Article published in:
Colour Studies: A broad spectrum
Edited by Wendy Anderson, Carole P. Biggam, Carole Hough and Christian Kay
[Not in series 191] 2014
► pp. 323–338

Referential meaning in basic and non-basic color terms

| University of Leuven, Belgium
| University of Leuven, Belgium
| University of Leuven, Belgium

The chapter presents a linguistic analysis of the referential meanings in the semasiological structure of basic and non-basic color terms in a specific usage situation such as marketing. Although most linguistic studies share the assumption about the central role of the reference-related aspects in understanding the semantic structure of color words, the methods for accessing and operationalizing this type of meaning remain rather limited. We propose that a usage-based bottom-up analysis of referentially-enriched multimodal data can provide additional possibilities for modeling the semantics of basic and non-basic color terms. The analysis focuses on the referential range of individual color terms as a basis for identifying different types of color terms used in online marketing and discusses the implications for the semantic relations between color terms based on their referential overlap.

Published online: 26 November 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.191.21ani
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