Exploration of the Usage of Color Terms by Color-blind Participants in Online Discussion Platforms

Ella Rabinovich, Boaz Carmeli


Abstract
Prominent questions about the role of sensory vs. linguistic input in the way we acquire and use language have been extensively studied in the psycholinguistic literature. However, the relative effect of various factors in a person’s overall experience on their linguistic system remains unclear. We study this question by making a step forward towards a better understanding of the conceptual perception of colors by color-blind individuals, as reflected in their spontaneous linguistic productions. Using a novel and carefully curated dataset, we show that red-green color-blind speakers use the “red” and “green” color terms in less predictable contexts, and in linguistic environments evoking mental image to a lower extent, when compared to their normal-sighted counterparts. These findings shed some new and interesting light on the role of sensory experience on our linguistic system.
Anthology ID:
2022.emnlp-main.447
Volume:
Proceedings of the 2022 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
Month:
December
Year:
2022
Address:
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Editors:
Yoav Goldberg, Zornitsa Kozareva, Yue Zhang
Venue:
EMNLP
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
6673–6685
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2022.emnlp-main.447
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2022.emnlp-main.447
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Ella Rabinovich and Boaz Carmeli. 2022. Exploration of the Usage of Color Terms by Color-blind Participants in Online Discussion Platforms. In Proceedings of the 2022 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, pages 6673–6685, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Exploration of the Usage of Color Terms by Color-blind Participants in Online Discussion Platforms (Rabinovich & Carmeli, EMNLP 2022)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2022.emnlp-main.447.pdf