Re: What counts as a basic color word?

michael poxon scripsit:

> There may be a morphological angle to this too: maybe basic colour terms are
> those that behave as single morphemes: thus 'red' can meaningfully take
> affixes (redden, redder, reddish, redly...) while 'maroon' cannot. Thus
> redden = to become red, but **maroonen = to become maroon.
I don't think that's a fair example: redden, blacken, *bluen, *greenen.
Causative -en is lexically restricted and that's all there is to it.
I have no trouble with maroonish, and marooner is blocked by the general
rule against -er with long adjectives.

> It'd be tempting
> also to say that basic colour terms should be base lexical terms that can
> cause, but not take, derivation. Thus 'teal' (the colour) is not a BCT since
> it is derived from another, semantically distinct but identically spelt,
> unit - one which can take affixes and which is a base lexeme ('there are
> teals swimming on the lake' - not a good example as animals often don't
> pluralise en masse, but the principle is valid, I think).
> On this basis, 'orange' is not a BCT of English.
I don't think that synchronically "orange" means "orange-colored"; it has
become an independent adjective no longer felt to be derived from the noun.
This is certainly true of "pink": not to know what "pink" means is not to
know English, but plenty of anglophones do not know what pinks are.

--
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@ccil.org
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
        --_The Hobbit_

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