scholarly journals The Semantic Structure of Color Terms in Arabic: A Cognitive Approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 1025-1033
Author(s):  
Jinan Al-Tamimi

The acquisition of the ability of perceiving and naming colors through language is an important topic in which languages vary and differ. The construction of color concepts and naming them are directly influenced by the culture and environment of each society. This can be noted by observing two aspects: Cognitive Semantics and its effect on the collective mind. This study focuses on the cognitive foundations of color terms in Arabic, and the semantic relation between the color concepts and terms in selected examples from both old and new usage of these color terms in Arabic. The study aims to cover the most dominant semantic components for color terms in the Arabic language, using the cognitive linguistic approach and the descriptive analytics method to determine the structure of cognitive perception of color terms in a language. Furthermore, the study stands on two pillars; the first reveals the way the conceptualization pattern of color terms occurs in Arab mindset displayed through selected examples of theoretical data on cognitive semantics, whereas the second addresses the semantic principle of color classification in Arabic. Finally, the conclusion, confirming the results about the notion that color naming in Arabic is based on the visual images associated with the colors in Arab environment, related to night and day. Hence, the color term becomes connected in the Arab mindset with the visual image, and under each color are colors similar to it in hue.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
saber lahbacha

From polysemy to meaning change: lexical cognitive perspectivesSaber Lahbacha By:PhD. Arabic language and Literature, University of Manouba, Member of association of Arabic lexicology in TunisAbstract:Many essays to find a model to study polysemy in most words emerged in several semantic, lexical, cognitive and pragmatic perspectives. Diverse dimensions of this phenomenon are activated according to the requirements of each discipline. If the lexical treatment gives priority to distinguish between polysemy (one entry) and homonymy (many entries), the pragmatic approach includes the contextual non-linguistic operators in building polysemy. The cognitive approach considers that lexical concepts are sets of semantic complicated nuances built on polysemy. This cognitive approach considers that there is no way to distinguish between meanings and the boundaries between them are ambiguous.Key words: Semantics – Polysemy – cognitive linguistics – lexicology – homonymy. ملخصلم تنقطع محاولات إيجاد منوال لمقاربة الاشتراك الدلالي (تعدّد المعاني) في معظم الكلمات عن البروز ضمن منظورات دلالية ومعجمية وعرفانية وتداولية متعددة. وبحسب مقتضيات كلّ فرع لساني، يجري تنشيط الأبعاد المختلفة للظاهرة ويتم التركيز على مناحٍ دون أخرى. فإذا كانت المعالجة المعجمية تضع أولوية اهتمامها في توضيح التمييز بين الاشتراك الدلالي (مدخل واحد) والاشتراك اللفظي (مداخل متعددة)، فإن المقاربة التداولية تؤصل مشاركة العوامل السياقية غير اللغوية في تأسيس الاشتراك الدلالي. أما المقاربة العرفانية فترى أن المفاهيم المعجمية هي مجموعات من الفروق الدلالية المتراكبة التي تقوم على الاشتراك الدلالي ولا ترى أن التمييز بين المعاني ممكن بل إن الحدود بين المفاهيم المعجمية ضبابية.الكلمات المفاتيح: علم الدلالة - الاشتراك الدلالي – اللسانيات العرفانية – المعجمية - الاشتراك اللفظي.


2018 ◽  
Vol 214 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-74
Author(s):  
M . Raad Abdul Jabbar Jawad

     To start with, a definition of the term 'color' in Arabic language is presented.  Then, a study of colors implications in Al-Jahili poetry is proceeded; the poet's creativity in using color terms and incorporating these terms in Jahili poems explicitly or implicitly in forming up the topics of their poetry, then outlined. Color figures and images are dominant in Al-Jahili poetry to its extreme so as to propagate an oasis of environmental emulations, on one hand, and an outlet for personal experience on the other. In his poetry, Antara followed his ancestors' poetic traditions and closely textualized their inspirations and fantasies in his versification.  Partly, his poetic diction was personalized; whereas, the semantic contents tackled by ancestors were mediated and de toured astray in some instanses.  Reviewing his poetry collection one can infer his typical attitudes of using colors: the black, the white, the red, the green, the blue, and the yellow. Excessive use of these colors can be cited along with multiplicity of presentation in creating a quantum of color implications especially those of the white and the black, he used a decorated mosaic of colors in forming his poetic image; whereas he incorporated a corona of colors in restoring his poeticity.  Color contrasts are foregrounded in building up perceptible imagesof his poems. Colorful images, he used, asa loverand as a knight are merged with his passion and bravery; though gloomy in his macabre. The paper concludes that Antara used an excessive influx of colors terminology and semantic sheds in entailing his topics, focusing on the red, black and white.  The black was his favorite; whereas the red and the black are used excessively in his expressions.  Explicit reference to the red and black was the highest in number in the selected poems.  Essentially, some node that the notability of the black was a symptom of suffering and degrading he suffered as a black.


i-Perception ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 204166951879206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmina Jraissati ◽  
Igor Douven

So far, color-naming studies have relied on a rather limited set of color stimuli. Most importantly, stimuli have been largely limited to highly saturated colors. Because of this, little is known about how people categorize less saturated colors and, more generally, about the structure of color categories as they extend across all dimensions of color space. This article presents the results from a large Internet-based color-naming study that involved color stimuli ranging across all available chroma levels in Munsell space. These results help answer such questions as how English speakers name a more complex color set, whether English speakers use so-called basic color terms (BCTs) more frequently for more saturated colors, how they use non-BCTs in comparison with BCTs, whether non-BCTs are highly consensual in less saturated parts of the solid, how deep inside color space basic color categories extend, or how they behave on the chroma dimension.


2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 487-495
Author(s):  
Don Dedrick

AbstractRecent work on color naming challenges the idea that there are shared perceptually salient colors or color categories that are "hardwired" into homo sapiens and provide the basis for one of the most famous cross-cultural claims of all time, Brent Berlin and Paul Kay's claim that there is a small number of "basic" color terms (eleven), and that some subset of these terms is present in every human language (Berlin & Kay, 1969; see Kay and Maffi, 1999; Kay and Reiger, 2003; and Kay 2005 for updates).


2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guenther Lampert

This study re-analyzes the English way-construction by having recourse to diverse concepts and tools of Talmy’s cognitive semantics. Drawing on his theory of recombinance and its relevance for conceptualizing the construction, the article implements Talmy’s theory of event integration, categorizes the way-construction as an instantiation of the open path event frame, considers link-ups of the schematic systems of force dynamics and attention as they become instantiated in the construction, and probes into its motion-aspect patterning, grounded in a conformation of space and time and resulting in a strategy that is called de-conflation. Further, it will recruit Talmy’s types of semantic conflict resolution (shifts, blends, juxtaposition) to explain seemingly incompatible features of the construction. On a meta-theoretical plane, the article is to present evidence for the view that a cognitive semantics account may complement the many descriptive accounts of the way-construction by providing some missing cognitive foundations and motivation.


2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingyi Gao ◽  
Urmas Sutrop

In this paper the theory of the evolution of basic color terms introduced by Berlin & Kay is applied to Mandarin Chinese. The data was collected using the fieldwork methods, color list and color-naming tasks. The rainbow order of colors does not affect the list task results. The results, i.e. basic color terms, are calculated according to the procedure in Davies & Corbett. There are nine basic color terms in Mandarin. Ranked according to the cognitive salience criterion they are the following: hóng ‘red’, huáng ‘yellow’, lu ‘green’, lán ‘blue’, hēi ‘black’, bái ‘white’, zǐ ‘purple’, fěn ‘pink’, and huī ‘gray’. Of the fully developed set of BCTs only the terms for ‘brown’ and ‘orange’ are absent. There are no real gender differences for the BCTs. Mandarin is a Stage VII basic color vocabulary language. The absence of the Stage VI term for ‘brown’ is explained using the wild-card theory. As a result Mandarin is not a counter-example to the theory of basic color terms. We suggest that the term chéng ‘orange’ is the next candidate for basic status in Mandarin. There are two competing terms for basic ‘brown’ zōng and hè. If one competing term for ‘brown’ (with high probability the term zōng) becomes basic, Mandarin Chinese will have a full set (eleven) of basic color terms.


Author(s):  
Patrick Duffley

This chapter provides a critical examination of the cognitive approach, which claims to follow a semiological or symbolic principle according to which the fundamental role of language is to allow the symbolization of conceptualizations by means of phonological sequences. It asks whether Cognitive Grammar is faithful to this principle and argues that the cognitive postulate of a continuum between semantics and pragmatics stands in direct contradiction to it. Critical assessments are also offered of Prototype Theory, Conceptual Semantics, Construction Grammar, and Natural Semantic Metalanguage.


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