The semantics of ‘white in Polish and Swedish

The paper presents a contrastive analysis of Polish and Swedish expressions featuring the term ‘white', in particular as the adjectives biały and vit. The semantics of the colour is reconstructed through the analysis of the collocability of the corresponding adjectives with names of different classes of objects and phenomena, both in the literal and figurative senses. An attempt is made to discover similarities and differences between the analysed words.In the case of ‘white' it is important to differientiate between quantitative and qualitative aspects of the colour, that is, between its luminosity and quality. Quantitatively, both adjectives prototypically refer to daylight. Qualitatively, ‘white' is linked to snow. This is supported not only by the collocability but also by the linguistic connotations that arise from the prototypical meanings. ‘White' is associated on the one hand with ‘bright' and ‘legal' and on the other hand with ‘clean' and ‘moral'. Both prototypical references are associated with ‘good'.Other meanings for the adjectives not derived from their protytypes are ‘unknown', ‘lacking', and ‘conservative'. Both adjectives are also used in expressions describing humans.The differences between the languages appear minor. Biały and vit show similarity in the collocability and in the set of semantic connotations.