The Quantitative Approach in Cultural Anthropology: Application of Linguistic Corpora in the Analysis of Basic Colour Terms

Abstract

Frequencies of colour terms are analysed in ten Indo-European languages (Czech, English, French, Italian, Polish, Russian, Rumanian, Slovak, Spanish and Ukrainian) on the basis of frequency dictionaries. The research reveals that cross-linguistic distributions of colour terms in these languages are similar, but more sensitive statistical tests (chi -square) show that they cannot be regarded as statistically independent. The quantitative structure of colour terms is then compared with the chronological-evolutionary scheme proposed by Berlin and Kay in 1969. The study proves that quantitative data based on lexical resources, including frequency dictionaries, are a useful and promising tool of research in the anthropology of culture.