Semantic Investigation on Color Adjectives with ABB forms in Taiwanese

• Main Authors: Liu Pei-tsi, 劉沛慈
• Other Authors: 呂菁菁
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2003
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/40491599649238264742

碩士 === 國立新竹師範學院 === 臺灣語言與語文教育研究所 === 91 === There are abundant ABB forms in Taiwanese. In this thesis, we focus on the ABB forms whose first morpheme indicates one of the five basic colors: black, blue (green), red, white, or yellow, trying to examine their usage frequency nowadays and to understand their semantic characteristics from the viewpoint of human cognition, especially the prototype theory. The semantic characteristics are induced from the language examples collected by the interviews with fluent native speakers. The usage frequency is calculated with the ratings of the informants. The informants are asked to do familiarity rating with a five-point scale. Their ratings are analyzed with the variables of their language ability and the other factors. After obtaining the list of the high-frequency ABB forms, which were beginning with one of the five basic color terms, we made some semantic hypotheses based on the sentences given by the informants and we designed a questionnaire of multiple choice sentences based on our hypotheses. There were 90 sentences in the questionnaire. And there were 34 fluent native speakers filling up our questionnaire. Based on their responses, we tested our hypotheses and finished the picture of the semantic characteristics for each high-frequency ABB forms beginning with color terms. The findings show that: (1) For some words, their core meanings are more precise, so that it is easier to depict their prototypical usages; while the core meanings of some other ABB forms are quite vague. (2) One ABB forms may be substituted by the other in some certain context, when there is some overlapping between their semantic characteristics. (3) Even with some overlapping, the semantic characteristics as a whole are unique for each ABB form. Beside of the main findings, the possible routes of sememe increasing and semantic change are also discussed in this thesis.