random threads from my last long babble

[anadamous]

To keep from getting too out of control, I decided to place some wilder tangents from my last entry into a new one:

Comments

[once_a_banana]

I like your idea that romanticized characters in ancient writing could easily be described with unfeasible colors :-)

But the central point of Berlin and Kay's work (and more recent work modifying their claims)-and this is actually the real majority view, though Cecil doesn't seem to know it-is that our neural responses, as one of your sources discusses a bit, have peaks based on pairs of opponent cells. So if you have a term that can get used for both yellow and green, as many languages do, then what someone calls the "best example" of the color will tend to be what we would call focal green or focal yellow, and not something more like chartreuse. So it doesn't really matter that the same word for Helen's hair could apply to a green thing-her hair could still be quite yellow and there's no inconsistency. You can have a language with just two terms, and then ask people to pick out good examples of the "warm/light" color, and they'll point to things that look quite red, or quite white, or quite yellow, etc. The interesting part

[anadamous]

Yeah, recent rigorous studies have been such a blow to Whorf. That's why iuncluded that last source. Man, Whorf was such a revelation to me Freshman year, because he was saying everything I was trying to articulate about isolation and alienation, but then I got tired of standing on such metaphysically shaky ground.

[anadamous]

Oh oh oh, and the other thing is that I think there are other words used for yellow or yellow/brown in the Iliad, and that Helen's hair and like one other thing are the only outliers for "green", but this I would have to check on for sure. Maybe tetetetigi would know. Anyway, if Helen was the only outlier, that would somewhat support my kidding Iliad=Anime hypothesis.

[once_a_banana]

Yeah that would be awesome-she's so full of "nature" and vitality, like any number of green-haired goddesses from all our favorite video games :-)

[davedash]

My favorite story was that of the evil scientist who made all his evil people white.

[anadamous]

Yeah, that was pretty hilarious. And then they came off the island, and they were all bestial and monkey-like! And yet they were able to sow dissent among the humans!