Morpho-Syntactic Procedures for the Formation of the Color Lexicon in German: A Data-Based Investigation of Selected Basic Color Words and Color Nuances

Abstract

Colour naming depend, i.a., on physiological, physical, or cultural factors that influence people’s ability to perceive and to name them. On this basis, it is interesting to examine the morpho-syntactic strategies used to build the German colour lexicon of basic colour terms and their nuances. Four basic colour terms (yellow, red, green, and grey) and their nuances have been selected from the Munsell colour system and investigated through an online questionnaire. One hundred and one German participants took part in the survey. For the designation of basic colour words, the informants prefer simple adjectives (rot ‘red’) or compositional strategies (mausgrau ‘mouse grey’). Derivational strategies (grünlich ‘greenish’), noun phrases (zartes Helltürkis ‘delicate light turquoise’), and adjective phrases (dunkles rotbraun ‘dark reddish brown’), on the other hand, are rarely used. Instead of affixes (-lich), structures expressing a specific property of the colour (dunkelgrün ‘dark green’) or a comparison (sonnengelb ‘sunny yellow’) are preferred to denote colour shades. Qualitatively, the spectrum of German morpho-syntactic structures to name colours seems to be quite broad, but quantitatively, only a few of them are actually selected and used.