Talking about Color and Taste on the Trobriand Islands: A Diachronic Study

How stable is the lexicon for perceptual experiences? this article presents results on how the trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea talk about color and taste and whether this has changed over the years. comparing the results of research on color terms conducted in 1983 with data collected in 2008 revealed that many English color terms have been integrated into the Kilivila lexicon. Members of the younger generation with school education have been the agents of this language change. However, today not all English color terms are produced correctly according to English lexical semantics. the traditional Kilivila color terms bwabwau ‘black,’ pupwakau ‘white,’ and bweyani ‘red’ are not affected by this change, probably because of the cultural importance of the art of coloring Gunter Senft is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands, and Extraordinary Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Cologne, Germany. [email protected]