Colourful causal constructions: a source of intensification? A cross-linguistic constructional analysis in Dutch, English and French

People resort to creative ways of expressing their feelings; the use of colour terms is no exception. Previous research has shown that colours form an interesting domain of expression, especially through their associations with specific emotions which can arise via several cognitive processes (Soriano & Valenzuela 2009). The cross-cultural nature of these associations, however, is disputable. This study aims to provide a cross-linguistic constructional analysis (Boas 2010; Hoffmann & Trousdale 2013) of the causal construction using colour adjectives (e.g. he is green with envy; she tur... Mehr ...