Morphological and Semantic Analysis of Color Terms in the Georgian Language of Fereidoun-Shahr: A Cognitive Approach

Residents of Fereidoun-shahr, Isfahan, speak Georgian language which is derived from the southern branch of the Caucasian languages. This language has been lexically affected by Persian while interacting and coexisting with it. The aim of this article is to examine the morphological structure of Georgian color terms of Fereidoun-shahr and provide a metaphorical-cognitive analysis of the terms in the framework of cognitive semantics and Berlin and Kay's (1969) study. The population of this field study included all Georgian speakers of the city and the sample consisted of 10 speakers who were chosen via accessible sampling. The findings reveal that a small number of the color terms are morphologically simple and only six of them, including thԑthri (white), ∫avi (black), tsˡithԑli (red), tsˡɔnԑ (green), qˡithԑli (yellow) and lurǰi (blue), make Georgian basic color terms while a great number of them, i.e. the non-basic ones, are complex, compound, or compound-complex and are mostly borrowed from Persian. Moreover, some of the Georgian color terms are metaphorical and/or are applied in metaphorical linguistic expressions which mostly carry negative semantic and emotional load. Due to the geographical location, social life-style and the simple way of living of the Georgian people, the number of their color terms, compared to that of Persian, is very small.