COLOR NAMING - A MAPPING IN THE NCS OF COMMON COLOR TERMS

This study can be considered a follow-up of the investigations of basic color terms by Berlin & Kay and others following their paradigm. It is complementary to these inasmuch as a different method was used for identifying focal areas and boundaries of common color categories, namely semantic differential scales and isosemantic mapping. Further, colors from the entire color space were studied. No comparisons were made between languages, this study being only concerned with the Swedish language. The purpose of this study was to provide a more thorough mapping of the ''spread gradients'' in various areas of the NCS color space of color categories as represented by the most common color terms.