Chinese And French Color Words Comparative Study

Contrast may make the objects' characters appear more distinct. This paper contrasts the Chinese and French color words including their formations, grammatical functions and associative-meanings. It helps us not only deeply know the color words' characters, but also learn more about the features of these two languages.This paper divides the Chinese and French color words into two major kinds---basic color words and non-basic color words first, and then compares their formations. The author finds that some of their formations are same, but others are different. They have same formations because these two languages require concise, accurate and economic expressions, and the human cognition has the common mode. Those different formations are created mainly by these two languages' unique features.This paper inspects the word classifications and the grammatical functions of the Chinese and French color words. The author finds that the basic color words are most active both in Chinese and French. And the active degree is related with the turn when this word appears in the human language. Generally speaking, the color words which appear more early, are more active. Moreover, the grammatical functions of Chinese color words have no corresponding relations with the word classifications. But the French color words are opposite, their grammatical functions have more obvious signs and more fixed corresponding relations with the word classifications.This paper researches and compares eight basic color words, in order to find the similarities and differences of their associative-meanings.