英文摘要 |
This paper investigates the effects of gender, age and profession on the performance of Mandarin color terms. Participants were divided into three groups according to three variables: gender, age and profession (art/color-related vs. non-art/color-related). These participants took on a free-listing task and a color-naming task, providing the color names in Mandarin. The results showed that, in terms of gender differences, women used significantly more elaborate color terms than men did in the color-naming task, especially in the category of modified terms. Taking the variable of age into consideration, younger participants made significantly more use of secondary terms, but significantly less use of modified terms than the middle and older groups in both tasks. As for profession, no significant difference appeared to exist between the participants with art/color-related and those with non-art/color-related backgrounds in both tasks. Task effect was additionally examined and discussed. Finally, this paper further elaborates the current usage of Mandarin color terms and offers some certain pedagogical implications. |