Year: | 1867 | ||
Short description: | Geiger's 'Colour Sense' lecture | ||
Medium description: | Lazarus Geiger's 'On Colour Sense in Primitive Times and its Evolution' plenary lecture at the Assembly of German Naturalists and Physicians. Examined colour vocabulary of ancient texts from other language groups than Greek and the etymologies of these words. Showed, for example, that modern European words for 'blue' derived from 'green' or 'black' and that further back 'green' derived from 'black'. 'He was the first to pose the question... the relation between what the eye can see and what language can describe' (Deutscher, 2010:44). That is, is the lack of a range of colour terms because the eye cannot perceive the difference or that no terms have been created by the culture using the language. | ||
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