Chapter 4. Spanish basic colour categories are 11 or 12 depending on the dialect

Abstract

A colour-term elicitation task was used to estimate basic colour terms (BCTs) in three Spanish dialects. In Castilian (spoken in Spain) and Mexican, eleven BCTs were identified, compared to twelve in Uruguayan, including celeste “sky blue”. The six primary BCTs and three derived BCTs appeared identical in all three dialects; however, terms for “brown” and “purple” revealed dialectal variation. An Extremes naming task was used to estimate the equivalence relation between BCT counterparts in the three dialects. A Boundary delimitation task was employed to demarcate boundaries of the basic colour categories in a*b*-plane of CIELAB. The task enabled mapping the denotata of the Uruguayan-specific BCT celeste. Results are discussed in the framework of the debate of universal versus language-specific factors.