국어의 기본 색채어와 그 의미

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss the basic color terms and their meanigs in Korean. In general Korean has five basic color terms: blue, red, white, black, yellow. Their expressions are divided into two groups. The first class is ‘bulgda(붉다), pureuda(푸르다), huida(희다), geomda(검다), nureuda(누르다)’. The second class is ‘ppalgahda(빨갛다), hayahda(하얗다), parahda(파랗다), kkamahda(까맣다), norahda(노랗다)’, which is the combination of ‘barkda(다), parada(다), haida(다), gamda(감다), norada(노다)’ -the deriva- tives by internal change in Middle Korean- and morphemes ‘-a ha-(-아-)’. Among these two categories, the first class is the older and the typical basic color terms in Korean. The second class has higher luminosity and saturation than first class. Through diachronic study of changes of these words, we can understand more the differences between these two basic color categories.