英汉颜色词语义韵对比研究——以黑与白为例

A Comparative Study on Semantic Prosody of Color Words in English and Chinese—A Case Study of Black and White

摘要: 颜色词具有丰富的文化内涵和象征意义，往往承载着复杂的情感色彩。本研究借助大型语料库BNC和CCL，对英语中“black”、“white”与汉语中对应的“黑”、“白”颜色词进行语义韵对比分析。通过提取高频搭配及共现语境，研究发现：总体而言，“black”与“黑”呈现出更强烈的消极语义韵趋势，而“white”与“白”则更倾向于传达积极或中性情感。英汉节点词在语义韵特征上存在明显差异，反映了来自不同社会文化背景的影响；同时，颜色词展现的语义韵共性也与其自身的属性密切相关。

Abstract: Color words carry rich cultural connotations and symbolic meanings, often conveying complex emotional tones. Based on large corpora BNC and CCL, this study conducts a comparative analysis of the semantic prosody of English color words “black” and “white” and their Chinese counterparts, “hei” and “bai”. By extracting high-frequency collocations and co-occurring contexts, the study finds that, in general, “black” and “hei” tend to exhibit stronger negative semantic prosody, while “white” and “bai” are more likely to convey neutral or positive emotions. Significant differences are observed in the semantic prosody features of these node words in both English and Chinese, reflecting influences from distinct socio-cultural backgrounds. At the same time, the shared semantic prosody of color words is closely related to their intrinsic properties.