Masoumeh Zarei; Shahla Raghib Dust
Abstract
Color terms are radiation of the human conceptual system that represents a reflection of his cognitive and linguistic features. The human conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. Metaphor is a cognitive mechanism and one of the linguistic strategies that can play a part in color term ...
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Color terms are radiation of the human conceptual system that represents a reflection of his cognitive and linguistic features. The human conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. Metaphor is a cognitive mechanism and one of the linguistic strategies that can play a part in color term formation and categorical extension of colors. This study has taken metaphor in Persian color terms and the metaphorical structure of color categories in the Persian language into consideration. In this study, based on cognitive lexical semantics, 910 color terms in Persian have been analyzed. After describing semantic domains in the metaphorical formation of Persian color terms and analyzing the metaphorical structure of Persian color terms, the frequency of semantic domains’ application in Persian color terms and color categories’ tendency for participation in the metaphorical structure of Persian color terms have been investigated. Metaphor is one of the cognitive mechanisms that have a significant role in forming color categories and their conceptual extension in Persian. The domains whose phenomena have been observed in the metaphorical structure of Persian color terms are plant domain, animal domain, food domain, body domain, mineral domain, natural phenomenon domain, and object domain. The frequency of application and distribution of these semantic domains in Persian color categories is not equal. Besides, the rate of color categories’ participation in the metaphorical structure of Persian color terms and their tendency to the source semantic domains vary in metaphorical mapping.
Introduction
Color terms are radiation of the human conceptual system that represents a reflection of his cognitive and linguistic features. Metaphor is a cognitive mechanism and one of the linguistic strategies that can play a part in color term formation and categorical extension of colors. This study has considered metaphor in Persian color terms and the metaphorical structure of color categories in the Persian language. In this research, we attempted to provide answers to the following questions:
How is the metaphorical structure of color categories in the Persian language?
What are the source domains in the metaphorical mapping of concepts in Persian color terms?
What is the contribution of color categories to the metaphorical structure and the extent of their tendency to the semantic domains in Persian color terms?
Literature Review
Conklin (1955) studied color categories in the Hanunóo language. Berlin and Kay (1969) argued that all languages share a universal system of basic color categorization that has evolved in 7 stages. Rosch (1973) studied the color terms of the Dani language. Levinson (2000) categorizes color propositions in the Yélî language. Everett (2005) believes that there are considerable differences in the way colors are named among the speakers of the Pirahã language. Xing (2009) investigated color terms in Chinese. Gol-Mohammadzadeh (2009) studied the symbolic meaning of color terms among Persian speakers. Estaji (2007) investigated Persian color terms structurally. Afrashi and Samet (2012) studied the conceptual metaphors of color in the Persian language. Alizadeh Sahrai and Raskhmahand (2016) investigated the hierarchy of basic color words in Persian.
Methodology
This research was based on a fieldwork study and the data was collected from different social-cultural contexts in the Persian-speaking society. In this study, we examined 910 color terms descriptively and statistically, within the scope of cognitive lexical semantics and the theoretical beliefs of Lakoff and Johnson (1980). In this research, we investigated the metaphorical structure of color categories and the formation of Persian color terms through the cognitive mechanism of metaphorical mapping.
Results
The analysis of the research data shows that in the metaphorical structure of color categories, due to the similarity of an area of the color spectrum to a phenomenon in the surrounding world, the name of that phenomenon is used for the lexical encoding of that area in the color spectrum. There is a general metaphor in the formation of Persian color terms and their categorization: the radiating color phenomenon is color (see the figure below).
Figure 1
The general conceptual metaphor of color in the Persian language
source domain target domain
radiating color phenomenon
color
mapping
This general metaphor is made of a set of radiating color phenomena that create a cluster of “convergent cognitive models” together. This cluster radially causes the formation of a set of convergent subcategories in the color categories, which are: color is plant, color is animal, color is body, color is food, color is mineral, color is natural phenomenon, and color is object. The models of this cluster are shown in the figure below:
Figure 2
The cluster of metaphorical cognitive models
source domains target domains
color
color
color
color
color
color
color
plant
animal
body
comestible
mineral
natural phenomenon
object
mappings
These cognitive models are semantic source domains in the metaphorical mapping of 910 Persian color terms. Figure (3) illustrates the distribution of these domains in the metaphorical mapping of Persian color terms:
Figure 3
the distribution of semantic domains in the metaphorical mapping
Generally, the distribution of these semantic domains in Persian color categories is not the same as the following table shows:
Table 1
The distribution of the semantic domain in color categories
color categories
plant
animal
mineral
natural phenomenon
food
body
object
blue
2%
6%
6%
18%
3%
5%
0%
purple
8%
2%
1%
0%
0%
0%
0%
gray
0%
12%
15%
9%
1%
3%
12%
yellow
17%
10%
18%
8%
10%
23%
14%
green
21%
13%
10%
5%
1%
5%
5%
red
19%
12%
15%
15%
25%
28%
7%
white
3%
9%
10%
14%
17%
8%
26%
black
2%
8%
4%
12%
0%
5%
9%
pink
9%
1%
3%
3%
9%
10%
5%
brown
12%
15%
10%
6%
33%
15%
9%
orange
6%
2%
7%
5%
0%
0%
0%
polycolor
1%
9%
2%
5%
0%
0%
14%
In addition to the non-uniformity of the frequency of the use of semantic domains in color categories, the participation rate of each of these color categories in the metaphorical structure of Persian color terms:
Figure 5
The participation rate of color categories
The tendency of each of these color categories to the source semantic domains in the metaphorical mapping is also different. The following table shows the contribution of color categories in the metaphorical structure of Persian color terms and the tendency of each of them to the source semantic domains in the metaphorical mapping:
Table 2
The contribution and tendency of color categories
color categories
plant
animal
mineral
natural phenomenon
food
body
object
blue
10%
21%
16%
45%
4%
4%
0%
purple
85%
9%
6%
0%
0%
0%
0%
gray
1%
34%
34%
20%
1%
1%
9%
yellow
43%
14%
19%
8%
5%
7%
4%
green
58%
20%
11%
6%
1%
2%
2%
red
41%
14%
13%
12%
%11
7%
2%
white
12%
19%
16%
22%
14%
4%
13%
black
17%
28%
11%
32%
0%
4%
8%
pink
57%
4%
8%
8%
11%
8%
4%
brown
33%
21%
11%
7%
20%
5%
3%
orange
49%
10%
23%
18%
0%
0%
0%
polycolor
14%
55%
10%
21%
0%
0%
0%
Conclusion
Metaphor is one of the cognitive mechanisms that play a great role in the formation of color categories and their conceptual extension in the Persian language. In the metaphorical structure of color categories in Persian, the concept of the surrounding phenomena domain is exactly mapped to the domain of color. The similarity between phenomenon and color is lexically encoded by color-term-forming affixes and morphemes of the Persian language. In Persian color terms, metaphor functions paradigmatically and there is a one-to-one correspondence between the concept of phenomenon and the concept of color. The domains that have been observed in the metaphorical structure of Persian are, in order of maximum, as follows: plant domain, animal domain, food domain, body domain, mineral domain, natural phenomenon domain, and object domain.
There is a non-uniformity in the degree of distribution of these semantic domains in different categories; the presence of some of them is more prominent in some color categories and insignificant in others. Furthermore, the percentage of color categories’ participation in the metaphorical structure of Persian color terms and their tendency to the source domains in the metaphorical mapping are also different. Plant is the most prototypical semantic domain in the metaphorical structure of Persian color categories and green, red, and yellow categories are the prototypical categories in the semantic domain of plant.
