The evolution of basic color terms in Chinese
汉语基本颜色词的演变
Jianshe Wu 吴建设

Abstract 摘要
This paper makes an attempt to construct a framework of how Chinese basic color terms evolve over the past 4000 years, which is divided into several periods, by an analysis of the relevant literature in history on the basis of word frequency counts. Then we discuss what stage each period should be classified into under Berlin & Kay’s framework and its recent developments. Against these findings, the similarities and differences between our corpus and Berlin & Kay’s assumptions are analyzed and presented. In addition, the replacement of Chi by hong is also discussed with reference to the Lexical Diffusion theory.

本文基于词频统计角度，通过对汉语历代文献的分析研究，试图构建汉语基本颜色词在过去4000多年中的演化框架。在此基础上，我们将汉语基本颜色词的演变与Berlin & Kay的基本颜色词演变理论及其最新进展相验证，以此讨论了汉语基本颜色词的演变与Berlin & Kay理论假设的异同。此外，我们还结合“词汇扩散”理论探讨了“以红代赤”这个词汇更替过程。

Keywords 关键词

Basic Color Terms 基本颜色词 Diachronic Study 历时研究 Lexical Diffusion 词汇扩散 Color Category 颜色范畴

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