Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.
Advertisement
Scientific Reports volume 13, Article number: 1836 (2023)
3
Metrics details
Matters Arising to this article was published on 01 February 2023
The Original Article was published on 27 September 2021
arising from: M. Josserand et al.; Scientific Reports https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-98550-3 (2021).
Recently in this journal, Josserand et al.1 argued that high exposure to UV-B light is an important factor in a language’s failing to lexically distinguish green and blue. As noted previously2,3, there is a correlation, globally, between (1) societies living in areas with high levels of exposure to UV-B light and (2) the tendency for languages in those societies to lack separate basic color terms for green and blue. Such languages, instead, have either a single term spanning green and blue, referred to as a “grue” term, or a term that merges green and blue with black and other dark shades. It has been proposed that this correlation is caused in part by premature lens aging. While this hypothesis is attractive at first glance, given that UV-B exposure can lead to more rapid yellowing of the eye’s crystalline lens, it overlooks two well-established facts, one about color vision and one about color naming.
First, chromatic adaptation in the visual system compensates for a wide range of prevailing illuminations, ensuring that the perceived color of objects remains relatively constant across different lighting conditions. This phenomenon, known as color constancy4,5, is particularly robust at the level of color categorization6, which is the level that is important for color naming. Chromatic adaptation and other perceptual mechanisms that support color constancy compensate for changes in the overall retinal illuminance caused by aging of the ocular media of the eye (i.e., “lens brunescence”), as well. The same neural mechanisms that ensure that a green apple appears green in the middle of the day or at sunset ensure that the apple appears green to a young child and an older adult.
Hardy et al.7 demonstrated that optical media (crystalline lens, cornea, etc.) brunescence is thoroughly compensated at the level of color naming across the age span of normal, healthy adults. In this study, younger (mean age = 23.2) and older (mean age = 73.9) adults were asked to name a range of standardized color samples. Across the 41-fold range of optical media opacity for participants in this sample, use of the English color term “blue” remained constant (R2 = 0.009, p = 0.89). These findings indicate that even a very large amount of lens brunescence is insufficient to affect color naming in the manner suggested by Josserand et al.1
Second, Berlin and Kay8, based on color naming data collected from 20 languages and examination of 78 additional cases from the published literature, concluded that there is a predictable progression through which most languages develop basic color terms. The specific account of color term evolution proposed there has since been significantly modified and simplified, mainly on the basis of color naming data collected in situ from 110 (at the time) unwritten languages9. But the initial qualitative finding of Berlin and Kay, namely that there exist substantial predictable regularities across languages in their color naming systems, has been corroborated. For example, no known language has distinct words for blue and green and yet fails to have distinct terms for red and yellow. These cross-language patterns of color naming have been explained in terms that do not rely on lens brunescence but instead on the similarity of colors, communicative need, or a combination of the two10,11,12,13. Therefore, a more parsimonious explanation for why some languages lack a particular set of color terms is based in need: such a distinction may not be sufficiently important to have arisen in that culture. According to Berlin and Kay8, “as a culture becomes technologically more complex, speakers have more frequent need to distinguish objects by their colors” (p. 512). With an increase in the number and variety of trade goods and other objects available in a society, accompanying, for example, the advent of manufacturing, and contact with languages of previously industrialized societies, there is increased pressure on the language used in that society to add color terms. This argument is supported by the observation that distance from the equator (and thus low UV-B exposure), level of technology, and number of basic color terms are positively correlated14,15,16. Thus, the correlation of grue terms with high levels of UV-B exposure could simply reflect the fact that grue terms tend to occur in less technologically complex societies, which tend to be spoken in high UV-B areas. An appeal to lens brunescence is not necessary to explain the geographical distribution of languages with grue terms.
One final consideration concerns historical language change. For example, Old Japanese had a grue term, ao(i), probably appearing between 500 and 650 CE, which now serves as the common term for blue. The present common term for green, midori, entered late Old Japanese or Early Middle Japanese sometime after 75017,18. Thus, Japanese has shifted from having a grue term to now having separate terms for green and blue. Similarly, but much more recently, the Nafaanra language, spoken in Ghana, had a grue/dark term in 1978 but now has distinct terms for green and blue19. We are not aware of any evidence that the amount of UV-B exposure in Japan or Ghana has decreased markedly over the relevant time periods. A more parsimonious explanation is that these two languages have followed a natural pattern of language evolution from fewer to more basic color terms, as the cultural need for a finer-grained color vocabulary increased.
For these reasons, we conclude that normal lens brunescence is unlikely to affect color perception enough to alter color naming and is, in any event, unnecessary to explain patterns of color naming and their geographic distribution. A limitation of the current literature is that little is known about the epidemiology of lens brunescence in high UV-B environments. Further empirical research into the rate of brunescence in geographic areas in question would aid our understanding of this issue.
Josserand, M., Meeussen, E., Majid, A. & Dediu, D. Environment and culture shape both the colour lexicon and the genetics of colour perception. Sci. Rep. 11, 19095 (2021).
Article ADS CAS Google Scholar
Bornstein, M. H. Color vision and color naming: A psychophysiological hypothesis of cultural difference. Psychol. Bull. 80, 257–285 (1973).
Article CAS Google Scholar
Lindsey, D. T. & Brown, A. M. Color naming and the phototoxic effects of sunlight on the eye. Psychol. Sci. 13, 506–512 (2002).
Article Google Scholar
Hering, E. Outlines of a Theory of the Light Sense (Harvard University Press, 1964).
Google Scholar
von Helmholtz, H. Treatise on Physiological Optics (Optical Society of America, 1924).
Google Scholar
Olkkonen, M., Witzel, C., Hansen, T. & Gegenfurtner, K. R. Categorical color constancy for real surfaces. J. Vis. 10(9), 16 (2010).
Article Google Scholar
Hardy, J. L., Frederick, C. M., Kay, P. & Werner, J. S. Color naming, lens aging, and grue: What the optics of the aging eye can teach us about color language. Psychol. Sci. 16, 321–327 (2005).
Article Google Scholar
Berlin, B. & Kay, P. Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution (Univ of California Press, 1969).
Google Scholar
Kay, P., Berlin, B., Maffi, L., Merrifield, W. R. & Cook, R. The World Color Survey (Center for the Study of Language and Information, 2009).
Google Scholar
Gibson, E. et al. Color naming across languages reflects color use. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 114(40), 10785–10790 (2017).
Article ADS CAS Google Scholar
Zaslavsky, N., Kemp, C., Regier, T. & Tishby, N. Efficient compression in color naming and its evolution. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 115(31), 7937–7942 (2018).
Article ADS CAS Google Scholar
Zaslavsky, N., Kemp, C., Tishby, N. & Regier, T. Communicative need in colour naming. Cogn. Neuropsychol. 37(5–6), 312–324 (2020).
Article Google Scholar
Twomey, C. R., Roberts, G., Brainard, D. H. & Plotkin, J. B. What we talk about when we talk about colors. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 118(39), e2109237118 (2021).
Article CAS Google Scholar
Ember, M. Size of Color Lexicon: Interaction of cultural and biological factors. Am. Anthropol. 80, 364–367 (1978).
Article Google Scholar
Hays, D. G., Margolis, E., Naroll, R. & Perkins, D. R. Color term salience. Am. Anthropol. 74, 1107–1121 (1972).
Article Google Scholar
Naroll, R. What have we learned from cross-cultural surveys?. Am. Anthropol. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1970.72.6.02a00030 (1970).
Article Google Scholar
Frellesvig, B. A History of the Japanese Language (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Book Google Scholar
Stanlaw, J. Language, contact, and vantages: Fifteen hundred years of Japanese color terms. Lang. Sci. 32, 196–224 (2010).
Article Google Scholar
Zaslavsky, N., Garvin, K., Kemp, C., Tishby, N. & Regier, T. The evolution of color naming reflects pressure for efficiency: Evidence from the recent past. J. Lang. Evol. (in press).
Download references
aNUma, Inc, San Rafael, CA, 94901, USA
Joseph L. Hardy
Department of Ophthalmology and Vision Science, University of California, Sacramento, CA, 95817, USA
John S. Werner
Department of Linguistics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA
Terry Regier & Paul Kay
Cognitive Science Program, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA
Terry Regier
Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, 94305, USA
Paul Kay
Sapience Practice, Reno, NV, 89502, USA
Christina M. Frederick
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar
J.L.H. drafted the first version of the manuscript. J.S.W., T.R., P.K., and C.M.F. made substantial contributions to the writing and editing of the manuscript.
Correspondence to Joseph L. Hardy.
Authors declare no competing interests.
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Reprints and Permissions
Hardy, J.L., Werner, J.S., Regier, T. et al. Sunlight exposure cannot explain “grue” languages. Sci Rep 13, 1836 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-28280-1
Download citation
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-28280-1
Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:
Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.
Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative
By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.
Advertisement
© 2023 Springer Nature Limited
Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.