When black is not black and white is not white: Adjectives of colour in multi-word names of biological taxons
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| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Words in a language can be used in meanings which deviate from their denotations. Examples of this phenomenon are various figures of speech or idioms. Also some botanical and zoological taxons in English include attributively used adjectives of colour but these adjectives obviously do not denote the physically definable and perceptible colours of the corresponding referents. Colour adjectives here are either used to refer to some other specific properties of the plants and animals, being only loosely associated with colour and often implying some kind of contrast to other taxons, or the colour relates only to one part or development stage of these entities. The paper analyses various senses of adjectives black, white, blue and red in biological multi-word terms, comparing them with the onomatological approach adopted in corresponding Czech and Latin nomenclatures. The interpretation of findings supports the claim that English naming tends to be vaguer than that of the compared languages, and that a link may be established in this respect to the analytic character of the English language. |