Łukasz Jędrzejowski (editor) - The Linguistics of Olfaction: Typological and Diachronic Approaches to Synchronic Diversity

The Linguistics of Olfaction: Typological and Diachronic Approaches to Synchronic Diversity — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Linguistics of Olfaction: Typological and Diachronic Approaches to Synchronic Diversity" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...154

The Linguistics of Olfaction

Typological and Diachronic Approaches to Synchronic Diversity

ukasz Jdrzejowski & Przemysaw Staniewski University of Cologne | University of Wrocaw

doi: 10.1075/tsl.131

ISBN: 978 90 272 6017 8 (ebook)

Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress:
LCCN 2020056534

2021 John Benjamins Publishing Company

2021 John Benjamins Publishing Company

John Benjamins Publishing Company https://benjamins.com

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Preface and acknowledgments

The collection of chapters included in this volume goes back to a selection of contributions to the workshop entitled Towards a Typology of Olfactory Expressions convened and organized by the volume editors, ukasz Jdrzejowski and Przemysaw Staniewski, at the 49th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea at Naples, 31 August 3 September, 2016.

We thank the organizers of the SLE conference and administration of both conference and workshop, in particular Michela Cennamo, Bert Cornillie, and Ana Daz-Negrillo.

Additionally, we would like to thank all internal and external reviewers who were willing to review chapters collected in this volume. In particular, we are indebted to (in alphabetical order): Odelia Ahdout, Anna Bondaruk, Denis Creissels, Katarzyna Dziwirek, Chiara Fedriani, Beatriz Fernndez, Joana Garmendia Mujika, Donna B. Gerdts, Bjrn Hansen, Birgit Hellwig, George Hewitt, Gianina Iordchioaia, Itamar Kastner, Paul Jen-kuei Li, Carsten Levisen, Zohar Livnat, Piera Molinelli, Heiko Narrog, Alexandru Nicolae, Teresa Oliveira, Carolyn OMeara, Seongha Rhee, Violeta Vzquez Rojas Maldonado, Marcin Trojszczak, Dorinda Tsai-hsiu Liu, Kevin Tuite, Kilu von Prince, Bodo Winter, and Karolina Zuchewicz. Our thanks go also to the editorial board of the series Typological Studies in Language and to Kees Vaes for their constructive and meticulous suggestions.

Finally, we are grateful to all the authors for taking time and putting effort into contribution to this collection. Without their patience and forbearance with our many questions, the completion of this work would not have been possible.

Kln / Wrocaw, February 2021
ukasz Jdrzejowski & Przemysaw Staniewski

Rendering what the nose perceives An introduction

ukasz Jdrzejowski & Przemysaw Staniewski University of Cologne | University of Wrocaw

In this chapter, we briefly overview the typological and diachronic research on olfactory expressions and point out possible further research questions. Essentially, we illustrate how linguistic olfactory terms interact with different areas of grammar, e.g. with morphology, and delineate some striking cross-linguistic patterns calling for a deeper unification of language-internal and language-external factors.

Keywords

• sense of smell;
• olfactory perception;
• sense modalities;
• typology;
• diachrony

Introduction

Olfactory perception is increasingly attracting attention in different research fields. In neuroscience, for instance, smell training is deemed to improve olfactory function and to alter brain structure, as recently shown in An et al. (2019). Relatedly, olfactory dysfunctions help identify pre-clinical signs of diseases, compare study of zebra finches, Taeniopygia guttata, shows that fledglings are capable of recognizing their own nest based on olfactory cues alone.

Novel research findings on smell can also be observed in linguistics. As Viberg (this volume) points out, the way people conceptualize and talk about smell varies across cultures. Typologically, the variation of lexical olfactory expressions ranges from a few (e.g. in Indo-European languages) to over a dozen inherent olfactory lexemes (cf. e.g. on ineffability). It is therefore tempting to linguistically examine the variation in olfactory expressions and ask where it comes from.

The main aim of this brief introduction chapter is to give a general overview of what is known about selected linguistic aspects of olfactory expressions cross-linguistically, to elaborate on selected topics as well as on open issues, and, finally, to point towards possible future research directions. This overview is by no means exhaustive. Rather, it is supposed to make the reader familiar with the extent to which olfactory expressions have been examined in the literature and to comment on striking cross-linguistic peculiarities. As it will turn out, addressing both issues will considerably help identify the far-reaching theoretical consequences that may follow from the typological picture.

On the variation of olfactory terms

There are several independent reasons for examining olfactory expressions. :236), for example, points out that the sense of smell is much more diverse than other senses, both in respect to how smell is encoded linguistically in a particular language and in respect to the number of sensations it can distinguish. In what follows, we elaborate on some of such reasons.

2.1 Lexical repertoires

One of the central typological tasks is to identify and examine linguistic expressions denoting a smell in a particular language. Regarding this, cultural contexts and social environments often determine the vocabulary as well as the development of morpho-phonological and syntactic patterns leading to linguistic variation and diversity across languages. A heterogeneous realization of a single linguistic category can also be observed with regard to the linguistic encoding of olfaction. The received wisdom has it that the terminology of olfactory expressions is generally poorly developed in Indo-European languages, see for example gives a general overview over main olfactory verbs in selected Germanic languages:

Table 1.

Main olfactory verbs in Germanic languages

	positive	neutral	negative
Afrikaans	ruik	stink
Danish	dufte	lugte	stinke
English	smell	stink
German	duften	riechen	stinken
Icelandic	ilma	lykta
Luxembourgish	richen	stnken
Norwegian	dufte	lukte	stinke
Swedish	dofta	lukta	stinka

What the Germanic languages have in common is that they possess two/three main olfactory verbs denoting additionally a hedonic value and a small number of other word classes derived from these verbs. This mainly accounts for why these languages are taken to have a poorly developed olfactory system. Yet, recent studies have shown that in some cultures (cf. e.g. Jahai or Maniq) the olfactory vocabulary can be very abstract and rich, cf. summarizes their findings and shows that Seri speakers have around ten different verbal predicates at their disposal denoting smells (comparable sets of olfactory terms have also been described for Jahai and Maniq):

Table 2.

Verb roots in the Seri olfactory lexicon and their exemplars according to

Verbal predicate	Possible referents for subject of verb
-heemt

Next page

1234567...154

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «The Linguistics of Olfaction: Typological and Diachronic Approaches to Synchronic Diversity»

Look at similar books to The Linguistics of Olfaction: Typological and Diachronic Approaches to Synchronic Diversity. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Silvia Luraghi (editor)

Valency over Time: Diachronic Perspectives on Valency Patterns and Valency Orientation

Johannes Kabatek

Manual of Brazilian Portuguese Linguistics

Christoph Gabriel (editor)

Manual of Romance Phonetics and Phonology

José M. González (editor)

Diachrony: Diachronic Studies of Ancient Greek Literature and Culture

Hanne Martine Eckhoff

Diachronic Treebanks for Historical Linguistics

Bowern Claire Louise

The Routledge Handbook of Historical Linguistics

Dariya Rafiyenko

Postclassical Greek: Contemporary Approaches to Philology and Linguistics

Paloma Nez-Pertejo

Crossing Linguistic Boundaries: Systemic, Synchronic and Diachronic Variation in English

I-Hsuan Chen

Diachronic Changes Underlying Synchronic Distribution: Scalar Inferences and Word Order

Lauren Gawne

Evidential Systems of Tibetan Languages

Elisabeth Mayer

Spanish Clitics on the Move

Alejandro Alcaraz Sintes

Diachrony and Synchrony in English Corpus Linguistics

Discussion, reviews of the book The Linguistics of Olfaction: Typological and Diachronic Approaches to Synchronic Diversity and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.