Cover not available

In:Multilingual Cognition and Language Use: Processing and typological perspectives
Edited by Luna Filipović and Martin Pütz
[Human Cognitive Processing 44] 2014
► pp. 73–96

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

A contrastive study of colour terms in French and German causal constructions

Published online: 10 June 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.44.03kno
This contrastive study explores the conceptualization of colours in different speech communities as they are realized in causal constructions, e.g. Je suis rouge de colère (‘I am red with rage’) or Er ist grün vor Neid (‘He is green with jealousy’). The theoretical framework is based on Goldberg’s model of Construction Grammar (1995, 2006) and on the theory of conceptual metaphor and metonymy. Colour terms in causal constructions are associated with specific emotions, but also with positive or negative values dependent on the speech community. The investigation includes corpus frequency, meaning and use contrasts in French and German, and elicited data, which allows us to highlight the typological and conceptualization differences between both languages.
References (66)
Aaronson, Bernard. 1970. Some affective stereotypes of color. International Journal of Symbology 2(1): 15–27.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Adams, Frances M. & Charles E. Osgood. 1973. A cross-cultural study of affective meanings of color. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 4: 135–156. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bennett, Thomas J. A. 1988. Aspects of English Colour Collocations and Idioms . Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berlin, Brent & Paul Kay. 1969. Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution . Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Biggam, Carole P., Carole A. Hough, Christian J. Kay, & David R. Simmons, eds. 2011. New Directions in Colour Studies . Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bochnakowa, Anna. 1990. L’adjectif de couleur dans les syntagmes nominaux en français et en polonais. In A. M. Lewicki & M. Kesik, eds., Syntagmes nominaux dans les langues romanes et slaves, Actes du Colloque International de linguistique organisé par l’Université Marie-­Curie-Skłodowska, Lublin , 7–24. Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bretones, Carmen. 2012. Different construals within language, thought and culture: The case of abstract expressions for color in Spanish vs. English. Unpublished manuscript presented at the 35th International LAUD Symposium in Landau, March26–29.
Brusatin, Manlio. 2009. Histoire des Couleurs . Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Burger, Harald, Annelies Buhofer, & Ambros Sialm, eds. 1982. Handbuch der Phraseologie . ­Berlin & New York: de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Caivano, José Luis & Paulina Becerra. 2007. Chronological Bibliography on Color Theory . [URL].
Camac, Mary K. & Sam Glucksberg. 1984. Metaphors do not use associations between concepts, they are used to create them. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 13(6): 443–455. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Choungourian, A. 1968. Color preferences and cultural variation. Perceptual and Motor Skills 26: 1203–1206. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Danesi, Marcel. 2008. Conceptual errors in second-language learning. In S. De Knop & T. De Rycker, eds., Cognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar: A Volume in Honour of René Dirven , 231–256. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Knop, Sabine. 2013. Eine Beschreibung von Konstruktionen mit Farbbezeichnungen im Rahmen der Konstruktionsgrammatik. In S. De Knop, F. Mollica, & J. Kuhn, eds., Konstruktionsgrammatik und romanische Sprachen, 211-236. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Knop, Sabine & Françoise Gallez. 2012. Manner of motion: A privileged dimension of German expressions. International Journal of Cognitive Linguistics 2(1): 25–40.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Derrig, Sandra. 1978. Metaphor in the Color Lexicon. In D. Farkas, W%. M. Jacobsen, & K. W. Todrys, eds., Papers from the Parasession on the Lexicon , 85–96. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dirven, René. 2004. Major strands in Cognitive Linguistics . Essen: LAUD, Series A, Nr. 634.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dirven, René & Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez. 2010. Looking back at 30 years of Cognitive Linguistics. In E. Tabakowska, M. Choinski, & L. Wiraszka, eds., Cognitive Linguistics in Action: From Theory to Application and Back , 11–70. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dirven, René & Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza Ibanez. In prep. Cognitive Linguistics three decades later: Looking back to look forward. In J. Luchjenboers & M. Aldridge-Waddon, eds., Grammar, Metaphor and Blends. Conceptual Structure and Cognitive Linguistics Research . Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Fan, Yanqian. 1996. Farbnomenklatur im Deutschen und Chinesischen: Eine kontrastive Analyse unter psycholinguistischen, semantischen und kulturellen Aspekten . Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Filipović, Luna. 2011. Speaking and remembering in one or two languages: Bilingual vs. monolingual lexicalization and memory for motion events. International Journal of Bilingualism 15 (4): 466–485. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fleischer, Wolfgang. 1997. Phraseologie der Deutschen Gegenwartssprache . Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Girdenienė, Skaidra. 2006. Zum Ausdruck der inneren Ursache durch Präpositionalphrasen im Deutschen und Litauischen. Kalbotyra 56(3): 48–55. ([URL])Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Glanemann, Claudia. 2003. Farbe zwischen Universalismus und Relativismus. Gebrauch und Bedeutung der Farbbezeichnungen im heutigen Französischen, mit Berücksichtigung des Italienischen und Deutschen . Ph. D. thesis, Münster: Fachbereich Philologie, Universität Münster.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. Konvergenz und Divergenz in der Bedeutungsstruktur von Farbwörtern im Französischen, Italienischen und Deutschen. In W. Dietrich, U. Hoinkes, 
B. Roviro, & M. Warnecke, eds., Lexikalische Semantik und Korpuslinguistik , 367–391. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gläser, Rosemarie. 1990. Phraseologie der englischen Sprache . Leipzig & Wien: Langenscheidt.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions. A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language . Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hang, Brigitte. 1994. Phraseologismen mit Farbwörtern im Französischen und Deutschen. ­Terminologie et Traduction 2: 69–122.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hardin, C. L. & Maffi, Luisa, eds. 1997. Color Categories in Thought and Language . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hausmann, Franz Josef. 1989. Le dictionnaire de collocations. In F. J. Hausmann, O. Reichmann, H%. E. Wiegand, & L. Zgusta, eds., Wörterbücher. Ein Internationales Handbuch zur Lexikographie , 1010–1019. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hill, Peter. 1972. Die Farbwörter der Russischen und Bulgarischen Schriftsprache der Gegenwart . Amsterdam: A. M.Hakkert.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By . Chicago: The University of ­Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lohde, Michael. 2006. Wortbildung des modernen Deutschen. Ein Lehr- und Übungsbuch . ­Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lucy, John A. 1992. Language Diversity and Thought: A Reformulation of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mollard-Desfour, Annie. 1998. Le Bleu – Le Dictionnaire des Mots et Expressions de Couleur du XXe siècle (DMEC) . Paris: CNRS Éditions.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000. Le Rouge – Le Dictionnaire des Mots et Expressions de Couleur du XXe siècle (DMEC) . Paris: CNRS Éditions.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. Le Rose – Le Dictionnaire des Mots et Expressions de Couleur du XXe siècle (DMEC) . Paris: CNRS Éditions.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Niemeier, Susanne. 1998. Colourless green ideas metonymize furiously. Rostocker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 5: 119–146.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. From blue stockings to blue movies: Color metonymies in English. In M. Plümacher & P. Holz, eds., Speaking of Colors and Odors , 141–154. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Osgood, Charles E., William H. May, & Murray Miron. 1975. Cross-Cultural Universals of Affective Meaning . Urbana/Chicago/London: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Palm, Christine. 1994. Habent sua fata idiomata. Beobachtungen zur Polysemie von Phraseologismen. In B. Sandig, ed., EUROPHRAS 92: Tendenzen der Phraseologieforschung , 431–460. Bochum: Brockmeyer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pastoureau, Michel. 2002. Bleu – Histoire d’une couleur . Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Plümacher, Martina & Peter Holz, eds. 2007. Speaking of Colors and Odors . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Sydney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, & Jan Svartvik. 1972. A Grammar of Contemporary English . London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Radden, Günter & René Dirven. 2008. Cognitive English Grammar . Amsterdam & Philadephia: Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Regier, Terry & Paul Kay. 2009. Language, thought, and color: Whorf was half right. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 30(10): 1–8.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roberson, Debi, Jules Davidoff, Ian R. L. Davies, & Laura R. Shapiro. 2005. Color categories: Evidence for the cultural relativity hypothesis. Cognitive Psychology 50(4): 378–411. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rosch, Eleanor. 1972. Universals in color naming and memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology 93: 10–20. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sandford, Jodi L. 2011. Warm, cool, light, dark, or afterimage: Dimensions and connotations of conceptual color metaphor/metonymy. In C. P. Biggam, C%. A. Hough, C%. J. Kay, & D. R. Simmons, eds., New Directions in Colour Studies , 205–218. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schaie, K. Warner. 1961. Scaling the association between colors and mood-tones. The American Journal of Psychology 74: 266–273. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schmidhauser, Beda. 1995. Kausalität als linguistische Kategorie . Tübingen : Niemeyer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Simmons, David. 2011. Colour and emotion. In C. P. Biggam, C%. A. Hough, C%. J. Kay, & D. R. Simmons, eds., New Directions in Colour Studies , 395–414. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Soriano, Cristina & Javier Valenzuela. 2009. Emotion and colour across languages: Implicit associations in Spanish colour terms. Social Science Information 48(3): 421–445. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stefanescu–Goanga, Florian. 1912. Experimentelle Untersuchungen zur Gefühlsbetonung der Farben. Psychologische Studien 7: 284–335.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sweetser, Eve. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics , vol. 2. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Trim, Richard. 2007. Metaphor Networks: The Comparative Evolution of Figurative Language . New York: Palgrave.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Uusküla, Mari. 2012. Variability of colour prototypes: Evidence from twelve related and non-related languages. Unpublished manuscript presented at the 35th International LAUD Symposium in Landau, March26–29.
Van Leeuwen, Theo. 2010. The Language of Colour: An Introduction . London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1990. The meaning of color terms: Semantic, culture and cognition. Cognitive Linguistics 1: 99–150. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Williams, John E., Kenneth Morland, & Walter L. Underwood. 1970. Connotations of color names in the United States, Europe and Asia. The Journal of Social Psychology 82: 3–14. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wyler, Siegfried. 1992. Colour and Language – Colour Terms in English . Tübingen: Narr.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zimmer, Dieter. 1996. Redensarten: Über Trends und Tollheiten im neudeutschen Sprach­gebrauch . München: Wilhelm Heyne.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
SketchEngine, [URL]
Kernkorpus des Digitalen Wörterbuchs der Deutschen Sprache (DWDS), [URL]
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Zaikauskaite, Laura, Phoebe French, Mina Stojanovic & Dimitrios Tsivrikos
2023. The effects of moral context on the colours of guilt and pride. The Social Science Journal 60:4 ► pp. 802 ff. DOI logo
Kalda, Anu & Mari Uusküla
2019. The Role of Context in Translating Colour Metaphors: An Experiment on English into Estonian Translation. Open Linguistics 5:1 ► pp. 690 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue