Colourfulness of the lexis: Lexicographic treatment of colour terms in Georgian-English Thematic Dictionary

The words denoting colours are imbued with certain semantic associations, and the Georgian-English Thematic Dictionary aims to systematically compile and document colour-related vocabulary, establish English equivalents, provide illustrative examples, and delineate word usage nuances within its structural framework. The significance of this research is based on the fact that for many of the selected colour terms, English equivalents are scarcely or not found in existing Georgian-English dictionaries. Conversely, there are concepts denoting colours in the Georgian language that have not been confirmed in English data.

Methodologically, the research data were selected from the Georgian National Corpus. The basis for the classification of lemmas with colour semantics served both literary and scientific works because the broad context of the specialized vocabulary was taken into account. Regarding the macrostructural study, a semantic classification of the vocabulary of colours was introduced, which allowed us to explore the Georgian linguistic heritage from this perspective and compare it with English. The following themes are discussed in the paper: a) precious stones, minerals; b) plants, fruit; c) animals; d) liquids; e) natural phenomena.

From the point of view of microstructural analysis, the following issues will be discussed in the paper: a) the existing asymmetry between the descriptive meanings of Georgian and English colours; b) the potency and immense variety of valid treatment strategies for lexical anisomorphism between the Georgian and English languages; c) we will demonstrate some examples of enriched entry structure for colour terminology in Georgian-English bilingualised thematic dictionary.