Diatopic variation in referential meaning of the ‘Italian blues’

Recent psycholinguistic studies provide convincing evidence that Standard Italian has more than one basic colour term (BCT) for ‘blue’ (e.g. Bimler & Uusküla, 2014; Paggetti et al., 2016), challenging the Berlin and Kay model (1969/1991). These studies were carried out in different regions of Italy and, given the well-known diatopic variation of Italian, allow influences of regiolects. Notably, across all studies there is consensus that the blu is the counterpart of English ‘dark blue’. However, the other deeply entrenched term, azzurro, was found to correspond to ‘light blue’ for Verona speakers (Paggetti et al., 2016) compared to ‘medium blue’ for speakers in Alghero (Paramei et al., 2014) and Florence (Uusküla, 2014). Furthermore, in the latter studies a third term, celeste, was considered a contender for a BCT corresponding to ‘light blue’.In the present study we explored diatopic variation in the denotata of blu, azzurro and celeste by conducting a psycholinguistic experiment in Verona (Veneto region) and Alghero (Sardinia). Participants were Italian monolinguals with normal colour vision: Verona N=15 (5 females); Alghero N=13 (7 females). Eight charts (Munsell Book of Color; glossy edition) were employed that encompassed the BLUE area of colour space (5BG, 10BG, 2.5B, 5B, 7.5B, 10B, 2.5PB, 5PB), in total comprising 237 Munsell chips.