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Referential meaning in basic and non-basic color terms

Publication date: 2014-01-01
Volume: 191 Pages: 323 - 338
ISSN: 9789027212191
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company; Amsterdam

Author:

Anishchanka, Alena
Speelman, Dirk ; Geeraerts, Dirk

Abstract:

© 2014 - John Benjamins B.V. The chapter presents a linguistic analysis of the referential meanings in the sema-siological structure of basic and non-basic color terms in a specific usage situation such as marketing. Although most linguistic studies share the assumption about the central role of the reference-related aspects in understanding the semantic structure of color words, the methods for accessing and operationalizing this type of meaning remain rather limited. We propose that a usage-based bottom-up analysis of referentially-enriched multimodal data can provide additional possibilities for modeling the semantics of basic and non-basic color terms. The analysis focuses on the referential range of individual color terms as a basis for identifying different types of color terms used in online marketing and discusses the implications for the semantic relations between color terms based on their referential overlap.