Grammatical Transcategorization of Basic Color Terms: A Cognitive Analysis of English and Chinese

Abstract

Color terms are important symbols in language that record human perception of the world, carrying both objective descriptive functions and rich cultural metaphorical meanings. English and Chinese exhibit significant differences in the usage of color terms, especially concerning grammatical transcategorization (shifting from nouns or adjectives to verbs). Based on the statistical findings of Liao Zhenggang (2011) from large corpora (COCA, CCL), and combined with cognitive linguistic theories, this paper explores the cognitive motivations behind the frequency differences in the grammatical transcategorization of basic color terms between English and Chinese. The study finds that the verbalization frequency of Chinese color terms is approximately ten times that of English; “红” (red) is the most frequently verbalized in Chinese, while “brown” ranks highest in English. This discrepancy stems from the interaction of three aspects: firstly, the isolating characteristic of Chinese leads to fuzzy boundaries between word classes; secondly, the degrees of conventionalization of conceptual metonymies involved in the verbalization of color terms, such as “Property for Change” and “Effect for Action”, differ between the two languages; thirdly, cultural models and experiential differences profoundly influence the semantic flexibility of color terms. This paper provides a systematic explanation for the phenomenon of grammatical transcategorization of color terms from a cognitive perspective and offers new insights for cross-linguistic comparative studies.