Colour Collocations

Lenka Koutn

OUTLINE
Colour, collocation Methodology Results Conclusion

Colour
Colour name: - a word or phrase referring to a specific colour

Basic colour terms (Berlin and Kay, 1969): Monolexemic High-frequency Agreed upon speakers of language

Basic colour terms

Stage I: dark-cool and light-warm black and white Stage II: red Stage III: either green or yellow Stage IV: both green and yellow Stage V: blue Stage VI: brown Stage VII: purple, pink, orange, or grey (Berlin and Kay, 1969)

Collocation
= tendency of words to co-occur J.R. Firth: You shall judge a word by company it keeps. (Partington, 1998)

Research Question
most frequent colour collocations in American and British English according to COCA and BNC
corpora and language acquisition of colour terms

Methodology
Query:

BLACK
COCA BNC

(55721)

BLACK
black.[j*]

black people

WHITE
COCA BNC

(41029)

White
I've tried to explain that anybody in a white coat looks like a hospital attendant, but they keep demanding results. [BNC:FAP:W_fict_prose]
She was grey haired, quite dumpy with a white coat on and she came to collect sperm if you wanted it stored. [BNC:K5D:W_newsp_other_report] blue collar workers to experience wage profiles that arc in the West generally confined to white collar professions. [BNC:EAX:W_non_ac_soc_science]

RED
COCA BNC

(35060)

Red
He and the Yankees might have caught up to the Red Sox in player development. [COCA:2011:NEWS:USAToday] Basketball stakes Obama's claim to being American just like Red Sox seats help Romney's Boston cred. [COCA:2011:MAG:Newsweek] He recommended that Red Army youths become village teachers to counteract this trend. [BNC:A64:W_ac_polit_law_edu]

GREEN
COCA BNC

(20281)

Green
the results, taken as a whole, demonstrate that the green form scheme represents an invaluable social service and provides a source of immediate legal advice [BNC:GVH:W_ac_polit_law_edu] The Green Capital document urges that Green Belt and Metropolitan Open Land be protected, wildlife sites safeguarded and the management of [BNC:A65:W_pop_lore]

YELLOW
COCA BNC

(8576)

Yellow
This varies with the nature of the offence (murder versus parking on a yellow line), the strength and efficiency of the police and the recording methods employed [BNC:K8Y:W_misc]

BLUE
COCA BNC

(19981)

BROWN
COCA BNC

(11927)

Brown
with more massive, neighboring clumps eject the smallest cores, and this results in brown dwarfs and isolated planets. [COCA:2006:MAG:Astronomy]

RESULT
Colour term COCA BNC

Black White Red

55721 41029 35060

6998 6189 4761

Yellow
Green Blue Brown

8576
20281 19981 11927

1355
3473 3163 1844

Conclusion
Colour collocations in American and British English differ and its use is culture dependent. According to corpora, the frequency of individual colour terms (except Yellow) is affected by their language acquisition.

References
Berlin, B., Kay, P. Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. University of California, Berkeley, 1969. Partington, A. Patterns and Meanings: Using Corpora for English Language Research and Teaching. Universita 'degli Studi di Siena, 1998. Davies, Mark. (2008-) The Corpus of Contemporary American English: 450 million words, 1990-present. Available online athttp://corpus.byu.edu/coca/. Davies, Mark. (2004-) BYU-BNC. (Based on the British National Corpus from Oxford University Press). Available online athttp://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/.

*Name the colour: http://www.colornames.ch/wie/index.php

Thank you for your attention.