White and black in Spanish and Slovak: Expressions without equivalents

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse and compare lexical units concerning the colours black and white in Spanish and Slovak which have no equivalents in the other language. Through a semantic analysis, it defines the associative fields of the lexical units and looks for common and different meanings in relation to the two different linguistic and cultural systems as well as in relation to the examined colours. The most frequent meanings of the chromatic lexical units in each language are examined, and semantic similarities are revealed between the lexical units (culturemes) in Spanish and Slovak.