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Lexicalization patterns in color naming: A cross-linguistic perspective
Edited by Ida Raffaelli, Daniela Katunar and Barbara Kerovec
[Studies in Functional and Structural Linguistics 78] 2019
► pp. 109–132

Lexicalization patterns in color naming in Korean

| Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

Korean has a large inventory of color terms lexicalized through diverse strategies. Sound symbolism is one of the most determinative factors. Sound symbolism operative in color naming includes vowel polarity, consonant tensing and aspiration, prefixation of intensifiers, phonetic extension, and reduplicative suffixation, through which diverse aspects of color perception, e.g., intensity, luminosity, extent, solidity and pleasurability, are encoded. Color naming patterns in Korean reveals an iconic relationship between the perceived state of affairs in the world and the linguistic forms in an intricate application of elaborate sound symbolism, which suggests synesthesia with other related perceptual domains such as auditory perception, distance perception, opacity perception, and value judgment.

Keywords: color lexicalization, sound symbolism, synesthesia, vowel polarity, consonant tensing, intensity, luminosity, extent, solidity, pleasurability
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Preliminaries: Sound symbolism
    • 2.1Vowel polarity
    • 2.2Consonant tensing and aspiration
    • 2.3Reduplication: Iconicity of multiplicity
  • 3.Lexicalization patterns
    • 3.1Nominal category
    • 3.2Adjectival/adverbial categories
      • 3.2.1Prefixation
      • 3.2.2Vowel polarity modulation
      • 3.2.3Consonant tensing/de-tensing
      • 3.2.4Reduplication
      • 3.2.5Phonetic extension
    • 3.3Verbal category
  • 4.Semantics-morphology interface
    • 4.1Iconicity
    • 4.2Synesthesia of multiple senses
    • 4.3Color and evaluation (attitude)
    • 4.4Productivity and novel coinage
  • 5.Summary and conclusion
  • Acknowledgment
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 9 October 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sfsl.78.06rhe
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