German Colour Terms

A study in their historical evolution from earliest times to the present

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027246103 | EUR 110.00 | USD 165.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027272027 | EUR 110.00 | USD 165.00

This monograph provides, for the first time, a comprehensive historical analysis of German colour words from early beginnings to the present, based on data obtained from over one thousand texts.

Part 1 reviews previous work in colour linguistics. Part 2 describes and documents the formation of popular colour taxonomies and specialised nomenclatures in German across many periods and fields. The textual data examined will be of relevance to cultural historians in fields as far apart as philosophy, religious symbolism, medicine, mineralogy, optics, fine art, fashion, and dyeing technology.

Part 3 — the core of the work — traces linguistic developments in systematic detail across more than twelve centuries. Special attention is given to the evolving meanings of colour terms, their connotative values, figurative extensions, morphological productivity, and lexicographical registration. New light is shed on a range of scholarly issues and controversies, in ways relevant to German lexicologists and to specialists in other languages, notably French and English.

[Studies in the History of the Language Sciences, 119] 2013. xiv, 663 pp.

Publishing status: Available
Published online on 7 June 2013

https://doi.org/10.1075/sihols.119

Table of Contents

List of figures | pp. xi–xii

Preface | pp. xiii–xiv

Part 1. Colour linguistics from a German perspective | pp. 1–44

Part 2. Cultural aspects of colour naming and inventorisation in German | pp. 45–268

Part 3. Linguistic aspects of German colour lexis | pp. 269–532

Abbreviations | pp. 533–536

Appendix A. Colour lists in early classified lexia | pp. 605–634

Appendix B. Extract from Christoph Arnold (1627–1685), Kunst-spiegel (1649) | pp. 635–638

Appendix C. Abraham Gottlob Werner (1749–1817), Ausführliches und sistematisches Verzeichnis des Mineralien-Kabinets des ... Herrn Karl Eugen Pabst von Ohain (Freiberg, Annaberg, 1791–2) | pp. 639–642

Appendix D. Selected lists of artists' colours | pp. 643–654

Index | pp. 655–664

“[A] work of the highest quality: it is clearly written and laid out, meticulously researched, and it represents a successful attempt to organize and interpret the material assembled in the [author’s 2013 Historisches] Lexikon [deutscher Farbbezeichnungen]. The work also helps to fill a major gap in the literature. [...] Colour classification is a highly complex topic, which involves the interaction between the perception, interpretation, and lexicalization of referents (colours) which themselves combine a number of dimensions (hue, saturation, and brightness). A diachronic approach introduces further complication, and yet the author has brought order to this almost chaotic semantic field, and done so with clarity and rigour.”

Howard Jones, in The Modern Language Review, 109:1106-1110

“Die vielseitige Studie verdient auch in Disziplinen wie Anthropologie und Psychologie wahrgenommen zu werden.”

William Dodd, in Germanistik, Band 55, Heft 1-2, 2014

“Es ist, wie seine anderen Monographien auch, ein herausragendes Standardwerk, das sehr lange Bestand haben wird.”

Volker Harm, Göttingen, in Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik, Heft 3 (2014)

“[U]ne compilation magistrale à la fois des sources primaires et de l’ensemble des travaux consacrés aux désignations de couleurs ; et l’on ne peut que souhaiter qu’il serve de point de départ à des recherches futures sur ces questions.”

Audrey Mathys, in Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, Vol. 109/2, 2014

Cited by (15)

Cited by 15 other publications

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Kleinwächter, Tanja C., Sarah Lowengard & Friedrich Steinle

2023. Introduction: Ordering Colours in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Europe. In Ordering Colours in 18th and Early 19th Century Europe [International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, 244], ► pp. 1 ff.

Mylonas, Dimitris, Serge Caparos & Jules Davidoff

2022. Augmenting a colour lexicon. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 9:1

Uusküla, Mari

2022. Translation of Color Language. In Encyclopedia of Color Science and Technology, ► pp. 1 ff.

Uusküla, Mari

2023. Translation of Color Language. In Encyclopedia of Color Science and Technology, ► pp. 1531 ff.

Griber, Yu. A.

2021. Mineralogical Code in Russian Color Names. Nauchnyi dialog :4 ► pp. 42 ff.

Wynn, Addison H.

2021. A new species of Gerrhopilus (family: Gerrhopilidae), with comments on the taxonomic status of Gerrhopilus ater suturalis (Brongersma). The Anatomical Record 304:10 ► pp. 2243 ff.

Levisen, Carsten

2019. “Brightness” in color linguistics. In Lexicalization patterns in color naming [Studies in Functional and Structural Linguistics, 78], ► pp. 83 ff.

Witzel, Christoph

2019. Misconceptions About Colour Categories. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 10:3 ► pp. 499 ff.

Zilli, Alberto & Nick V. Grishin

2019. Unveiling one of the rarest ‘butterflies’ ever (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae, Noctuidae). Systematic Entomology 44:2 ► pp. 384 ff.

Griber, Yulia A., Dimitris Mylonas & Galina V. Paramei

2018. Objects as culture‐specific referents of color terms in Russian. Color Research & Application 43:6 ► pp. 958 ff.

Simonini, Giulia

2018. Organising Colours: Patrick Syme’s Colour Chart and Nomenclature for Scientific Purposes. XVII-XVIII 75

Vejdemo, Susanne

2018. Lexical change often begins and ends in semantic peripheries. Pragmatics & Cognition 25:1 ► pp. 50 ff.

Hodacs, Hanna

2016. Transferring and Substituting Tea and Colours. In Silk and Tea in the North, ► pp. 147 ff.

Hodacs, Hanna

2016. A Colourful Cargo for a Motley People. In Silk and Tea in the North, ► pp. 90 ff.

CHIARI, Sophie

2015. General Introduction: “Chamelion like” England. E-rea :12.2

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 30 october 2024. 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.

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