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英汉颜色词次范畴对比研究

A Contrastive Study of the Subcategories of English and Chinese Color Terms

【作者】 薛亚红

【导师】 杨忠;

【作者基本信息】 东北师范大学 , 英语语言文学, 2013, 博士

【摘要】 颜色词是人类对色彩感知、范畴化并用自然语言进行编码的结果,是用来描述事物颜色属性(色调、明度和饱和度)的词语,是人类语言中一个相对独立且在动态发展的词汇系统。颜色词历来是哲学家、人类学家、心理学家和语言学家等共同关心的焦点,也是当代语言学研究的前沿课题之一,相关研究从不同视角展开,著述频出。相关研究虽然各有见地,但也存在诸多局限。例如,西方学者的颜色词研究多沿袭语言相对论与语言进化论的理论范式,多采用传统的人类学、心理学研究方法,多以英语作为元语言和对象语言,多以颜色词基本范畴为研究对象,很少涉及颜色词的次范畴—非基本颜色词,所揭示的也仅是颜色词研究中诸多问题的几个方面。而国内学者在进行英汉颜色词对比研究时,也是以颜色词基本范畴为对象,未将颜色词次范畴作为主要内容来探讨,既缺乏跨语言的对比分析,又缺乏对深层的语义机制阐释。因此,本文在评述颜色词相关研究的基础上,对英汉颜色词次范畴展开了对比研究,主要回答以下研究问题:1.英汉颜色词次范畴在体现形式方面的共性和差异是什么?2.英汉颜色词次范畴在文体特征方面的共性和差异是什么?3.英汉颜色词次范畴在认知机制方面的共性和差异是什么?本研究依据认知语言学的范畴化理论、概念映射理论及系统功能语法的例示理论,提出了英汉颜色词次范畴对比研究的认知语义研究模式,在此基础上,基于语料库的量化研究与质化研究相结合的研究方法及对比研究方法,首先对问卷调查获取的语料及选自A Dictionary of Colour、Oxford English Dictionary在线词典、《现代汉语词典》、《颜色描写词典》、《中国颜色名称》、《现代汉语颜色词词表》、美国当代英语语料库(COCA)和北京大学现代汉语语料库(CCL)的语料以及自建语料库中的语料进行整理、分类,考察这些语料中非基本颜色词的出现和使用情况,然后进行对比分析。对比研究发现,英汉颜色词次范畴在体现形式、文体特征及认知机制方面均存在着共性与差异。研究发现,英汉两种语言颜色词次范畴的形态结构大体相同,均包含实物颜色词、专名颜色词、程度颜色词及间色词四类。然而,从体现形式上看,英汉非基本颜色词除由基本颜色词相互结合、基本颜色词与实物名称结合或基本颜色词加修饰词构成这一共性特征外,英语非基本颜色词体现形式更加多样,实物颜色词及间色词的构成形式均多于汉语。英汉非基本颜色词作为以英汉基本颜色词为认知原型进一步切分而成的又一原型范畴,均具有模糊性、比喻性、使用的“专门”性等语义特征及描写功能、表情功能等语用功能,多出现于文学作品、汽车、手机等电子产品及服装与装饰装潢材料等产品广告中。研究还发现,非基本颜色词的衍生是次范畴化的过程;在这一过程中借助于隐喻、转喻和概念整合等认知方式。英汉实物颜色词和大部分专名颜色词是隐喻构建的,是基于“颜色是实物”这一实体隐喻而形成的。其源域喻体主要集中在常见的植物、动物、矿物/金属、珠宝、自然现象及人类活动等方面,其中“实物名称+基本颜色词”类实物颜色词的源域又以植物域为最。而英汉各种实物颜色词的源域喻体选择又具有各自的特点,例如,英语中以地名、化工及人类活动为源域喻体构成的实物颜色词在数量上明显多于汉语;而“实物名称+color(ed)/色”类实物颜色词在源域的选择上,汉语也以植物域为最,而这类英语颜色词的源域喻体选择没有显著差别。此外,人们还将某种色彩的使用者或与之相关的地名等用作喻体来表达与之相关的颜色,如:Turkey red、Alice blue、Lincolngreen、“澳门绿”、“海军蓝”等,这也从一侧面反映了人们认知水平的提高及语言表达方式的日益多样化。此外,英语中有数目可观的实物颜色词和少数专名颜色词是通过转喻构建的,人们用日常生活中所熟知的植物、动物、用品、化工产品和宝石名称(其中以植物名称为最)等直接转喻与之相关的、突显的颜色。人们也常把地点与发生在该地点上的事件、位于该地点上的机构紧密联系起来,用地名转喻有关的人、事件或机构等。例如:magenta是意大利一城镇,是1859年著名的马真塔战役的战地,品红这种染料恰于同年发现,因此,人们以该战城转喻“品红”这一颜色。与隐喻式实物颜色词不同,这类转喻式英语实物颜色词的色彩表达已完全脱离了颜色词范畴,仅用一实物名称转指其突显的颜色,其能产性强,在英语非基本颜色词中占有相当的比重(38.4%)。相比之下,汉语的此类颜色词较少,仅占汉语非基本颜色词总量的1.38%。而且,因为此类颜色词是多义词,其使用需要有语境提示,否则,它们只是一些实物名称,例如:“鹤”是“鸟类的一属”,只有在诸如“鹤发童颜”、“鹤发松姿”等词中才转喻表达“白色”之义。英汉程度颜色词是方位隐喻构建的。汉语程度颜色词中还有一类是通过通感隐喻构建的。这类程度颜色词可具体分为四类:色觉沟通听觉颜色词、色觉沟通味觉颜色词、色觉沟通肤觉颜色词和色觉沟通嗅觉颜色词。这类颜色词是人们通过联想将色觉与各感官沟通而形成的,不仅表达色彩信息,还表达人们对所描述事物的爱憎情感等。相比之下,英语中除soft red等少数词之外,很少有与汉语对应的由通感隐喻构建的颜色词。这也从一个侧面体现了所属语言系统对其词汇表达的制约。而英汉间色词的认知机制是概念整合。以间色词“蓝绿”为例,它由基本颜色词“蓝”和基本颜色词“绿”整合而成,其中,“蓝”和“绿”分属两个输入空间,“蓝”像晴天天空的颜色,“绿”像草和树叶茂盛时的颜色,是蓝颜料和黄颜料混合成的颜色。来自两个输入空间的构成成分通过跨空间的映现形成了一种新的色彩概念:“蓝绿”色。可见,非基本颜色词既是是人类色彩认知深化与跨越范畴认知的产物,又是群体共识,与一个民族的文化密切相关。它直接反映语言社团如何将色彩经验识解(construe)为意义,这个认知过程以范畴化为基础。其范畴化及次范畴化反映着一个民族认识事物的独特思维方式。非基本颜色词与文化语境息息相关,与其使用情景语境紧密关联。英汉颜色词次范畴的体现形式、文体特征及认知机制的趋同性与差异性从一个侧面揭示了英汉两种语言在表征颜色范畴方面的共性与差异及语言范畴与认知能力、群体共识、民族文化的密切关系。本研究具有一定的理论意义和实践意义。首先,本研究将认知语言学的范畴化理论和概念映射理论及系统功能语法的例示理论应用于英汉颜色词次范畴的对比研究中,一方面扩展了相关理论的应用范围,另一方面加深了人们对相关理论的理解和认识。本研究首次对非基本颜色词进行定义和系统分类,首次提出“专名颜色词”这一概念;并在前人研究基础上提出了颜色词次范畴对比研究的认知语义研究模式,为不同种类词汇范畴化研究提供了统一的理论框架;本研究首次运用基于语料库的量化研究与质化研究相结合的研究方法对英汉颜色词次范畴的体现形式、文体特征及认知机制进行对比分析;也是首次尝试对颜色词汇系统中的非基本颜色词进行全面、系统的分析探讨。颜色词次范畴对比研究从一个侧面揭示了两种语言在表征颜色范畴方面的差异及两种文化思维模式的差异;也在一定程度上支持了Levinson(1997;2003)对Sapir&Whorf假说新解观点,即:人类语言原子层面的一致性与分子层面的差异性,丰富人们对人类跨范畴认知的认识;进而加深了人们对语言范畴与非语言思维之间关系的理解。其次,本研究从体现形式,文体特征和认知机制三个方面对比分析英汉非基本颜色词的共性和差异,对比分析的结果可对外汉语教学、英语教学、英汉翻译和词典编纂提供参考。

【Abstract】 Color terms, as the results of human perception, categorization and encoding withnatural language of color, are words and expressions denoting the color attributes of things,including hue, brightness and saturation and form a relatively independent yet dynamiclexical system of human language, which remain the research focus of philosophers,anthropologists, psychologists and linguists and one of the leading issues in the linguisticstudies of the day. Relevant studies have been carried out from different perspectives,yielding fruitful results, yet they also have some limitations. For example, when studying thecolor terms, western scholars tend to follow the theoretical paradigms of linguistic relativityand linguistic universality, taking such traditional anthropological and psychological methodsas naming and response time as their research methods, taking English as the metalanguageand object language, and basic color terms as their research focus, with no due attention paidto non-basic color terms—the subcategories of color terms, thus revealing just several aspectsof the many problems in the research of color terms. And when the Chinese scholars makecontrastive studies of English and Chinese color terms, they also focus on basic color termsrather than non-basic color terms, with little cross-language contrastive studies and nointerpretation of the inner semantic mechanism involved. Thus this dissertation conducts acontrastive study of the subcategories of English and Chinese color terms after a literaturereview of the previous studies of color terms home and abroad, aiming to answer thefollowing three research questions:1. What are the similarities and differences in the representation of the subcategories ofEnglish and Chinese color terms?2. What are the similarities and differences in the stylistic features of the subcategoriesof English and Chinese color terms?3. What are the similarities and differences in the cognitive mechanism of thesubcategories of English and Chinese color terms?The present research puts forward a cognitive semantic research model in the contrastivestudy of the subcategories of English and Chinese color terms based on the categorizationtheory and conceptual mapping theory of cognitive linguistics as well as the theory ofinstantiation in systemic functional grammar and takes as its research methodology thecombination of quantitative research and qualitative research as well as a contrastive analysis.The data used are taken from the questionaires, A Dictionary of Colour, the Online OxfordEnglish Dictionary, Modern Chinese Dictionary, Color Description Dictionary, Color Glossary of Modern Chinese, The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) andCorpus of Chinese Language (CCL). After sorting, classifying and analyzing the data, thepresent paper makes a contrastive study of the subcategories of English and Chinese colorterms and finds that the non-basic color terms, as subcategories of basic color terms, areformed in the cognitive process of transcategorization. There are both similarities anddifferences in terms of the representation, the stylistic features and the cognitive mechanismin English and Chinese color terms.It is found that there are four main types of non-basic colors in terms of themorphological structure in both English and Chinese: object color terms, proper noun colorterms, color terms denoting degree, color terms denoting mixed color. Yet, in terms of therepresentation forms, besides the common features shared by the two languages in theformation of object color terms, i.e. basic color terms and object names combined, basic colorterms and modifiers combined, there are more representation forms particularly in objectcolor terms and color terms denoting mixed color in English non-basic color terms, whilethere are also unique representation forms in Chinese non-basic color terms.It is also found that as the prototypes resulting from furthering cutting with basic colorterms as their cognitive prototypes, non-basic color terms have their unique semantic features,such as features of vagueness, figurative features and use in some special genres and inparticular contexts and so on. In addition, they serve such pragmatic functions as descriptivefunction and expressive function, which are the main reasons why they occur mostly inliterary works and the advertisements of car, clothing and decorating materials and suchelectronic products as mobile phones, and computers.In addition, it is found that the derivation of non-basic color terms is the cognitiveprocess of subcategorization, during which such cognitive means as metaphor, metonymy andconceptual integration are resorted to.Object color terms and most of the proper noun color terms are semantically motivatedwith ontological metaphor as its main mechanism,that is, they are formed on the basis ofontological metaphor. The source domains include the domains of plants, animals,minerals/metals, jewels, natural phenomena and human activities, of which the plant domainranks first in the color terms formed by object names and basic color terms combined.Besides, the choices of the source domains reveal the unique features in English and Chinese,as illustrated by English object color terms and proper noun color terms, in which the numberof non-basic color terms formed with names of place, chemical products and human activitiesas their main source domains is much larger than their Chinese counterparts, whereas interms of object color terms formed by object names and-colored combined, the plant domainof the Chinese color terms still ranks first, while in English there is no obvious distinction.Besides, people also take the users of a color and the names of relevant places as the vehicle to denote the color, such as Turkey red, Alice blue, Lincoln green, Macao green and navy blue,etc., which reveals from one aspect the improving of human cognitive capacity and theincreasing diversity of linguistic expressions.Besides, there are a large number of English object color terms and a few proper nouncolor terms which are metonymy-motivated. People often denote the relevant, salient colorswith the names of plants, animals, articles for use, chemical products and jewels by means ofmetonymy, of which the plant names rank first. People also associate the place where anevent takes place with the event or the place where an institution is located with theinstitution. For example, magenta is an Italian town, where the famous Magenta Battle tookplace in1859, coincidentally, the dye “品红” was also found that year, thus people denote thedye with magenta, the name of the battle field, metonymically.Unlike the object color terms and proper noun color terms which are formedmetaphorically, the conveying of color concepts with the color terms formed metonymicallyhas totally gone beyond the color category, in which the names of entities is usedmetonymically to denote their salient colors. Such color terms are great in number accountingfor38.4%in the total number of English non-basic color terms. By contrast, there are only asmall number of such words in Chinese, accounting for only1.38%in Chinese non-basiccolor terms. And since these words are polysemous words, their use as color terms shouldhave contextual clues, otherwise, they are only names of objects. For example,“鹤” is agenus of birds in Chinese, only when it is used in such idioms as “鹤发童颜” and “鹤发松姿”, can it carry the meaning of “white”, otherwise, it is only a name of the bird in Chinese.The cognitive mechanism of English and Chinese color terms denoting degree isorientational metaphor. There are also in Chinese color terms denoting degree, the color termswhich are synesthetically motivated and which can be divided into four subcategories:synesthesia between color vision and audition, synesthesia between color vision and gustation,synesthesia between color vision and dermal sense and synesthesia between color vision andolfactory sense, which are formed by communicating between color vision and differentsenses, denoting not only information of color but also people’s emotion of love and hatetowards the things described. By contrast, there are rarely such color terms formed in thisway in English except a few words such as “soft red”, which reveals the constraints of thelanguage systems on their language expressions.The cognitive mechanism of English and Chinese color terms denoting mixed colors isconceptual integration. Take the color term “blue-green” as an example. It is formed byintegrating the basic color terms “blue” and “green”, of which “blue” and “green” belong totwo different input spaces, with “blue” the color of the sky on a sunny day and “green” thecolor of grass and leaves when they are flourishing. The two components from the inputspaces form a new color concept “blue-green” through cross-space mapping, meaning a color with “blue” and “green” combined.In short, non-basic color terms are not only the products of the deepening of humancognition of color as well as the products of human transcategorization but also the groupconsensus, having great bearing on the ethnic culture. They directly reflect how a speechcommunity construes color experience as meaning, and this cognitive process is based oncategorization and subcategorization, revealing the unique thinking mode of an ethnic groupin getting to know things. The non-basic color terms have a close bearing not only on culturalcontexts but also on situational contexts. The similarities and differences reveal from oneaspect the different construing of color experiences in English and Chinese as well as theclose relation between linguistic categories,cognitive capacity and ethnic traditions.This research has both theoretical and practical significance.Firstly, this research applies the cognitive theories of categorization and conceptualmapping as well as the theory of instantiation in systemic functional grammar to thecontrastive study of the subcategories of English and Chinese color terms, which can broadenthe application scope of the relevant theories on the one hand, and deepens people’sunderstanding of these theories on the other hand.This research defines and systematically classifies non-basic color terms,brings forwardthe concept of proper noun color terms and puts forward the cognitive semantic researchmodel of the subcategories of color terms for the first time on the basis of previous studies,providing a unified theoretical framework for the categorization of different types ofvocabulary. This research also carries out a corpus-based contrastive study, with thecombined method of qualitative study and quantitative study of the subcategories of Englishand Chinese color terms in terms of their representation forms, stylistic features as well astheir cognitive mechanism for the first time, and tries to analyze the non-basic color termscomprehensively and systematically.The contrastive study of the subcategories of English and Chinese color terms revealsfrom one aspect the similarities and differences in the representation of color categories intwo different language as well as the different thinking modes of the two cultures, supportingto some extent the new interpretation of Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis by Levinson(1997;2003),namely, there is universality at the atomic level but differences at the molecular level inhuman languages, thus enriching people’s understanding of human transcategorization anddeepening people’s understanding of the relationship between linguistic categories andnon-linguistic thinking.Finally, the findings of the research into the similarities and differences of English andChinese color terms in terms of their representations, stylistic features as well as the cognitivemechanism will provide reference for teaching Chinese as a foreign language, Englishteaching, English-Chinese translation as well as dictionary compiling.

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