Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures Online

This feature concerns the identity or differentiation of basic colour terms referring to the green and the blue sensation. By basic colour terms we mean words whose “meaning is not predictable from the meaning of [their] parts”, whose “signification is not included in any other color term”, whose “application must not be restricted to a narrow class of objects”, and which are “psychologically salient for informants” (Berlin & Kay 1969: 6).

– Differentiation: One basic colour term denotes ‘green’ and another denotes ‘blue’.

– Identity: A single basic colour term denotes either ‘green’ or ’blue’ and there is no term that denotes only ‘blue’ or only ‘green’.

– Overlap: This covers cases of semantic overlap, where there are two different basic colour terms, but one of them denotes ‘green/blue’, and the other one denotes only ‘green’ or only ‘blue’.

– Not applicable: The language does not have a basic colour term for 'green' or for 'blue', or both.

The last logically possible constellation, identity and differentiation (there are at least three basic colour terms; one denotes ‘green’, one denotes ‘blue’, and the third denotes ‘green/blue’) is not attested in the APiCS sample.