Loanwords and Expressions Denoting Hues in Old Hungarian (original) (raw)
Related papers
Basic colour terms in Finno-Ugric and Slavonic Languages: Myths and Facts
The present dissertation considers colour naming in three Finno-Ugric (Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian) and two Slavonic (Czech and Russian) languages. The dissertation pursues three main objectives: (1) to establish the basic colour terms in two Finno-Ugric languages, Hungarian and Finnish, and one Slavonic language, Czech; (2) to examine the intriguing case of the two reds, which are allegedly basic in Hungarian according to Berlin and Kay; and (3) to compare the denotata of focal colours of the basic colour terms identified across the three studied languages and relate these to foci in English, Russian and Estonian studied earlier by others. The theoretical background of this study is the theory of universal basic colour terms put forward by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay (1969). In field studies the author carried out 245 individual interviews in Hungary, Finland, and the Czech Republic. Data was collected using the field method developed by Davies and Corbett (1994, 1995): (i) A list task elicited a variety of colour terms in each language. Based on term frequency and mean position, salience indices of individual colour terms were inferred (Sutrop 2000, 2002), which enabled identification of the terms having basic status. (ii) In a subsequent psycholinguistic experiment, called the ‘colour naming task’, colour term mapping was carried out using the Color Aid Corporation’s set of colour tiles. A further goal of the experiment was the establishment of the focal colours for the basic colour terms in the languages of interest. The main findings of these experiments are summarised below. (1) According to the empirical fieldwork, Hungarian and Czech possess 11 basic colour terms. In Finnish, by comparison, 10 basic colour terms fulfil the criteria of basicness, while the term for purple, violetti, although not basic yet can be considered on its way to evolving to basic status. (2) Of the two Hungarian terms for ‘red’ I found that only one, piros, has basic status. The other term, vörös, reveals its cultural salience – via established collocations and connotations – but shows low frequency in elicited lists and when tiles of abstract colour are named. The possibility of two basic ‘reds’ in Czech was also examined since recently, based on work with the Czech National Corpus, it has been argued that two basic colour terms for red also exist in the Czech language (see Schmiedtová & Schmiedtová 2002, 2006). According to my fieldwork in the Czech Republic the basic term for red in Czech is červená, while rudá plays a subsidiary role, is collocation-specific and connotation-loaded, similar to vörös in Hungarian. The question of two reds in Hungarian and Czech presents a semantic question whose solution should be sought on the plane of paradigmatic vs. syntagmatic analysis, i.e. taking into account not only the colour term denotata but also distinct collocations, and as well as positive and negative emotional associations (connotations). It is suggested that the phenomenon could be tackled in terms of cultural salience, a concept which needs further development (see Rakhilina 2007). The study also refers to a possibility that the phenomenon of two reds in the languages spoken in the geographical neighbourhood is areal. However, further fieldwork also needs to be carried out in other neighbouring languages (in particular, in Slovak and Polish). (3) The dissertation also addresses the ongoing debate on focal colours, or best examples, of basic colour terms. The universalist position claims that the foci of the colour categories are identical across languages; by contrast the relativist position argues for cultural- and language-specific focal colours; and an intermediate position prefers a weak relativity solution. The latter implies that focal colours in individual languages vary, but the variability is constructed within a certain focal area. The study provides additional evidence for the hypothesis of weak relativity – by demonstrating that the focal colours deviate slightly among the three studied languages and also in comparison with focal colours in English, Russian and Estonian, studied earlier by other researchers using the same stimuli and methods.
European (dis)union of colours: secondary basic colour terms in Polish, Portuguese and Spanish
The paper proposes a cross-cultural and cross-geographical analysis of secondary basic colours, covering the languages of Polish, Portuguese and Spanish. Here, the selected words are violet, orange, pink and grey. However, these words still pertain to the class of Basic Colour Terms (as referred to in Berlin and Kay's hierarchy) as they are usually described as a mixture of two other (basic) colours (i.e. violet = red + blue; orange = yellow + red; pink = red + white; grey = black + white) – they are called secondary colour terms. Not only are they the least studied (in comparison to white, black and red), but they also seem more likely to highlight the potential differences between the languages in question. The study is essentially synchronic, but also contains information of diachronic nature (the etymology and, possibly, the history of considered terms). Having demonstrated the presence of violet, orange, pink and grey in the language (idioms, phrases, collocations, etc.), the authors go on to discuss the differences and similarities of colour terms geographical and linguistic ends of Europe have different colour visions.
2017
The article is dedicated to the etymological study of native phraseological units with a colorative component in the English, Romanian and Turkish languages. Special attention is given to the culturebound items and events in the history of the languages. The article aims to describe some peculiarities of the origin of the English, Romanian and Turkish phraseological units in the comparative aspect. The introduction presents a concise literature review devoted to the study of phraseological units with a colorative component and defines the notion of a native phraseological unit. Materials and methods section proposes a detailed account of the phraseological units, the appearance of which is motivated by some definite culture-bound items and events in the historical development of the language bearers. The data and facts gathered to conduct the study are taken from authoritative dictionaries. The results and discussions sections concentrate on both general and specific etymological pe...
The Metaphorical Use of Colour Terms in the Slavonic Languages
Colour terms (CTs) describe the visual impression created when light reflected from physical objects strikes the eye. It follows, therefore, when CTs refer to nouns denoting events, states or moods, that is, abstract nouns, that they are being used figuratively or metaphorically, as in English 'blue funk' or 'red revolution'. There are also examples where the colour of an object signifies something else apart from the physical appearance. The article is based on a comprehensive search for examples in the relevant Slavonic normative dictionaries and the other sources listed in the bibliography. Additional examples were collected from artistic literature. Hence the material can be considered to be representative, if not necessarily completely exhaustive, for the Slavonic standard languages.