A Contrastive Study Of Color Words In Chinese - Bu Yi Language

The relation between language and culture is inseparable. Language and culture are both the results of social development, and language is deeply rooted in culture. Vocabulary, as one of numerous elements of language, is the most active part. Color Words, which plays very important role in vocabulary, contains a wealth of cultural connotations. This essay aims to collect the underlying reasons to explain the similarities and differences between Chinese and Buyi language via the systematic comparison and contrast of both languages’constitute, syntactic function and cultural connotations. In the perspective of descriptive linguistics, this ariticle refers "The basic theory of color words," and applys the method of contrastive linguistics research to explore the features of Color Words’ vocabulary and syntax in Chinese and Buyi language, and to demonstrate the cultural connotation behind Color Words, as well as the influences imposed on development of Color Words by the historical cultural comminication and fusion between two ethic groups.The article is mainly divided into four parts, the first part is to define the basic Color words in Chinese and Buyi language; the second part respectively analyzes the composition and characteristics of Color Words in Chinese language and Buyi language, and discusses the similarities and differences between them; the third part illustrates syntactic function of the Color Words in Chinese and Buyi language with examples; In the last part, on the foundation of first three parts, it discusses the similarities and differences of cultural implications behind two kinds of basic Color Words and analyzes the presence of such similarities and differences.After the systematic comparison and analysis, it is founded that there are defintely similaritis exsited in the formation and syntactic function of basic Color Words in Chinese and Buyi language. In addition, the differences between both lauguage are obvious, which are mainly exsited in the positional relationship between the center and modifiers language. Compared to the Chinese, the Color Words of Buyi has more stable position in the sentence and follows closely with center language. Regarding with cultural meaning of the two languages, both of them were influenced by social production practices, religions and beliefs, customs and the conciousness of aesthetic, therefore the differences and distinctions happened.