Yekibayeva N.A.
Associate
professor at L.N. Gumilyov National University
Taximova A.Zh.
Master student of L.N. Gumilyov National University.
“Comparative analysis of
Kazakh and English culture in the concept of colour terms”
Nowadays
the research of colour terms plays an important role in the modern linguistics.
It has a lot of reasons: first of all, many scientists connect the elements of
the colour terms with psychology. As psychologists believe that the waves of
colour terms exist in the nature, the colour terms itself is the result of
person’s brain and eyes’ work, it is connected with the nervous system.
Physicists are interested in energetic nature
of the colour terms, physiologists search the process of accepting colours
through eyes, psychologists examine the affect of colour terms on people’s
psychology, what emotions they have, and the humanitarian sphere (in fine
literature and fine art) considers the aesthetic role of colour terms.
In
linguistics, especially in cognitive linguistics, the colour terms are
considered by the native speakers’ view of the world, through their life
experience, through the language information in their spiritual peculiarities.
American scientists L. Warf, E. Sapir’s works, other individual linguistic
field were the reasons of studying the symbolic and conceptual descriptions of
the colour terms. For example, in Kazakh linguistics the colour terms was
searched by N.N. Aitova [1], S.K. Zharkynbekova [2].
Generally
consider the language as the source of the nation’s perception, the structure
of consciousness, thinking mechanism is connected with Van Humboldt’s concepts
of nation’s spiritual- cultural code [3, 138].
Colour
terms, colour symbolic are complex phenomenon that describes every nation.
Nowadays the colour terms are considered in the context of research of
cognitive and pragmatic aspects of the language. Because the linguistics of
colour terms can show new aspects of “language and thinking”, “language and
society”, “the linguistic view of the world”. Moreover, the colour terms take
an important role in cultural relations. The colour terms is marked from the
ethno cultural point. It is the result of the nation, the factor that makes the
nation; the main way to study the national culture. That’s why the scientists
are interested in studying the colour terms.
We
join to the point of view it’s evident
a great pay attention to every aspect of the colour terms. We have and tried to
clarify and distinguish the colour terms peculiar to every nation. For this
purpose we’ve tried to solve the following objectives:
1. to research the colour terms as linguistic paradimes;
2. to accept the colour terms and its universals of names;
3. to study the components that give lexical- semantic information;
4. to define the correlation of semantic field of colour terms;
5. to study the colour terms as metalanguage;
6. to compare every nation’s lingua cultural peculiarities of colour terms
and to describe their complexes and etc.
In
the above mentioned aspects some of them are important and under the hot
discussion in spite of numerous number of scientists. For example, one of such
question is to distinguish the colour terms that is peculiar to every nation
and has the meaning of national ethno symbol. Many scientists mention I.
Goethe’s system; he divided all the colour spectrums into three groups:
The
main colours: yellow, blue, red; other colours are made in the basis of them.
1.
First degree compound colours- green, orange, dark blue; they are made in the
basis of combining two words.
2.
Second degree compound colours- the colours that are made from the first degree
compound colours.
We
can say that American linguists B. Berlin and P. Kay helped us to understand this
case. They studied the colour terms in 98 languages and from the materials made
the list of 11 main colours: basic colour terms – black, white, red, yellow,
green, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange, gray[4].
It
means that if every language had three colour terms they would be – white,
black, red. Russian linguists agree with the list and consider that there are
amin eleven colour terms; they also think that English blue has two equivalents
in Russian, they are- blue and light blue.
According
to B.Berlin and P. Kay’s list scientists put thecolour terms in such hierarchy:
black, white}- >{red}- >{green, yellow}- > {blue} - > { brown }
→ > {gray, orange, pink, purple}. Russian scientist R. Frumkin thought
that this list was nominal, but did not offer his own list of colour terms. R.
Fruminka thinks that putting against the colour terms to its shade is cultural-
historical and psychological fact, from the psycho physiological point they are
equal. It means that from the psycho physiological point to divide the colour
form its shade is impossible, it is the simple view of the world.
It
is said that colour terms is the root that distinguishes the national- cultural
peculiarities. According to this we can say that grey is tha main colour, the
light grey is the shade of the colour. As a result there are about 800 colour
terms in Russian [5].
If
to speak about Kazakh language, the book “Full of secrets colour and shade” [6]
names the colours but does not give the exact number of them. There are colours
like құëà(roan), øàáäàð (ginger), òàðғûë (motley), êүðåң(brown) that are important for Kazakh nation, they are ethno basis and
ethno relevance of the nation. It can be proved form facts of Kazakh
literature, mainly the scientific researches about colour terms.
When
we speak about ethno basis and ethno relevance of the colour terms in Kazakh
languahe we should consider A. Toktaubay’s work [7, 15 p.]. He said that there
are a lot of colours to describe the horse. There are about 300 words related
to the colours of the horse and also he mentioned that these words cannot be
translated into Russian, French and German languages. He believed that it is
important to study the believes of Kazakh people because they also related to the
colours of the horse. Kazakh people respect this livestock and the main colours
to describe it- is dark blue, then spotted (áîçøұáàð,
êөêøұáàð, áàéøұáàð), then roan, brown, ginger and etc. Even Abay’s father Kunanbay defined
that they were the grandchildren of dark blue, so it proves that this colour
plays an important role in our ideology [7 , 15 p.].
There are associated uses of colour terms,
for example, colours that show emotional state (provoking pink, dark lilac,
steep red), combinations with name of objects (the colour of ocean wave, the
colout of elephant’s ivy, the colour of asphalt, the colour of coffee with
milk, ash rose, drank cherry, beige frost, wet asphalt). Because of good
cultural communication these terms can be met in Kazakh language too (I bought
a dress. It’s beautiful- the colour of ocean wavecolloquial speech). In written
Kazakh fine art we cannot find the equivalents of the above mentioned colours,
Kazakh writers use the main colour terms. The writer G. Musirepov said instead
of using “coffee with milk” we can introduce “as coffee” [8].
However,
as we mentioned before, in the modern Kazakh language the usage of colour terms
changed its lexical unit’s structure and content. The factors that affected on
it: a) the widening of economical and socio- cultural relations; b) the
development of advertisement as individual type of genre; c) the translation of
texts and genres in the context of socio- cultural relations and as a result
the equivalents of colourtemrs in foreign language in Kazakh language.
First
of all, we will try to divide into several groups the colour terms that were
collected from Kazakh lexicographical works, market goods, samples of
advertisements:
First
group. The main colour terms in Kazakh culture: white, black, blue, red, green,
brown, yellow, grey, dull;
Second
group: words that were made from the main colour terms: light white, pink,
purple, light yellow, dark brown, dark red, light blue, light grey, dark black
and etc. ;
Third
group: colours that are related to environment, things, animals: light clouds,
roan, dark ginger, spotted, light- bay, dark spotted and etc.
Forth
group: words that are form other languages, especially from Russian language:
magenta, cream, chestnut, aqua, light brown, lime, cocoa color, burgundy,
beige, bright blue, orange.
We
think that, from the association point, it is better to show the exact colour
of the object; in order to make the colour terms it should exist in the culture
of the object or it should be real according to its socio- economical state.
For example, the terms like wheat colour, celine, cheeks are red like an apple,
hall colour, bright as milk, eyes like currants, dark eyes form exact
associations.
In
conclusion, we can say that the colour terms attract a lot of scientists. As
the colour terms is considered to be every nation’s property. V.A. Moskovich
shows, that colour terms as leitmotiv has emotional view of nation’s world, in
addition, it is a big category that shows individual author’s world [11, 84
p.]. The terms that describe the colour in every language has informational
state that describes complex, multi structural colour symbolic. Before the
colour terms was considered only in lexicology, seismology, in recent years
this topic is considered in lingua relations, concept logy, cognitive and
anthropological linguistics, and psycholinguistics. In many works it was
important to pay attention to the world language view concepts, the description
of nation’s ethno world, theexistence of colour terms in mental space and the
colour terms that appeared according to the acceptance of the environment.
References:
1
Aitova N.N. “The cognitive semantics of colour terms in Kazakh language: book”-
Aktobe : ASU named after K. Zhubanov. 2006- 161 pages
2.
Zharkynbekova S. “Concepts of color in the Kazakh and Russian cultures”-
Almaty: Kazakh university. 2004.- 226 pages
3.
Humboldt V. “On the distinction between the structure of human language and its
influence on the spiritual development of man” / / W.von Humboldt. Selected
works on linguistics. - M.: Progress. 2000, - 400 pages
4.Gachicheladze
GR “Literary translation and literary relationship”. - 2nd Edition - Moscow:
Soviet writer, 1972. – 262 pages
5.Frumkin
RM “Color, meaning similarity”. - Moscow: Nauka, 1984. – 174 pages
6.
Kaidarov A., Omirbekov B., Akhtamberdiyeva Z. “Full of secrets colour and
shade”.- Almaty: Kazakhstan, 1986.- 95 pages
7.
Toktaubay A. “Theatre of horses”// Independent Kazakhstan, 2003.
8.Musirepov
G. “The colour field”// Kazakh literature, 1966- April
9. Moscovici VA Tcvetooboznachenij system in
modern English / / Problems of Linguistics. - M., 1994. - ¹ 6. - 84-95 pages