Study Of Chinese Color Words

The color-words in the Chinese Language have constituted a distinct class, which gain its acknowledgement due to the semantic properties of its constituent members. In the present thesis, two stages of its development will be under examination and discussion: (1) the color-words are attached to those substantial nouns with real-world referents of colors; (2) it secedes from the substantial nouns and forms its own group. Meanwhile, those seven ways of its derivation are also elaborated in this thesis: metonymy, analogy, blending, modification, transferred-epithet, repetition, and borrowing. According to its functions, the categories of its members are pinned down as the following: nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. By employing a static method of analyzing, the common semantic properties of the color-words are revealed like this: objective, general, national, and fuzzy; by using a dynamic analysis, the individual traits are also unveiled: rich in colors, subjective, changeable, and symbolic. In addition, by analyzing MO Yan's (a contemporary Chinese Writer) way of utilizing color-words, their functions in literature are also disclosed as the following: to describe the colors and forms of the objects, to highlight the sense of the subjective, and to achieve symbolism in the literary creation.Based on the studies on the emergence of Chinese color-words, the present thesis makes an effort to carry out an exploration on Chinese unique way of thinking embodied in the encoding of color-words; based on an understanding of their developmental course, this thesis also tries to tackle the way of Chinese people to symbolize and specialize the natural colors; based on a knowledge of the way of their settling categories, the thesis attempts a comprehension of their external syntactic functions; based on a dynamic and a static analysis, the thesis makes known the internal semantic properties of Chinese color-words; and based on an analysis of Mo Yan 's way of employing color-words, the thesis has elaborated the value and importance of the color-words in literary works as well.