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A case in point are color terms - despite of having biologically identical visual systems, humans disagree about how to divide the natural colour continuum into discrete, named colors. Different languages have between 2 and 11-12 simple color words, with red being the first to be added to simple black and white, followed by one or more terms for bluish-greenish (Berlin & Kay). But nobody agrees where the borders are. Welsh, for instance, has one word, glass, covering most of English blue/green, while Russian, on the other hand, subdivides blue into dark sinij and light golubojshades. And the descriptive logic in idioms is even worse: black eyes from an English football fight, for instance, will be diagnosed as Blaues Auge after a rematch in Germany. So, which colour is the correct diagnosis? We simply have to accept that meaning is usage within a (conventionalized) system of language, as Wittgenstein would put it. Therefore, a relative peace of mind arrived in linguistics with Saussure's distinction between signifiant and signifié: The sign is independent of its meaning. (See also Language and Thought)
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