Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” - Volume 11, Issue 2, 1987

This paper documents the results of a study of color terms produced by Trobriand Islanders. Eleven color stimuli were presented to 60 informants in five different age-groups ranging from approximately 4 to 75 years. These informants, native speakers of Kilivila, live in Tauwema village on Kaileuna Island, one of the Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea.The paper first describes the method and the aims of the study. It then discusses the strategies of language production used by the informants, presents the inventory of the lexical set of color terms in Kilivila, and describes the semantic scope of these terms. Finally it discusses aspects of language change in progress that affect this lexical set of color terms in a rather dramatic way.

The Japanese "passive" construction with the verb stem formant -(r)are-has dual semantic functions. In some uses it indicates that the action's effects impinge emotively and/or psychologically on the subject, while in other uses the special effective nuance is absent. This distinction of semantic functions is shown to correlate with a distinction in the inherent aspectual character (Aktionsart) of verbally denoted actions, the deed/attribute distinction. A -(r)are- verb denoting a concrete action, or deed, implicates an abrupt change of circumstances having immediate effects on the subject's emotional and/or psychological situation; while processes and other nonconcrete actions, expressed through -(r)are-'s attributive use, implicate less immediate changes of the subject's state. In sum, the manner in which the action proceeds conditions the specific type of affect with which it is associated; both uses of -(r)are- are affective in distinct ways. These findings suggest the need to reconsider prior formal accounts of 'passive' -(r)are- constructions as rule-conditioned alternates of corresponding sentences without -(r)are-.