Color is a key feature, crucial for recognizing and categorizing objects. Even though color appearance tends to be perceived as stable, and universal tendencies have been found, color lexicon is subject to both intercultural and intralinguistic variations. Within a general hypothesis of integrating univer salistic assumptions with a relativistic view, color terms and comparative color based expressions (e.g., white as snow) were studied. Data were collected through questionnaires and corpora; the languages studied included Italian, Danish, and English.Our data provide a picture of the variegated intertwinement between nature and culture in the investigated languages. From a universalistic perspective, nat ural objects (e.g., sea, sky), which appear to be more stable across time and space, are more frequently mentioned as typical exemplars than artificial ones. From a relativistic perspective, some typical exemplars, which are not common interlin guistically, are mainly related to the linguistic representation of local history and traditions of the specific nation and culture.Instead of positing a single (either universalistic or relativistic) explana tory model, different interfaces and several contextual parameters are hypothe sized to work jointly with universalistic constraints in lexicalizing the chromatic experience.
In this article, we propose a contrastive, panchronic method of semanticpragmatic analysis, which we find particularly useful for uncovering the subtle distinctions of meaning and use that are characteristic of particle(-like expression)s in many languages. By way of illustration, we o¤er an indepth analysis of the synchronic uses and diachronic development of two cognate particles from two Romance languages, namely French déjà and Italian già, equivalent in some of their most salient uses to English already. Synchronically, we have identified fifteen di¤erent uses of déjà and già, of which eight are shared between the two particles. We argue that both the gradual diachronic expansion of the range of uses of both items, and the small, but nevertheless clear, di¤erences of use among the two that we observe in synchrony, support an analysis in terms of polysemy, as opposed to monosemy. What we propose is in the first instance a synchronic description of the two particles. The diachronic facts adduced are principally used to support our contention that déjà and già are polysemous, and as an additional tool for identifying which uses should be regarded as separate senses.
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