Northern Sotho colour terms and semantic universals

Abstract

In 1969, Berlin & Kay published a book entitled Basic colour terms in which they explicate their findings after having investigated basic colour terms in 98 genetically unrelated languages. This enabled them to formulate the following two-fold hypothesis: (a) that there exists a universal set of eleven basic colour terms, and whereas some languages select sub-sets from this universal inventory to name colours, other languages utilize the set as a whole; and (b) the colour vocabulary in any given language develops along an evolutionary line commencing with terms for white and black, and culminating in terms for pink, purple, orange and grey. In this contribution, the basic colour terms of Northern Sotho are subjected to Berlin & Kay's findings against two opposing hypotheses with regard to language, namely the relativist approach (also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis), on the one hand, and the universalist approach, on the other. It is shown that Berlin & Kay's hypothesis, which gave further impetus to the acceptance of the universalist approach, is fully supported by data from Northern Sotho.