Eesti ja saksa aktiivse värvisõnavara võrdlus
A Comparison of Estonian and German Active Colour Vocabulary

Summary/Abstract: The objective of the study that forms the basis of this article was to determine the active colour vocabulary in Estonian and German using cognitive and linguistic methods and to ascertain possible similarities and differences in colour words in both languages. The colour adjectives in Estonian and German were analysed from a word formation aspect with regard to both morphological structure and semantics. The comparative analysis was based on the results from an empirical study of two samples, one of which consisted of twenty native Estonian speakers and the other of twenty native German speakers. The morphological and semantical analysis and comparison of colour terms in Estonian and German helped highlight the differences and similarities in the formation of colour adjectives and in the active colour vocabulary in the two languages. The morphological analysis determined which colour adjectives took productive affixes and derivatives, which forms were preferred by the informants and which colour words belong to the active vocabulary of each language. The dominant terms for naming colours in both samples were basic colour terms. In the use of compound colour terms, both languages displayed more similarities and usage consensus than differences. The article also presents a semantical analysis of source-based compound colour terms, highlights the most common sources for comparison in the two languages, and shows which basic colour terms form the largest number of compound colour terms.

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