The colourful causal construction. A corpus-based cross-linguistic analysis of its form and function in Dutch, English and French

Previous research has shown that colours are used in many languages to express emotions. This study aims to provide a cross-linguistic constructional analysis of the Colourful Causal Construction (CCC) (e.g., she is red with anger) in which colour-emotion associations play a central role. A corpus study was conducted using the TenTen web corpora to investigate the formal variation and the lexical-semantic features of this construction in Dutch, English and French, as well as its productivity and potential for intensification. Results show that the CCC fits a similar semi-schematic pattern in t... Mehr ...