A Comparative Study on the Classification of Basic Color Terms by Undergraduates from Yi Nationality, Bai Nationality and Naxi Nationality
彝族、白族和纳西族大学生的基本颜色词分类

Introduction The relation between color terms and color cognition is a core issue in cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics since it concerns the relation between language and cognition. Up till now, three distinct theories concerning this issue have emerged. The theory of color-term evolution argues that color terms and color cognition are mutually independent. On the other hand, the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis holds the view that color terms affect color cognition. A compromised view between the two suggests that there is universal pattern of human color cognition, but color cognition is also influenced by language and culture. In the present study the three hypotheses mentioned above were examined by comparing students coming from three nationalities in China. These three nationalities were Yi, Bai, and Naxi. All of them lived in Yunnan Province located in Southwest China. Method Two hundred and thirty-eight undergraduate students (105 males and 133 females) coming from two universities in Yunnan province took part in the study. Among the students, 85 (42 males & 43 females) came from the Yi Nationality, 93 (31 males & 62 females) came from the Bai Nationality, 60 (32 males & 28 females) came from the Naxi Nationality. The materials used were 11 Chinese basic color terms: black, white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, palm, gray and pink. The participants were asked to classify the 11 color terms according to their own criteria. The responses were analyzed using multi-dimensional scaling. Results and Conclusion The results showed that students from the three nationalities were consistent in their classification of basic color terms in general. However, there were also noticeable cultural differences in terms of the number and content of the categories and in terms of semantic meaning dimensions of the basic color terms. These differences reflect the effect of culture and language on color cognition.