THE SEMANTIC OF COLOURS IN ROMANIAN: A CASE STUDY
LA SÉMANTIQUE DES TERMES DE COULEUR EN ROUMAIN: ÉTUDE DE CAS

Summary/Abstract: The present study, which is based on data collected for the Max Planck Institute in the context of a research program called Evolution of Semantic Systems (EoSS), aims at discussing the issue of colour names in the Romanian language. After illustrating a few of the theories around the issue of colour perception and describing how the data collection took place, some observations have been made based on the collected data. As a result of the investigation, 34 terms have been identified in the Romanian language, used as answers to name the 84 Munsell chips by 20 speakers. Following Berlin & Kay`s implicational hierarchy, it has been observed that for the Romanian language the basic terms naming colours are: white, black, red, green, yellow and blue; also, the article discusses the phenomenon of derivation through which the majority of colour names have been formed in Romanian. The case of GRUE for Romanian, and the case of cărămiziu (tile colour) are also discussed. In addition, there have been noted differences between male and female colour naming.

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