Semantic extensions of the color terms, black and white, in Taiwanese Mandarin, Taiwanese Hakka and Taiwanese Southern Min

• Main Authors: Lu, Shu Chen, 呂淑禎
• Other Authors: Lai, Huei Ling
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/83942683751743589129

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 語言學研究所 === 100 === This thesis explores the similarities and differences regarding color terms of black and white among TM, TH and TSM. Black and white are the two most fundamental colors in the natural world as designated at stage one in Berlin and Kay’s (1969) evolutionary sequence. We classify data into cognitive categories of prototypical meaning, metonymic extensions, metaphorical extensions and idiosyncratic examples, observe their corresponding lexicalization types (Packard 2000) and use Kövecses’ (2005) cultural factors in metaphor to examine them. The three languages all contain abundant data of prototypical meanings which refer to the physiologically visual color, black and white, the representative colors of human conceptual universals about night and day (Wierzbicka 1996, Goddard 1998). Via different ICM mechanisms (Kövecses and Radden 1998), the three languages develop diverse metonymic extensions. Besides, through the general metaphor ABSTRACT QUALITY IS PHYSICAL QUALITY (Goatly 2011), numerous attributes are conceptualized through the visual color black or white in metaphorical extensions. Some metaphorical extensions are universal across the three languages; some are language-specific because of cultural roots, fixed constructions or language borrowing. Idiosyncratic examples include arbitrary items and proverbial expressions. We also use Kövecses’ (2005) cultural factors in metaphor to observe the cross-cultural and within-culture dimensions. For the cross-cultural dimension, in terms of the source domain of color black or white among the three languages, TM develops the most prolific metaphorical extensions of color terms, TH has the least versatile generations, and the development of TSM color terms is in between. The complexity of TM color terms is closely related to the vivacity of cultural, economic or technological developments in that language. From the most primitive opposite of darkness and brightness, color terms of black and white also distinctively contrast with each other. The negative meanings of color terms black are proportionally dominant whereas the meanings of color terms white are mostly non-negative. Furthermore, color terms black and white reveal some evident oppositions in the metaphorical extensions such as mystery and clarity, viciousness and innocence and illegality and legality.