Basic colour terms for black and white in Chinese: with discussions on models of language development

Abstract

The basic colour terms for black and white are studied in four archaic and two contemporary linguistic norms of the Chinese language. It is presented that studied Chinese linguistic norms use a common term for white and three different terms for black. It is suggested that the different basic colour terms for black might originate from different source languages. The study supports a panchronic language development instead of a diachronic one, and includes introductions to histories of the Chinese linguistic norms