Abstract This paper is a collection of theories dealing with the hierarchy of color terms and some of the arguments

they provide. First, the initial theory of Berlin and Kay (1969) is described, followed by some attempts to explain why such a hierarchy exists. These include neural responses to visual information, cognitive universals that lead to learning biases, and a reflection of the extralinguistic world. The opposing view is later introduced. The criticism towards Berlin and Kays (1969) methodology is summarized, as well as those arguments against the theories that followed it. The counterproposal is then presented. It maintains that color terms are a reflection of cultural and social pressures and any attempt to explain linguistic color systems should take that as a departing point. Finally, a model combing both approaches is briefly described. It defends that colors terms area created in a way that the partition of the color space is maximally efficient, and that focal points are derived from the boundaries of color terms, instead of a universal set. The paper concludes noting the similarities between the debate on the color terms hierarchy and grammatical theory.

i. Table of Contents i. Table of Contents ....................................................................................................................... 1 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 2 2. Color terms support linguistic universalism ............................................................................. 2 2.1 Berlin and Kay (1969): Basic Color Terms ........................................................................ 3 2.2 Hypotheses for the universality of the color terms hierarchy ............................................. 4 2.2.1. The color terms hierarchy is a reflection of humans neural system .......................... 4 2.2.2. The color terms hierarchy is a reflection of cognitive universals ............................... 6 2.2.3. The color terms hierarchy is a reflection of the extralinguistic world ........................ 7 3. Color terms support linguistic relativity ................................................................................... 7 3.1. Counter arguments to the hierarchy of color terms............................................................ 7 3.1.1. Arguments against Berlin and Kay (1969) ................................................................. 7 3.1.2. Arguments against universalist theories ..................................................................... 8 3.2. Hypothesis for the relativity of the color terms hierarchy ................................................. 8 3.2.1. The color terms hierarchy is a reflection of humans cultural needs .......................... 8 3.2.1. Arguments for the relativity of the color terms hierarchy .......................................... 8 4. Color terms support an integrated view of relativity and universalism .................................... 9 5. Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 10 6. References ............................................................................................................................... 12

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1. Introduction Linguistic typology has a broad research focus that can be divided into three branches (Croft 2003: 1 4). The first one can be referred to as typological classification. In this area, linguists categorize languages in regards to a number of structural features. Secondly, we have typological generalization, which aims at the discovery of the systematic occurrence of patterns interlinguistically. Finally, typological theory represents an approach to the study of language that aspires at the explanation of cross-linguistic data and the creation of a theoretical framework. Of these three perspectives, it is probably the last one that brings most controversies, given that scholars rely on theoretical choices despite the inductive nature of the typological thinking (Croft 2003: 280 286). A classic example of these debates is the case of color categorization or the color hierarchy. Since the late sixties, with the publication of Berlin and Kay (1969); researchers have struggled to understand why language name some colors and not others, and why regular patterns seem to arise when looking at the diversity of linguistic color systems (Levinson 2001: 3). The reason for this situation may be that, a priori, many systems could be said to be influencing the color systems of the world languages, for instance, visual perception, neural processing or conceptualization (Loreto et al. 2012: 6819). Furthermore, the fact that, from around two million perceptually distinguishable colors, only 30 are usually identified in the cognitive space (Yendrikhoskij 2001: S235) has also attracted many scholars in trying to elucidate the reasons for such constraints. This adds to what Shepard (2001: 593) called the psychological puzzle: the hues corresponding to the most distant wavel engths, red and violet, appear more similar to each other than they do to the intermediate wavelengths, such as green. As a result, the realm of color categorization has been used both as an exemplar of both linguistic relativism and linguistic universalism (Roberson 2005: 56 57). The former defends that both similarities and differences in color terms among languages reflect a cultural selection that has a further impact on cognition (Roberson et al. 2005: 379). Nevertheless, the latter posit that the opposite is true. They support that the hierarchical findings of Berlin and Kay (1969) are a clear example of panhuman universals (Roberson et al. 2005: 379) in color categorization that reflect a common evolutionary path. The arguments proposed by both perspectives are numerous and diverse, drawing from a number of different sciences. In order to get a better grasp of the current situation in the academia, the present paper will be a collection of different theories dealing with color linguistic categorization with a brief elaboration of the arguments they advance. For this purpose, we will first describe the initial theory of Berlin and Kay (1969) and the resulting proposals that defended the universality of the hierarchy of color terms to then move into the opposite view and portray the arguments against the universalist opinion and their contra proposals. Finally, a theory that merges both perspectives would be outlined. 2. Color terms support linguistic universalism Before Berlin and Kays (1969) influential publication on basic color terms, Colors prevailing status within anthropology and linguistics was very straightforward: Physicists view the color spectrum as a continuous scale of light-waves [] but languages mark off different parts of this scale arbitrarily and without precise limits (Bloomfield 1933: 140, see also Bohannan [1963] for an anthropological perspective). However, this structuralist position changed when Berlin and Kay (1969) discovered that the selection of color terms across languages follows a strict hierarchical pattern. This hypothesis had great repercussions not only in linguistics, but also in anthropology and cognitive Page 2 of 14

psychology. Due to its importance for the understanding of the recent theories of the color hierarchy, the next section briefly summarizes the work of the authors. 2.1 Berlin and Kay (1969): Basic Color Terms The trigger that initiated their work was the fact that, for the authors, color terms were too easily translatable between languages for the relativist hypothesis to be completely true (Berlin and Kay 1969: 2). Hence, they decided to research whether, in fact, arbitrariness was at the bottom of languages color terms selection. For this purpose, they selected native speakers of twenty genetically unrelated languages from California. These informants were shown a table of 329 color chips by the Munsell Color Company. Then they were asked to (i) name the basic color terms of their language and (ii) to map both their focal point and their boundaries on the array of color stimuli. In determining what a basic color term is, they used the following features: (a) it is a monolexemic word, (b) the color it refers to is not included in any other color term, (c) its use should not be restricted to a limited class of objects, (d) it must be psychologically salient, i.e. it should be included in all idiolects of the informants as well as having stable references across informants; (e) basic color terms must have the same distributional potential, (f) color terms that share form with the name of an object are rejected, unless they fulfill the previous requirements. Furthermore, if the status of a lexical item was still doubtful, its morphological complexity was then taken into account: simpler forms were taken over items that were more complex. Two were the main results of this experiment, both shown in Figure 1. First, they noted that there were a total of eleven basic color terms from which languages could draw their inventories. Moreover, they also noted that the color terms that a language has are not randomly selected from these eleven terms. Berlin and Kay realized that there was a hierarchy in the distributional pattern of color term systems: (i) all languages have terms for black and white, (ii) if a language has three basic color terms, the third one is red, (iii) if it has four terms, then it is either green or yellow, (iv) if a language has five terms, then it contains both green and yellow, (v) if a language contains six terms, it includes blue, (vi) if a language has seven terms, it has a term for brown, and (vii) if a language has eight or more basic color terms, then it has pink, purple, grey, orange or a combination of these. In other words, if a language codes a color in Figure 1 below with a basic color term, then it does so for the colors to the left of this position. Nevertheless, they noted that it is color foci which have a special place in cognition since their location was not significantly distant between both speakers of the same language and speakers of different languages. Figure 1. Hierarchy of color terms, from berlin and Kay (1969: 4)

Berlin and Kay linked their hierarchy to an evolutionary path. They posited that, in the course of their history, languages tend to follow the hierarchy above, acquiring color terms in a rigid manner. From a stage in which they only have a term for only black and white, red would first emerge, followed

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by green or yellow, then both, and so on and so forth, till they have all 11 basic color terms. This was also correlated to the technological and cultural advancement of the culture. They observed that languages from highly industrialized European and Asian peoples (Berlin and Kay 1969: 16) have all eleven basic color terms, while languages spoken by small populations with limited technology usually encode a fewer number of color terms. Nevertheless, this hypothesis was later reject by the authors with the publication of the The World Color Survey, in which, based on a larger database, they revealed that linguistic color systems are similar across both industrialized and non-industrialized societies (Kay and Regier 2003: 9088). Another parallelism that Berlin and Kay pointed out is that between the evolutionary stages of linguistic color systems and phonological development. They describe that, ontogenetically, the initial contrast is between /p/, minimal energy, and /a/, maximal energy, which parallels the color opposition between white, maximum brightness, and black, minimum brightness. They acknowledge, however, that this is a phylogenetic development, rather than ontogenetic. Eventually, the authors claimed the 11 basic color terms to be panhuman perceptual universals (Berlin and Kay 1969: 109) but did not go further into its physical or psychological explanations. However, many scholars attempted to deal with this hierarchy and unveil why human languages follow such patterns and many proposals have been advanced, which will be the topic of the next subsection. 2.2 Hypotheses for the universality of the color terms hierarchy 2.2.1. The color terms hierarchy is a reflection of humans neural system. Belpaema and Joris (2005: 294) quote Durham (1991) in noting that color categories are a function on neural constraints, since the regularities in linguistic coding of color terms parallel the way in which our nervous system codes colors in the brain. Indeed, this is one of the most influential hypothesis, initially proposed by Kay and McDaniel (1978). They describe that, despite the three types of color-sensitive cells in the eye (cones), neural processes beyond the retina are based on a set of opponent neural responses (Kay and McDaniel 1978: 617). In this stage, visual cells have a firing rate above their basal state for regions in the visual spectrum with a particular wavelength. Moreover, their firing goes below their basal rates for lights from the complementary spectral regions (Kay and McDaniel 1978: 618). They quote De Valois and Jacobs (1968) discovery of four types of opponent cells. (i) A group of cells has low positive responses to high wavelength stimuli and negative to lower ones (red). (ii) Its opponent cells have a high positive response to low wavelength stimuli and negative to higher ones (green). (iii) The third group of cells has high positive response rates to high wavelength stimuli and negative responses to lower wavelength light (yellow). Finally, (iv) its opponent cells have low positive responses to low wavelength stimuli and negative to higher one (blue). This is summarized in Figure 2 in the following page. This information implies that color hues are, then, the result of antagonistic neural processes (Kay and McDaniel 1978: 620 621): responses for green-red and blue-yellow. Furthermore, they (1978: 627) also described a different neural channel that carries information about brightness/darkness, which is the bases for the distinction between black and white. Beyond these six colors, the addition of color terms refers to overlapping points between responses. Kay and McDaniel then argue for the relationship between these four different responses and the semantic categories that they represent (1978: 625 626). They argued that both the neural responses and the semantic categories of color terms have a prototype-based structure. First, both have an overlapping area, in which membership is not an unambiguous yes/no issue but a matter of degree. Second, neural responses have a point at which the firing rate reaches its maximum, which parallels the foci of basic color terms. Third, the lowering in firing from the neurons highest point is Page 4 of 14

equaled to the decline of membership the farther we move form a colors foci. Finally, the point at which the membership of a color within a semantic category becomes zero is the same for the point at which the firing of the correspondent neuron becomes zero. Another piece of evidence for the causal effect of neural responses relates to the intersections between colors. The authors (1978: 630) noted that for languages that code grue lexically, the highest firing points of the respective neurons, blue and green, correspond to the color foci for grue, instead of the mathematical middle point between these two. Furthermore, based on psycholinguistic evidence by Heider (1972), they show that the focal colors for black, white, blue, green, yellow and red are named significantly more rapidly than any other non-primary colors (Kay and McDaniel 1978: 634).
Figure 2. Firing rates of the four groups of visual cells. The horizontal dotted line represents the basal firing rate of the cells. +R-G and R+G stand for red and green respectively. +Y-B and Y+B stand for yellow and blue respectively. Taken from Kay and McDaniel (1978: 618).

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2.2.2. The color terms hierarchy is a reflection of cognitive universals. After the publication of Berlin and Kays research (1969), one of the most significant pieces of psycholinguistic evidence that supports their hypothesis was carried out by Heider in the early seventies (Heider 1972), since, as Roberson et al. (2000: 369) put it, the anthropological and psycholinguistic evidence pointed to an acceptance of the universality [of color terms]. Her research consisted of four experiments. The first one (Heider 1972: 12 13) aimed at determining the focal points for basic color terms. Second, she (Heider 1972: 13 15) hypothesized that focal colors and, especially, the universal color terms posited by Berlin and Kay (1969), would be more codable and, therefore, require less time to name them, which was partially confirmed (Heider 1972: 15). Third, Heider designed an experiment to prove whether the foci of the universal color categories by Berlin and Kay (1969) can be remember more accurately (1972: 15 18) despite the number of basic color terms in the language of the participant. For this purpose, she used English speakers and the language of the Dani population in Indonesia, which only has two basic color terms. Participants were presented a chip with a color for five seconds. After 30 seconds, they were shown a 160-chips array and asked to select the color that they were shown. Her results (1972: 18) showed that latency was shorter for the primary focal colors, that is, red, blue, green and yellow. Finally, she investigated whether focal colors are more easily retained in the long-term memory (Heider 1972: 18 20). The participants had to memorize 16 stimulus-response pairs: a color and a name for a clan (only Dani participants were included). Her results showed that primary focal colors led to less errors than non-primary focal colors. Based on these results she argued that there are regions in the color space that are universally easier to remember (1972: 11) and linked them to the basic color terms. Due to the superiority on retention in long-term memory of these areas, they are easier to map as the core meaning of color terms and, therefore, easier to learn (Heider 1972: 19). Furthermore, she noted that the differences in saliency are also reflected in the order of evolution. The fact that the primary basic color terms (red, blue, yellow and green), which are the most codable among the eleven basic color terms based on her experiments, are then the first to appear in Berlin and Kays (1969) hierarchy is not unexpected. After these proposals, some scholars tested with computational techniques the hypothesis that some colors are easier to learn and remember than others in order to explain the color hierarchy by Berlin and Kay (1969). Among these, Belpaeme and Bleys (2005), Dowman (2003, 2007) and Loreto et al. (2012) could be said to be the most relevant. Although their methodology has some differences, they all rely use the same principles in their experiments. They used an expression-induction model, which aims to simulate the processes of language change over a number of generations. This software uses agents that are capable of learning an aspect of languages and using it afterwards. These productions are then the input for other agents learning. This process is run several times and the final languages are studied. If they resemble some of the universals or restrictions of natural languages, then these properties could be argued to be the result of learnability and language change. Since the studies mentioned above use different number of colors and agents, Dowman (2003) will be the focus of this section. Based on Heiders results (192), he assigned a probability value to each color; corresponding to how likely a person is to remember it. These values were 0.05 for colors others that were not focal and 1 for focal ones (red, green, yellow and blue). He then used ten agents, each of which had initially observed a color term and a random exemplar of it. These associations were then the bases for the first interactions. His results greatly paralleled the typological hierarchy of Berlin and Kay (1969), which led him to assume that color categorization is a result of an uneven color space. This provides some learning biases that, eventually, affect the way in which languages evolve. Page 6 of 14

2.2.3. The color terms hierarchy is a reflection of the extralinguistic world. A number of scholars have argued that human beings name and categorize colors in a way that reflects what they encounter in their existence (Shepard 2001, Yendrikhosvkij 2001). Shepard (2001: 592- 597) notes that natural selection favors those individuals that have adapted to their environment. He then argues that the visual system has adapted in order to achieve color constancy. Despite different atmospheric states, the human visual system recognizes the color of an object as being constant, even though the filtering of the sun light through, for instance, the clouds modifies the physical qualities of the light reflected from the object and, hence, its color should be perceived different. This is argued to be the result to the visual adaptation to the three degree of freedom of light transformation: light-versus-dark, red-versusgreen, and blue-versus-yellow (Shepard 2001: 595). These three opponent transformations are said to have been internalized by human beings and provide the three dimensional structure of color space. Furthermore, building on this hypothesis, Yendrikhosvkij argues that the hierarchy of color terms is nothing but a reflection of the distribution of colors in the perceived world (2001: S235): the more we face a color, the more frequently it appears on linguistic color systems. To test this hypothesis, he took 630 natural images and, from them, randomly selected 1000 pixels. He then assigned them a value from the CIE 1976 L*u*v* (standardized color space diagram). His results showed that the order of emergence of clusters [] in the CIELUV color space is similar to the order of emergence of color category terms across different languages (Yendrikhosvkij 2001: S237). 3. Color terms support linguistic relativity Berlin and Kays (1969) publication also started a completely different line of research. Under this perspective, the differences in color naming across languages are correlated to differences in color cognition, denying the existence of such cognitive universals that were said to motivate linguistic color systems (Kay and Regier 2003: 9085). In this section, the arguments against the universality of color terms will be first explained, followed by the counterproposals that are usually advanced. 3.1. Counter arguments to the hierarchy of color terms 3.1.1. Arguments against Berlin and Kay (1969). Many scholars have denied the mere existence of a hierarchy of linguistic color systems and disqualified the methodology followed by Berlin and Kay (1969). Kay and Regier (2003: 9085) note that the selection of participants did not provide a representative sample, questioning, therefore, the quality of the data. Two main biases are pointed out in their article: they did not have more than one speaker for most language in their sample and, moreover, the data was collected from English bilingual speakers in the San Francisco bay area rather than in the native community of the languages. Levinson also provides a number of difficulties with their methodology, especially in relation to the linguistics of the term elicited (2001: 6 - 7). First, he notes that the research does not inform the bases for the choice involving the grammatical category of basic color terms. He also points out that many languages have systematic patterns to refer to surface properties of objects that combine color with other surface characteristics; nevertheless, these systems are rejected by the definition of a basic color term. In a slightly different line, he also argues that the referential bases of the cross-linguistic research may either be irrelevant (Levinson 2001: 6) or impose lexicalization patterns for English speakers to other languages, rendering different linguistic color systems more similar than they really Page 7 of 14

are. Finally, he also states that the Munsell array used biased the outcome towards the 11 basic color terms. In this way, Berlin and Kay made their universal foci unnaturally salient (Levinson 2001: 46). In a semantic perspective, Levinson (2001: 41) further notes that basic color terms should probably not be isolated from the color referring expressions that are not considered a basic color term, since they both divide the color space, which links to what Michaels (1977) already noted. He claimed that the real discovery made by Berlin and Kay was that different languages encode the color space differently (Michaels 1977: 339). Thus, Levinson concluded that these flaws do not support the existence of a linguistic hierarchy for - or the universality of - the basic color terms. 3.1.2. Arguments against universalist theories. A different line of criticism has been addressed towards the theories explaining the color hierarchy. Davidoff (2001), Dowman (2007) and Roberson et al. (2000) observed some complications with the neural correlations to color terms by Kay and McDaniel (1978). Davidoff argued that Kay and McDaniels neural responses do not constitute strong evidence for their theory. Since they recorded the firing rate of people who already have a color term for red, blue, green and yellow, he defends that the neural response was guaranteed due to the entrenchment of these terms (Davidoff 2001: 382). He also defended (2001: 383), in addition to Dowman (2007: 105) and Roberson et al. (2000: 394), that the correlation between neural firings and color lexicon is not so straightforward and that more systems are likely to interfere between them. Particularly, Dowman (2000: 104), quoting Foley (1977), states that Culture must be the crucial autonomous intermediary between any innate and hence universal neurological perception of color stimuli and the cognitive understanding of these. Perhaps more importantly, Pilling and Davies (2004: 430) realized that the theory by DeValois and Jacobs, on which Berlin and McDaniel based their hypothesis, has been readjusted. The opponent cells were shown to code information regarding colors such as magenta and cyan, instead of red and blue as previously thought. Since these do not correspond to the initial basic color terms, Kay and McDaniels theory was said to be on longer valid. Heiders research has also been subject to critics, since she was said to select the results of her experiments that better suited her hypothesis (Roberson et al. 2000: 370). Therefore, many scholars have later attempted to replicate her results, with different outcomes that were the bases for different hypothesis. 3.2. Hypothesis for the relativity of the color terms hierarchy 3.2.1. The color terms hierarchy is a reflection of humans cultural needs. Based on the just mentioned flaws, a number of authors proposed a different perspective on color naming and the color hierarchy. Roberson et al. (2005: 406) summarize it stating that linguistic color systems evolve out of different cultural and environmental pressures. As Levinson (2001: 41, 43) puts it, it is only when colors reach a certain communicative relevance and functional load that they become systematized in the lexicon of a language. Up until then, color notions may be handled by employing some descriptive phrases or polysemous words, probably because, in such cultures, color is not something detachable from objects and, therefore, there is no need to refer to them in isolation (Levinson 2001: 41). 3.2.1. Arguments for the relativity of the color terms hierarchy. This theory started also a number of investigations trying to prove its validity. For instance, Davidoff (2001: 383) claims that, were color concepts based on visual properties, they would be subject to the Sorites paradox. He argues: Page 8 of 14

[T]ake the case of a series of colour patches of decreasing wavelength, each of which is indistinguishable from its immediate neighbours because the steps in wavelength are below threshold for the human visual system. One end patch, it is agreed, can be called red. If red is a truly perceptual or observational category then the immediate neighbour of this patch must also be called red. But, so by extension must its immediate neighbours. Pursuing the reasoning, one arrives at the paradoxical conclusion that all colours in the series (even blues at the other end) must be called red (Davidoff 2001: 383)

Furthermore, he also provides some examples of brain damage that produced language impairments. The patients who suffered it had difficulties in perceptual categorization. They were said to show the effects of Sorites paradox: since they must rely on perceptual similarities, they could not provide any boundaries for colors. This was further linked to the effect that language has on color cognition: it is only languages that create color categories and, therefore, the color terms that a language has have an impact in how colors are processed. Taking a different perspective, Roberson et al. realized that if there is a regular hierarchy of colors based on perceptual universals, two language that are at the same stage would have similar cognitive representations of the color space (2005: 380). For this purpose, they compare the color cognition of two different populations: Himba (northern Namibia, Africa) and Berinmo (Papua New Guinea). The reason for this choice is the differences in visual diet (Roberson et al. 2005: 380), Himba population live in the desert while the Berinmo people live in deep forests. Based on nine experiments, they show that the structure of the color space for these two populations are different and, therefore, despite the same number of basic color terms, there should be no universal behind these selections. One example of their experiments relates to similarity judgment (Roberson et al. 2005: 394 398). In it, Himba speakers were asked to make similarity judgments between English blue and green, Berinmo nol and wor (roughly green-yellow and blue respectively) and Himba dumbu and burou (roughly yellow-green-brown and blue respectively), all of which have different category boundaries (see Roberson et al. [2005: 382] for the exact boundaries of these categories). The results show that Himba speakers could more easily differentiate between the colors across their linguistic boundaries than between those of the boundaries corresponding to English or Berinmo (Roberson et al. 2005: 398). They took this as evidence for the rejection of the universality of focal color terms and their importance in explaining the color hierarchy. Nevertheless, despite their refusal of universals in color cognition, they argue that there are certain constraints that facilitate the apparition of certain typological patterns in color naming. For instance, Roberson et al. (2000: 395) explain that their cultural experience hypothesis does not lead to an open house. For instance, similar colors are group together. This links to what Davidoff (2001: 386) also noted: color categories are formed in a way that there is no term that includes two colors but leaves out the space in between. In other words, there is no term that groups blue and yellow but leaves green outside this category. Roberson et al. (2005: 405) highlights another cognitive constraint on the cultural selection of color terms. If a language has only terms for black, white and red, it is cognitively more economical that the two next terms would organize in a way that their centers are maximally separated from each other. 4. Color terms support an integrated view of relativity and universalism

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At this point, the findings presented show a mixed picture between two antagonistic perspectives in relation to the color terms hierarchy. Nevertheless, a reconciliation of these views has been proposed by Regier et al. (2007) and Abbott et al. (2012). Regier et al. formalized the notion that color naming and the color hierarchy is a reflection of optimal partitions of color space (Regier et al. 2007: 1436). To test this hypothesis, they created a scheme of color space that was optimal for a language of five color terms. Then, they took Berinmo color terms and constructed 19 distorted versions of it. Their results (2007: 1440) showed that the unmodified version of Berinmo color terms was closer to the optimal partition of color space than all the modified versions. They then executed the same experiment with all the languages in the The World Color Survey. They showed that for most of the languages the original linguistic color system of the language was more similar to the optimal partition than their modified versions. Thus, they argue (2007: 1441) that they results fall in between the universalist and the relativist perspective: color boundaries are formed by cognitive universal principles but, in contrast with the universalist view, there is not focal colors that derive color naming. Nevertheless, they did not explain why languages choose some colors to be their best examples, that is, their focus. Abbott, Regier and Griffiths (2012) addressed this issue. Abbott et al argued that focal colors are not universals, but derived from color boundaries. They created a model with which they could hypothesize the most representative color of a category. It was argued to be the color with the least variation in distance to the other colors in the category. Distances were taken from the CIELAB space. Then, they compared these hypothetical foci to the foci provided by the participants in the The World Color Survey. Their results supported their hypothesis, since there was a significant amount of overlap between the hypothetical and attested foci (Abbott et al. 2012: 63 64). Finally, they took the Karaj language, from Brazil, which is known to have unusual color category boundaries (Abbott et al. 2012: 64). They run their model with positive results for their hypothesis. Hence, they argued that, when boundaries fall in unexpected places, so do foci. Nevertheless, foci were predictable by choosing the most representative color within the boundaries of the category. These two articles show then a golden mean between linguistic relativity and linguistic universalism. They allow culture to divide the color space in a way that the boundaries of the categories create an (near) optimal partition of color space (see also Regier and Kay 2009: 443 - 444). Furthermore, the focal color would be selected as the color that is the most representative within the boundaries of the category in question. Thus, this hypothesis allows for both universal tendencies and typological patterns, as well as counterexamples. 5. Conclusion This paper has addressed the current situation in the academia in relation to the color hierarchy and color categorization. First, the revolutionary publication of Berlin and Kay (1969) has been summarized. They argued in favor of the existence of a hierarchy of color terms that correlated with an evolutionary path that languages followed in their history: black and white, red, green or yellow, green and yellow, blue, brown and pink, orange, grey and purple, or a combination of these last four. Afterwards, a number of representative theories explaining why such a hierarchy exist has been outlined: from four groups of neural firing rates to the cognitive saliency of four primary color terms and their tendency to be more easily remembered. Furthermore, an opposing view has also been introduced. The main arguments against the universality of certain colors have been based on different grounds. First, the flawed methodology of Berlin and Kays research have been pointed out, as well as Page 10 of 14

the impossibility to directly link neural activity to category formation. Hence, a rival theory arose that linked color categories to cultural and social pressures. Finally, a theory that combines both approaches has been presented. In it, culture creates boundaries that divide the color space in optimal categories. Furthermore, their focal colors are not drawn from a universal set. On the contrary, they are derived from the boundaries, in a way that if a language has unexpected color categories, its foci would be placed in unexpected places as well, but they would still be predictable from the boundaries. It is interesting to note that this dispute in the realm of the color hierarchy reflects a wider situation within linguistic theory. One of the main questions in linguistics is whether humans linguistic knowledge is innate or derived from more abstract cognitive processes or a cultural artifact. This has specially applied to the field of grammatical theory, leading to the creation of opposing models of grammar: Chomskys Generative grammar on the innatist perspective and Construction Grammar or Systemic Functional Grammar on the other end. Therefore, we may conclude that, as in the color hierarchy, linguistic theory may advance by trying to find a certain point in between these two orthogonal views.

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