Basic Color Terms in Old Norse Icelandic: A Quantitative Study

Abstract

In Basic Color Terms (1969), Brent Berlin and Paul Kay maintain that a language adds basic color terms in a particular order: 1: black, white; 2: black, white, red; 3a: black, white, red, green; 3b: black white, red, yellow; 4: black, white, red, yellow, green; 5: black, white, red, yellow, green, blue; 6: black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, brown; 7: black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, grey. Since then, there has been some elaboration and criticism of  their conclusions, and in response to these, the two linguist-anthropologists have modified them.

 Old Norse-Icelandic has eight basic color terms. Recent analyses of these have largely supported Berlin and Kay’s evolutionary sequence, though it has been argued that grey (grár) should be assigned an early stage, blue (blár) a late stage, green (grœnn) a stage earlier than yellow (gulr), and brown (brúnn) a fairly late stage.

This article presents a quantitative study of basic color terms in the Sagas and þættir of Icelanders in order to explore, if there is a correlation between the frequencies of these terms and the proposed sequence, although it is recognized that there may not necessarily be a correlation between synchronic frequencies of usage and diachronic stage of introduction. A striking difference between these sequences and the evolutionary order proposed by Berlin and Kay is the prominence of rauðr. The reason for the relative infrequent use of svartr and hvítr in comparison with rauðr may be that the two achromatic color terms have near-synonyms, whereas rjóðr is the only near-synonym for rauðr. Blár, too, is common, but since it originally meant a dark color and did not attach firmly to the blue spectrum until the late fourteenth century most of the occurrences of blár should probably be grouped with svartr. With regard to brúnn, grœnn, and gulr, the frequency study supports the above proposed sequence in that gulr should be assigned a late stage and after grœnn and brúnn. It is concluded that while there seems to be no correlation between the (proposed) date of composition of the individual sagas and their frequency and variety of basic color terms, there seems to be a correlation between the frequency of basic color terms in Old Norse-Icelandic and the implicational ordering of those terms according to the Berlin and Kay hierarchy and the amended version for Old Norse-Icelandic.