Colour verbs in Modern Greek: A cognitive approach

摘要: This paper gives an outlook on how the coordination between phonology and semantics in verb derivation may look, and which constraints the distinction between possible/established, possible/novel, and not possible/forced verbs can be mapped onto. The object of investigation are the colour -ízo verbs in Modern Greek. The analysis is mainly based on the studies by Berlin & Kay (1969) , Kay & McDaniel (1978) , and Kay & Maffi (1999) on basic colour terms. The colour verbs in Modern Greek are compared with the English colour verbs. It is shown that systematic gaps linked to the causative/inchoative paradigm of -ízo verbs are due to the semantics of the base rather than deficiencies in the base's morphophonological character. The lower the evolutional stage that a base can be fitted to, the more likely an -ízo derivative will be produced.