خلاصة:
We deal with a wide range of colors in our daily life. They are such ubiquitous phenomena that is hard and next to impossible to imagine even a single entity (be it an object، place، living creature، etc) devoid of them. They are like death and tax which nobody can dispense with. This omnipresence of colors around us has also made its way through abstract and less tangible entities via the interaction between culture and cognition. In an attempt to shed further light on the way that color meanings could be extended in different languages and cultures، the present study sought to investigate the semantic extension of Persian and English color terms based on cultural data. The findings revealed the existence of both language-idiosyncratic and general tendencies for both Persian and English languages with respect to semantic extension of color terms. It was also shown that Persian and English speakers mostly use the same mechanisms of metonymy، metaphor and sense of opposite relation based on cultural data and their experience of the physical world to develop more and more color meanings. Furthermore، the study suggested that the direction and development of the semantic domain of a color term mainly depends on its already developed semantic properties and is not accidental. Two other accidental points were also found in the study. First، the borrowing، acceptance and the usage of a color expression from another language might depend on the already developed semantic properties of the related color term in the recipient language. Second، it is possible to predict the direction and development of the new connotations and meanings of a color term in a specific language.
ملخص الجهاز:
In an attempt to shed further light on the way color meanings could be extended in different languages and cultures, the present study sought to investigate the semantic extension of Persian and English color terms based on cultural data.
It was also shown that Persian and English speakers mostly use the same mechanisms of metonymy, metaphor and sense of opposite relation based on cultural data and their experience of the physical world to develop more and more color meanings.
g. , Baxter, 1983; Hardin & Maffi, 1997; Hays, Margolis, Naroll, & Dale, 1972; Kay, 2003; Kay, Berlin, Maffi & Merrifield, 1997; Kay & McDaniel, 1978; Kikuchi & Lichtenberk, 1983; Mitterer, Horschig, Musseler & Majid, 2009; Philip, 2006; Socelia, 2008; Tao, 1994; Uuskula, 2008; Wierzbicka, 1990, 1996, 2008; Xing, 2008, to name a few).
The former claims that the semantics of basic color terms in all languages is the results of a common set of neurophysiological processes in which differences in wavelengths of light reaching the eye are transformed into response differences in the visual nervous systems, while the latter, which is the concern of the present study, opposes Kay and McDaniel's claim and suggests that color concepts are interwoven in certain universal identifiable human experiences, such as day, night, fire, the sun, vegetation, the sky and the ground.
3. Data and Method Although there are many colors used in Persian language and culture, this study focuses on only six very commonly used colors consisting of black (siah or meshki), white (sefid), red (ghermez or sorkh), green (sabz), yellow (zard) and blue (abi), so that it would be more suitable for the purpose of comparing and contrasting with their English counterparts.