The Semantic Structure of Color Terms in Arabic: A Cognitive Approach

Abstract

The acquisition of the ability of perceiving and naming colors through language is an important topic in which languages vary and differ. The construction of color concepts and naming them are directly influenced by the culture and environment of each society. This can be noted by observing two aspects: Cognitive Semantics and its effect on the collective mind. This study focuses on the cognitive foundations of color terms in Arabic, and the semantic relation between the color concepts and terms in selected examples from both old and new usage of these color terms in Arabic. The study aims to cover the most dominant semantic components for color terms in the Arabic language, using the cognitive linguistic approach and the descriptive analytics method to determine the structure of cognitive perception of color terms in a language. Furthermore, the study stands on two pillars; the first reveals the way the conceptualization pattern of color terms occurs in Arab mindset displayed through selected examples of theoretical data on cognitive semantics, whereas the second addresses the semantic principle of color classification in Arabic. Finally, the conclusion, confirming the results about the notion that color naming in Arabic is based on the visual images associated with the colors in Arab environment, related to night and day. Hence, the color term becomes connected in the Arab mindset with the visual image, and under each color are colors similar to it in hue.