earticle

영어

In this paper, I discuss the cognitive analysis on the understanding of English compounds, especially focused on the compounds including the color terms. I deal with one of the word-formation process, that is, compounding process within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics(Langacker(1987), Lakoff and Turner(1989), Johnson(1987)) to suggest the cognitive analysis on the opaque meaning of the compound based on metaphor and metonymy system. I classify the compounds according to their morphological structures and their semantic structures. I discuss the meaning relations among the constituents composing the compound word. Of the many possible relations I suggest that we select one as primary understanding based on the Relevance Principle and Maxim of relevance. To understand the composite meaning of the compound, Metaphor and Metonymy system need to be introduced. To explain the specialized meaning of color-term compound, I used the conceptual metaphors such as QUALITY IS A COLOR, EMOTION IS A COLOR, SIGNAL IS A COLOR. and PURPOSE IS A COLOR etc.. I applied more specific conceptual metaphors GREEN IS NATURE for the individual cases of color-terms. In English, every color has its own metaphorical meaning, as well as conceptual metaphors associated with emotion, sentiment, and social situation. We can find the similarities and differences in Korean uses of color-term compounds.