Open thread, Feb. 16 - Feb. 22, 2015

MrMind

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If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Notes for future OT posters:

1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag.

2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.)

3. Open Threads should be posted in Discussion, and not Main.

4. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday.

Agreed - we do use such labels for many aspects of sounds, but with the exception of labelling musical notes, sound-related terms tend to refer to multidimensional characteristics of sounds, not just frequencies (although in many cases, related to frequency). This leads to a situation in which sound quality terms may tend to be less discrete than basic colour words; if so one would predict less categorical perception than is observed for basic colour words.

I think we can also see this same phenomenon in colour as well - once we go beyond a language's basic colour terms where colour labels are not nearly so contrastive (mauve/fuschia?).