Diatopic variation in referential meaning of “Italian blues”

Paramei, G.V. and D’Orsi, M and Menegaz, G (2018) Diatopic variation in referential meaning of “Italian blues”. In: Progress in Colour Studies: Cognition, Language and Beyond. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, pp. 83-106. ISBN 9789027201041

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

Contemporary Italian blu is unanimously glossed as “dark blue”. In comparison, azzurro is referred to as either “light blue” or “medium blue” in different studies. We explored diatopic variation (linguistic variation on a geographical level) in the denotata of blu, azzurro and celeste “sky blue” in a psycholinguistic experiment conducted in Verona (Veneto region) and Alghero (Sardinia). Participants named Munsell chips of the BLUE area. For each blue term, a referential volume of naming-consensus colours was fitted by a convex hull visualized in CIELAB space. The referential extents of azzurro and celeste were found to differ markedly between the two regions: Verona participants used azzurro to denote “medium-and-light blue”; in contrast, for a similar colour space extent, Alghero participants used predominantly celeste, with azzurro being constrained to darker “medium blue”. The historical factors are discussed behind the more conservative colour naming in Sardinian dialects compared to mainland Contemporary Italian.

Item Type:	Book Section
Keywords:	Italian blues; diatopic variation; unconstrained colour naming; referential volume; convex hull
Faculty / Department:	Faculty of Human and Digital Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User:	Matthew Adams
Date Deposited:	03 Dec 2018 14:20
Last Modified:	03 Dec 2018 14:27
URI:	https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/2698

Actions (login required)

View Item