Four Treasures Reference Database
Record No. 17146
The vocabulary of color with particular reference to ancient Greek and classical Latin
Book Section
Lyons, J. (1999) The vocabulary of color with particular reference to ancient Greek and classical Latin. In: The Language of Color in the Mediterranean: An Anthology on Linguistics and Ethnographic Aspects of Color Terms, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, pp. 38–75.
ISBN/ISSN: 9789120000000 | not seen
gems, color science
Lots of color terms with some interesting discussion, but this author, like many others, is intent on shoe-horning ancient color terms into the B&K model of the evolution of color term systems (Basic Color Terms, or BCTs, and Non-Basic Color Terms, or NBCT), and like many other authors, interrogates ancient literary sources that do not engage the subject of color in concrete terms, which are necessarily in the wheelhouse of scientific and natural history treatises (e.g., Theophrastus and Pliny the Elder) that concern themselves with trying to describe concrete things by empirical observation. Instead, Lyons focus on ancient texts is limited to the realm of metaphor and conceptually abstract notions of color. IMO, Warburton (2007) presents a justifiable takedown of Lyons.