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Part of
Progress in Colour Studies: Cognition, language and beyond
Edited by Lindsay W. MacDonald, Carole P. Biggam and Galina V. Paramei
[Not in series 217] 2018
► pp. 285–299

Chapter 15
Colour terms in the blue area among Estonian-Russian and Russian-Estonian bilinguals

 | Tallinn University, Estonia
This chapter investigates the colour terms of Estonian-Russian (Estonian-dominant) and Russian-Estonian (Russian-dominant) bilinguals in the blue category. The blue category has been chosen because Russian and Estonian have different BCT (Basic Colour Term) inventories. Data was collected using a list task and a naming task. The list-task results show that both bilingual groups consider Estonian sinine and Russian sinij more salient than Estonian helesinine and Russian goluboj; therefore, the first two colour terms are encoded better in bilinguals’ semantic memories. The naming task results indicate a higher consensus in the more frequently used (dominant) language. The bidirectional (L1–L2–L1) convergence of linguistic form and semantics is apparent in both list and naming tasks, which consequently can be attributed to the activation of each language system through the priming effect.
Keywords: blue category, Russian, Estonian, bilinguals
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology and participants
  • 3.Analysis
    • 3.1List task
    • 3.2Naming task
  • 4.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 26 November 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/z.217.15loi
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