The World Color Survey [WCS] is a research project that was undertaken to validate, invalidate or – most likely – modify the main findings of Berlin and Kay (1969) [B&K]: (1) that there exist universal cross-linguistic constraints on color naming, and (2) that basic color terminology systems tend to develop in a partially fixed order. To this end, the WCS collected color naming data from speakers of 110 unwritten languages. The data have recently been compiled into a unified data archive, available online.
The WCS stimulus array. The rows correspond to 10 levels of Munsell value (lightness), and the columns correspond to 40 equally spaced Munsell hues, from R2.5 in column 1 to RP10 in column 40. The color in each cell corresponds approximately to the maximum available Munsell chroma for that hue–value combination.
Contour plot of WCS best-example choices compared with best examples of English color terms. Berlin and Kay reported more than one best-example choice for several of the English color terms; all best-example choices are displayed here.
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