Abstract
We report a study of the acquisition of colour terms by Russian
children
which had two main aims: first, to test Berlin & Kay's (1969)
theory of
colour universals using acquisition order as a measure of basicness; and
secondly, to see if the two blue terms of Russian are genuinely
basic.
Two hundred children aged from three to six-years-old were tested on
three colour-tasks – colour term listing, colour term production
and
colour term comprehension. To a reasonable approximation, the order
of colour term acquisition was in accord with Berlin & Kay's theory,
but
the data are also consistent with the weaker claim that primary terms
tend to be learned before derived terms. On balance the data were
consistent with Russian exceptionally, having an extra term for the blue
region. But, the two blue terms – goluboj
‘light blue’ and sinij
‘dark blue’ – were confused more often than other pairs
of terms even by the
five- to six-year-old sample.