Linguistic Categorisation of Colours: Relative Basicness of French Colour Terms Cover Image

La catégorisation linguistique des couleurs : niveaux d’élémentarité des noms de couleurs Français
Linguistic Categorisation of Colours: Relative Basicness of French Colour Terms

Author(s): Maria H. Golka
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Theoretical Linguistics, Semantics
Published by: Instytut Slawistyki Polskiej Akademii Nauk
Keywords: linguistic categorisation; basic colour terms; relative basicness; semantics

Summary/Abstract: Categorisation is one of the basic cognitive processes. Because of the continuous character of the colour spectrum, colour terms constitute an interesting material to study linguistic categorisation. The first part of this article offers a review of research on the linguistic categorisation of colours, especially on basic colour terms and prototypes. In the second part, the results of an empirical study on the basicness of French colour terms will be presented. The results suggest that colour terms are categorised as prototypically structured concepts, which supports the hypothesis of the relative basicness of colour terms.

  • Issue Year: 2014
  • Issue No: 14
  • Page Range: 131-147
  • Page Count: 17
  • Language: French