Chapter One Necessity for Comparative Study of Color

于玲玲 馬磊

【中圖分類號】G64 【文獻(xiàn)標(biāo)識碼】A 【文章編號】2095-3089（2012）07-0092-02

Color is an integral part of human language, as well as a reaction to the culture. We are living in a beautiful, wonderful and colorful world. There are the blue sky, white cloud, red sun， green grass, black earth , and grey buildings, etc around us， bright colorful pieces forming a picture. Color as the air, everywhere there are. Modern abstract artist Wassily Kandinsky pointed out in his “On the Art of Spirit” that “color directly affects the spirit”. If you have deep insights on life, you will agree with him: Hot red, a symbol of progressive and hope; chain of life the green, a reflection of youth and vigor; quiet blue with meaningful content and elegant; of course, there are white, black, yellow…

1.Definition of basic color terms

Basic color terms, as a part of the basic vocabulary, are very important to all nations and people. Although the study of color terms has long been an interest in many fields, each step in the study of color terms is closely linked to human civilization. The prosperity of natural science in the 17th century had propelled the study of color and color terms in physics and optics; the development of philosophy in the 18th century gave rise to the aesthetic study of color words; the rise of cultural study in the 19th century laid solid foundation for contrasting and comparing color terms from a cross￣cultural perspective; from the last century until now, the linguists participation made the notions of the universality of language principles highly valued and accepted in the system of color terms. In the recent thirty years, with the development of neurology, biogenetics, cognitive science and cognitive psychology, people are unveiling the complicated relationship in the color terms system, which contributes to better understanding of the internal and external systems of color words and to further the study of linguistic study of color terms.

At the end of the 1960s two American scholars—ethnologist Brent Berlin and Paul Kay hand in hand cooperated in the worlds nearly 100 kinds of languages phrases which represent color, and published half a century color words in the research of the most influential masterpiece( Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution, 1969). Berlin and Kay think that there exist eleven basic color terms in English. There are “white”,“ black”, “red”, “green”, “yellow”, “blue”, “brown”, “purple”, “pink”, “orange” and “grey”.

Anyway, what is a basic color term? According to Taylor (1995), “There are two ways in which we can understand the term Prototype. We can apply the term to the central member， or perhaps to the cluster of central members, of a category. Alternatively, the prototype can be understood as a schematic representation of the conceptual core of a category.” We can not always show people an object when we want to show the color of the object. On the contrary we always show it in the form of language, oral or written. We try our best to use color terms to describe and name color itself. Therefore, in the first place, a color term is the description of a corresponding color, used to identify the very color of the physical objects. Because of colors, the world is colorful; because of the color words, language is wonderful.

Thus in this thesis， there are seven basic color terms, they will be defined as follows: “red” and “hong”（紅）, “white” and “bai”(白), “black” and “hei”(黑), “blue” and “l(fā)an”(藍(lán)), “green” and “l(fā)ǜ”(綠), “grey” and “hui”(灰), as well as “yellow” and “huang”(黃). And the definition is based on the already existed and widely accepted principles advocated by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay.

2. Basic meaning and usage

We are living in a color world. Color terms, as a part of the basic vocabulary, are very important to all nations and people in humans life. We mainly use a great variety of color terms to describe the colorful things or the brilliant colorful nature in the daily life. And they are reflections of understandings to natural environment. Generally speaking, “red” is used to describe sun, fire and blood; “blue” represents for sky and sea ; “green” is used to describe grass and plants; “white” sometimes stands for snow; “black” is for night; and so on.

There are two major word features for color: nouns and adjective.

That objects specific color of color features.

E.g. a. Her skin was distinguished by its redness. (她的膚色以紅色為特征。)

b. The windows outside，a vivid green， cast of soft shadows on his face. (窗外的柳樹，翠綠的、陰暗的影子映在他的臉子(梁斌《紅旗譜》)。米法利《英漢基本顏色詞文化內(nèi)涵研究》)

c. As we set off， the green mountains on the two banks became deep blue in the dusk， receding toward the stern of the boat. (我們的船向前走，兩岸的青山在黃昏中，都裝成了深黛顏色，連著退向船后梢去(魯迅《故鄉(xiāng)》)。米法利《英漢基本顏色詞文化內(nèi)涵研究》)

Preposition “in” + color words (nouns), means “wearing the color of the clothes…”

E．g. Sharon is dressed in butter yellow/blue/pink. (莎倫穿著米黃色/藍(lán)色/粉色的衣服。)

In addition, close to human skin, color is also used to refer to a particular race.

E．g. There were both whites and blacks at the meeting that day. (那天，會上白種人和黑種人都有。)

In English, we often see the people with surnames that are colors. For example: Mr. Brown, Mr. White, Mr. Green and so on. The British for a long period of time had no surname until the 16th century, when widespread use of surname became popular. English surname are derived from variety reasons, some of which are reflecting their own personal characteristics, such as: skin color, height, character, etc… A Mr. Black perhaps got his name because of his darker skin. A Mr. Green might have ancestors who used to live near the forest or grassland.

3. Symbolic meaning and usage

Language is a social phenomenon, developing with the development of society. The evolution of political and economic system, division and reunion of society, contacts among societies, all these have been promoting the development of languages. Due to the different cultural, historical and geographical reasons, English and Chinese color terms reflects the color of their orientation, social psychology, customs, religious belief and other cultural characteristics. With the advance of the human civilization, the color terms symbolic meaning and cultural connotation have developed quietly. Most color terms have either positive and derogatory meaning or neutral meaning. The different meanings of color are widely used in every area in peoples lives: emotional, economic, political, cultural, and daily life.

4. Customary collocation

Our life is indivisible from colors. Color terms, as the product of culture, exist with strong vitality. Thus, with the development of language, through association, mixing and matching of basic meaning of color terms and basic parts of speech, people create lots of fixed phrases, which are often with particular meaning and stable structure. However, because of the cultural differences between English and Chinese, and different from language habits and thinking ways, we couldnt simply translate the meaning of color terms from English to Chinese or from Chinese to English. Therefore, it requests us to pay more attention to the accumulation and continuously explore cultural differences between English and Chinese. Only such ability in the process of translation accomplishment already considers the two different cultural backgrounds and language corresponding habit can we translate well. We should aim to grasp of the original meaning and translate a reveal of the connotations and implications of basic color terms.

Besides, color vocabulary can also form verbs and other parts of speech form through word￣building convention and changing between different speech form to acquire new meaning and usage.

E.g. Mrs. Tu paused and sighed slightly，her eyes reddening at the edges. 姑太太說到這里一頓，輕輕吁了口氣，眼圈兒也像有點紅了(茅盾《子夜》)。米法利《英漢基本顏色詞文化內(nèi)涵研究》)

References:

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