focal. These are the ones that the informants consider to be the best, the ideal, the prettiest and the most representative of that color. Except for Brown, the informants showed very little hesitancy in picking these particular chips and showed remarkable constancy in retes ting, though they varied a bit from one informant to another. Ex- cept for Brown, all chips chosen as focal were the highest chroma - regardless of light value - for that particular hue band. They also tended to be those that were relatively high in chroma as compared with neighboring hue bands. The chips chosen as the best Browns were not maxima for their hues, but usually were the saturated ones at that light value of their hue. The term that designates the focal chip or chips contains -iq- as the element that pre- cedes the final -tuq/ -yuq, e.g., quqsuxiqtuq. Ex-

6May also be tunguxtuq, or even tunguyuyuxtuq . In bimorphemic systems one of the two shorter terms is used for primary Blue. In the unimorphemic sys- tems, one of these terms tends to focus more on Green and the other on Blue, with considerable overlap. 7Usually terms used only for medium Greys.

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Page 5: Color Classification of Some Central Canadian Eskimos

Heinrich: Color Classification of Central Canadian Eskimos 71

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Page 6: Color Classification of Some Central Canadian Eskimos

72 Arctic Anthropology XI- 1

cept for Brown, the bases used for focal terms are the same as those used for primary areas.

Surrounding and underlying each primary area is a large and indefinitely bounded area, the periph- eral area, where the color is perceived, but per- ceived as not being truly or completely of that color. The boundaries of the peripheral areas are vague for the informants. They had difficulty in placing non-primary chips from the Munsell Books of Color and showed considerable ambivalence in drawing boundaries on the Berlin-Kay color chart. And on retesting for both, they often gave highly variable responses. Among the postbases employed were -ciax-, -yanga-, -aya-, -uyu-% -lak-, -luq-, qayax-, -su-, -vallay- and others, covering a range of meanings that includes: little, tendency, inclined toward, deficiency, obscurity, sliding (from), futurity, probably. The bases for primary terms were employed here, but so were allomorphs.

No allomorphs were recorded for Black, Yellow, Green and Blue. Red is a special case. The in- formant for System C employed the base aupayaax- consistently for all Red and Reddish terms; inform- ants for the other terms used aupalluk- as the base for primary and focal Red and for some peripheral Red terms, but they also used the aupayaax- base for the latter. Brown and White have undisputable allomorphs. For Brown the focal term is consistently qatcuxiqtuq, while off-Brown terms are built on both the qayuq- and the qatcux- bases. For White the allomorph quallux- is frequently used, and the Sys- tem D informants used, additionally, a number of terms built on a qat- base, such as qataxtuq, qatan- gasuq, qatsatuq and others.

Three morphemes were found for Grey and Grey- ish: siangnaq {siangnax-); aqsialuk (aqsialux-); kutyuq (kutyux-). The first was used in System B for all Greys, the second in System C for light value 2 (Blackish) chips in Y and GY, and the third in System C for light chromatic Greys. Kutyux- was also used for Whitish terms, specially light Pinkish and Lavender. The term kutyuq was re- stricted to light value 9 chips 10P, 2.5RP, 5P and 10 RP, all of which have chroma values of 2.

DISTRIBUTION OF THE COLORS

Figure 1 is a composite mapping of the colors of the systems. This is an average, so to speak, of the main features, with variation and idiosyn- cratic features that are judged unimportant omitted or averaged out.8 Except for System C, where the informant consistently places his focal Red one light value lower than do the other informants, the averaging out does not delete much data. Bounding

peripheral areas in this manner, however, does in- volve some arbitration and eliminates information on variability. It also fails to show the amount of overlapping of peripheral areas. This mapping, the form of which is adapted from the Berlin-Kay color chart, shows only the highest chroma value at each light value of each hue. It thereby eliminates all data pertaining to unsaturated colors. Fortunately, this does not skew the picture very much except for Brown.

8Detailed and specific information on the colors and systems are to be published in a later theoret- ical paper.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berlin, Brent and Paul Kay 1969 Basic Color Terms: Their Universality

and Evolution. Berkeley and Los Angeles.

Hays, David G., Enid Margolis, Raoul Naroll and Dale Perkins

1972 Color Term Salience. American Anthro- pologist 74-5:1107.

Hill, Jane H. and Kenneth C. Hill 1970 A Note on Uto-Aztecan Color Terminol-

ogies. Anthropological Linguistics 12-7: 231.

Ishihara, Shinobu 1971 Tests for Colour-Blindness. Kanehara

Shuppan, Tokyo.

Rivers, W. H. R. 1902 The Color Vision of the Eskimo. In Pro-

ceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 11-2:143.

Snow, David L. 1971 Samoan Color Terminology: A Note on the

Universality and Evolutionary Ordering of Color Terms. Anthropological Linguistics 13-8:385.

Westcott, Roger W. 1970 Bini Color Terms. Anthropological Lin-

guistics 12-9:349.

The University of Calgary Calgary Alberta

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