Perceptual Grounding of Chinese Color Words: A Multimodal Study of Semantic Similarity and Perceptual Color Proximity

This study investigates the perceptual grounding of chinese color words by examining the alignment between semantic similarity and perceptual color proximity. A total of 120 high-frequency color expressions derived from six basic color terms were analyzed. For each expression, 100 related images were collected and processed to extract 13 perceptual features in the JzAzBz color space, capturing dimensions such as brightness, hue, and color entropy. Semantic similarity was computed using word vectors trained with the FastText model on the CCI 3.0 corpus. Hierarchical clustering revealed coherent groupings within both semantic and perceptual spaces. A significant but moderate positive correlation (Pearson r = 0.16, p <. 001) between the two similarity matrices supports the hypothesis of partial perceptual grounding. Residual analysis further identified aligned and deviated pairs, highlighting the interplay between perceptual features and color words. These findings provide empirical support for embodied theories of meaning and offer a scalable method for multimodal semantic modeling.