The categorization of colours and their expressions in German and French: a contrastive and pedagogical study.

De Knop, Sabine
(2014) 36. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft; thème: „Gottesteilchen der Sprache: Theorie, Empirie und die Zukunft sprachlicher Kategorien“. — Location: Universität Marburg (5.May.2014)

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In order to become proficient in a foreign language (FL), learners (FLL) have to learn lexical units and the grammar of FL but also internalize the conceptual categories of the foreign speech community (Danesi 2008). Learning difficulties are often due to the categorization clash between the native (L1) and the foreign (L2) language (Jing-Schmidt 2010; Littlemore 2009). The presentation will first discuss such difficulties with examples from the domain of colours both in French and German. Very generally, Western speech communities define hues in a similar way but their number and especially their use in specific contexts differ. Compare for instance colour expressions for traffic lights: whereas French speak of orange ‘orange’, Germans use gelb ‘yellow’ for the same light. The categorization differences often result from their use in a specific syntactic structure, as illustrated by the following examples: Fr. Marie est verte de jalousie, ‘Maria is green with envy’ vs. Germ. Maria ist gelb vor Neid, lit. ‘Maria is yellow with envy’. Hence colour categories have to be described in a usage-based perspective which takes larger linguistic contexts into account (Lucy 1992). With a survey conducted with German and French speakers it will be further shown that the frequency difference in the use of colour expressions in German and French is not always a conceptual issue but is due to favoured lexicalization patterns, German privileging a more synthetic language with compounds for instance, whereas French favours a more analytic language (Siemund 2004). As a consequence, an appropriate teaching methodology will have to describe colour categories in usage, i.e., in larger syntactic structures. Additionally, it will have to focus on the favourite lexicalization patterns of L1 and L2. The study will illustrate the need to consider language and cognition as strongly linked (Dirven and Ruiz de Mendoza Ibanez 2010), which is one of the tenets of Cognitive Linguistics. References Danesi, Marcel. 2008. Conceptual errors in second-language learning. In S. De Knop & T. De Rycker,(eds.), Cognitive Approaches to Pedagogical Grammar: A Volume in Honour of René Dirven,231-256. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Dirven, René and Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza Ibanez. 2010. Looking back at 30 years of Cognitive Linguistics. In Tabakowska, E., M. Choinski & L. Wiraszka (eds.), Cognitive Linguistics in Action: From Theory to Application and Back, 11-70. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton. Jing-Schmidt, Zhuo. 2010. Seven events in three languages: Culture-specific conceptualizations and their implications for FLT. In De Knop, S., F. Boers & A. De Rycker (eds.). Fostering Language Teaching Efficiency through CL, 137-165. Berlin; New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Littlemore, Jeannette. 2009. Applying Cognitive Linguistics to Second Language Learning and Teaching. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Lucy, John A. 1992. Language Diversity and Thought: A Reformulation of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Siemund, Peter. 2004. Analytische und synthetische Tendenzen in der Entwicklung des Englischen. In Hinrichs, U. (Ed.), Die Europäischen Sprachen auf dem Weg zum analytischen Sprachtyp, 169-196. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
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De Knop, S. (2014). The categorization of colours and their expressions in German and French: a contrastive and pedagogical study. 36. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft; thème: „Gottesteilchen der Sprache: Theorie, Empirie und die Zukunft sprachlicher Kategorien“., Universität Marburg. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/190473