Browsing by Author "Parshotam, Minali Dinesh"

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    Colour memory and similarity judgement in isiXhosa-English bilinguals : the case of luhlaza
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2020-03) Parshotam, Minali Dinesh; Bylund, Emanuel; Xeketwana, Simthembile; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of General Linguistics.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Colour categorisation has been a well-known topic of enquiry in the cognitive sciences. There is an abundance of literature examining colour categorisation in speakers of different languages. The findings indicate that cross-linguistic variation in colour term repertoires to some extent influences the way speakers perceive colour. English and isiXhosa differ in their categorisation of colour, as isiXhosa, unlike English, does not have a lexical distinction between green and blue, but instead has the basic colour term luhlaza to refer to this colour space. The aims of the current study is, firstly, to see whether these cross-linguistic differences modulate memory accuracy and similarity judgements of the green-blue colour space and, secondly, to see whether experience with English language influences isiXhosa speakers to behave more like speakers of English on these measures. A pre-experimental study is conducted in order to obtain baseline colour data of South African English. The data collected on the colours green and blue is then used for the main experiments of the current study. The main experiments include a memory task, examining the recognition memory for the relevant colour space among the participants, and a similarity judgement task, examining perceived similarity of triads of colour stimuli belonging to same and different categories of colour. Overall, 60 participants, isiXhosa-English bilinguals and first language South African English speakers, participated in the main experiments. Findings from both the memory and the similarity judgement experiments show certain differences, but also to a greater extent, similarities between the two language groups. Additionally, the isiXhosa-English bilingual speakers’ English experience is assessed, but direct effects of English language experiential variables are not found.