The challenge of linguistic creativity is to use words in a way that is novel and striking and even whimsical, to convey meanings that remain stubbornly grounded in the very same world of familiar experiences as serves to anchor the most literal and unimaginative language. The challenge remains unmet by systems that merely shuttle or arrange words to achieve novel arrangements without concern as to how those arrangements are to spur the processes of meaning construction in a reader. In this paper we explore a problem of lexical invention that cannot be solved without an explicit model of the perceptual grounding of language: the invention of apt new names for colours. To solve this problem we shall call upon the notion of a linguistic readymade, a phrase that is wrenched from its original context of use to be given new meaning and new resonance in new settings. To ensure that our linguistic readymades, which owe a great deal to Marcel Duchamp’s notion of found art, are anchored in a consensus model of perception, we introduce the notion of a lexicalized colour stereotype.

1. You want
yer colours? I
got «beaucoup de
couleurs» for
ya, mate.

2. We want a
lawyer, pig!
OK, punks!

4. My words have
never carried so
much meaning now
that I can directly
ground them via
actions in the

5. Some colours
make me feel
While others
make me see
Some make me
with envy!

6. @everycolorbot is a minimalist
data-only Twitterbot.
The bot generates a random six-
digit color hex-code (for an R-G-B
Red/Green/Blue mix) and a
swatch of corresponding color.
Though very simple, can we say that this bot’s use of
RGB symbols is grounded in external visual reality?

7. Dulux uses pretentious names with positive effect, but a
bot might call this one “cow urine” or “rusty battleship”.
This bot would exhibit humor and visual appreciation,
while grounding its use of color symbols in real stimuli.
The RGB symbol-codes in
@everycolorbot are not used as
linguistic symbols, and are not
used to convey semantics.
What if we build a bot that
assigns meaningful color names
to these arbitrary RGB symbols?

8. First, let’s ground the
meaning of color
words in actual RGB
codes that a computer
can render on screen.
When a bot combines
color words, it can
also combine their
RGB color codes.
A compositional semantics for linguistic symbols is paired
to a compositional semantics for RGB codes,
so that we can also ground the meaning of complex phrases.

10. We can use Web n-grams to
suggest attested combinations of
our color stereotypes, such as
“paper tiger” and “rose garden”.
Readymade combinations of
words make much more sense
than purely random ones.

11. The lower the n-gram frequency, the
less conventional the readymade ...
… so the more striking and unusual
the color name that can be derived.

16. Questions /
Judgments
@HueHueBot
(Machine names)
ColorLovers.com
(Human names)
Q1: Most
Descriptive name
70.4% 29.6%
Q2: Most
Preferred name
70.2% 29.8%
Q3: Most
Creative name
69.1% 30.9%