Metaphor in Persian Color Terms

Color terms are radiation of the human conceptual system that represents a reflection of his cognitive and linguistic features. The human conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. Metaphor is a cognitive mechanism and one of the linguistic strategies that can play a part in color term formation and categorical extension of colors. This study has taken metaphor in Persian color terms and the metaphorical structure of color categories in the Persian language into consideration. In this study, based on cognitive lexical semantics, 910 color terms in Persian have been analyzed. After describing semantic domains in the metaphorical formation of Persian color terms and analyzing the metaphorical structure of Persian color terms, the frequency of semantic domains’ application in Persian color terms and color categories’ tendency for participation in the metaphorical structure of Persian color terms have been investigated. Metaphor is one of the cognitive mechanisms that have a significant role in forming color categories and their conceptual extension in Persian. The domains whose phenomena have been observed in the metaphorical structure of Persian color terms are plant domain, animal domain, food domain, body domain, mineral domain, natural phenomenon domain, and object domain. The frequency of application and distribution of these semantic domains in Persian color categories is not equal. Besides, the rate of color categories’ participation in the metaphorical structure of Persian color terms and their tendency to the source semantic domains vary in metaphorical mapping.