The Challenge of Olfactory Ideophones: Reconsidering Ineffability from the Totonac-Tepehua Perspective

Autor:	Susan Smythe Kung, Asifa Majid, Carolyn O'Meara
Rok vydání:	2019
Předmět:	050101 languages & linguistics Linguistics and Language Ideophone media_common.quotation_subject 05 social sciences Perspective (graphical) Ineffability Art Olfaction Language and Linguistics Linguistics Depiction 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences media_common
Zdroj:	International Journal of American Linguistics
ISSN:	1545-7001 0020-7071
Popis:	Olfactory impressions are said to be ineffable, but little systematic exploration has been done to substantiate this. We explored olfactory language in Huehuetla Tepehua—a Totonac-Tepehua language spoken in Hidalgo, Mexico—which has a large inventory of ideophones, words with sound-symbolic properties used to describe perceptuomotor experiences. A multi-method study found Huehuetla Tepehua has 45 olfactory ideophones, illustrating intriguing sound-symbolic alternation patterns. Elaboration in the olfactory domain is not unique to this language; related Totonac-Tepehua languages also have impressive smell lexicons. Comparison across these languages shows olfactory and gustatory terms overlap in interesting ways, mirroring the physiology of smelling and tasting. However, although cognate taste terms are formally similar, olfactory terms are less so. We suggest the relative instability of smell vocabulary in comparison with those of taste likely results from the more varied olfactory experiences caused by the mutability of smells in different environments.
Databáze:	OpenAIRE
Externí odkaz:	https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_dedup___::d102843caed01eb5b3fc6e6423173947 https://doi.org/10.1086/701801 Zobrazit plný text záznamu Plný text ve formátu PDF Plný text ve formátu HTML
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