This study examines the cross‐cultural generality of Hering's (1878/1964) color‐opponent theory of color appearance. English‐speaking and Somali‐speaking observers performed variants of two paradigms classically used to study color‐opponency. First, both groups identified similar red, green, blue, and yellow unique hues. Second, 25 English‐speaking and 34 Somali‐speaking observers decomposed the colors present in 135 Munsell color samples into their component Hering elemental sensations—red,green,blue, yellow, white, and black—or else responded “no term.” Both groups responded no term for many samples, notably purples. Somali terms for yellow were often used to name colors all around the color circle, including colors that are bluish according to Hering's theory. Four Somali Grue speakers named both green and blue elicitation samples by their term for green. However, that term did not name the union of all samples called blue or green by English speakers. A similar pattern was found among three Somali Achromatic speakers, who called the blue elicitation sample black or white. Thus, color decomposition by these Somali‐speaking observers suggests a lexically influenced re‐dimensionalization of color appearance space, rather than a simple reduction of the one proposed by Hering. Even some Somali Green‐Blue speakers, whose data were otherwise similar to English, showed similar trends in yellow and blue usage. World Color Survey data mirror these results. These within‐ and cross‐cultural violations of Hering's theory do not challenge the long‐standing view that universal sensory processes mediate color appearance. However, they do demonstrate an important contribution of language in the human understanding of color.

中文翻译：

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检验赫林色彩外观理论的跨文化通用性


本研究探讨了赫林（Hering，1878/1964）色彩外观的色彩对立理论的跨文化普遍性。英语和索马里语的观察者执行了两种经典用于研究颜色对立的范式的变体。首先，两个小组都发现了相似的红色、绿色、蓝色和黄色的独特色调。其次，25 名英语和 34 名索马里语观察者将 135 个孟塞尔颜色样本中存在的颜色分解为其赫林元素感觉的组成部分——红色、绿色、蓝色、黄色、白色和黑色——否则回答“没有术语”。两组对许多样本都没有做出回应，特别是紫色。索马里语中黄色的术语经常用来命名色环周围的颜色，包括根据赫林的理论呈蓝色的颜色。四位索马里格鲁语使用者用绿色术语命名了绿色和蓝色启发样本。然而，该术语并未命名所有被英语使用者称为蓝色或绿色的样本的并集。在三位索马里消色差说话者中也发现了类似的模式，他们将蓝色引出样本称为黑色或白色。因此，这些索马里语观察者的颜色分解表明颜色外观空间受到词汇影响的重新维度化，而不是赫林提出的简单简化。甚至一些索马里绿蓝语使用者的数据在其他方面与英语相似，但在黄色和蓝色的使用方面也表现出类似的趋势。世界色彩调查数据反映了这些结果。 这些对赫林理论的文化内和跨文化的违反并没有挑战普遍的感官过程调节颜色外观的长期观点。然而，它们确实证明了语言在人类对颜色的理解中的重要贡献。