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Kleurconstructies : corpusonderzoek naar de morfologische middelen van het Nederlands om nuances van zes Basic Color Terms uit te drukken
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Zimmermann_86172200_2023.pdf
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- Colour nuances are increasingly necessary in industrialised societies, but their morphology has so far been little studied. Past research has already shown that Dutch is a language that allows a lot of creativity in forming new words. Indeed, word formation processes such as compounding and derivation are highly productive in this language. Therefore, this thesis investigates the morphology of colour shades in Dutch. More specifically, it studies the morphological means used to express nuances of six (namely black, white, red, yellow, green and blue) Basic Colour Terms (Berlin & Kay, 1969). Furthermore, it examines how the results differ according to the nuanced colour term, in terms of frequency, productivity and constructs. To answer the research questions, a corpus study using the nlTenTen20 web corpus on the Sketch Engine platform was conducted. The analysis of a corpus of more than a thousand concordance rules allowed the identification of recurring patterns among the nuances. On the one hand, the following compound constructions were found: [[X]adj[color]adj]adj, [[X]noun[color]adj]adj, [[X]prefixoïd[color]adj]adj, [[X]verb[color]adj]adj. On the other hand, the derivation patterns [[color]adj-(t)ig]adj and [[color]adj-achtig]adj were found. This study was able to confirm the productivity of Dutch (adjectival) compounds and derivations. Unexpected results in terms of frequency of nuancing emerged, particularly because warm colours were expected to be the most nuanced, while it was not the case. Finally, new hypotheses based on our results were formulated. These could be examined in further research.