How to talk about smell in Japanese
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Anthony E. Backhouse
Abstract
This chapter presents a corpus-informed description of olfactory language in Japanese, centering on everyday speech. Core smell vocabulary takes in the verbs kagu and niou, the nouns nioi and kaori, and the adjective kusai, and exhibits the clear presence of evaluation. Additional basic resources comprise major syntactic and collocational patterns, with smell nouns sharing combinatorial behavior with other perceptual nouns, as well as morphological patterns for complex adjectives in -kusai and sensory smell vocabulary involving mimetic adverbs with iconic encoding of temporal contour and intensity. Some smell terms describe intra-mouth perception as a component of taste in addition to regular olfaction. A review of smell vocabulary used in more formal registers again shows evaluation as a prominent feature.
Abstract
This chapter presents a corpus-informed description of olfactory language in Japanese, centering on everyday speech. Core smell vocabulary takes in the verbs kagu and niou, the nouns nioi and kaori, and the adjective kusai, and exhibits the clear presence of evaluation. Additional basic resources comprise major syntactic and collocational patterns, with smell nouns sharing combinatorial behavior with other perceptual nouns, as well as morphological patterns for complex adjectives in -kusai and sensory smell vocabulary involving mimetic adverbs with iconic encoding of temporal contour and intensity. Some smell terms describe intra-mouth perception as a component of taste in addition to regular olfaction. A review of smell vocabulary used in more formal registers again shows evaluation as a prominent feature.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface and acknowledgments vii
- List of contributors ix
- Rendering what the nose perceives 1
- Why is smell special? 35
- The domain of olfaction in Basque 73
- On olfactory terminology in Georgian and other Kartvelian languages 113
- Let me count the ways it stinks 137
- Olfactory, gustatory and tactile perception in Beja (North-Cushitic) 175
- How to smell without a verb “to smell” in Fon 199
- How to talk about smell in Japanese 221
- An overview of olfactory expressions in Formosan languages 251
- Olfactory words in northern Vanuatu 277
- Alternating smell in Modern Hebrew 305
- Syntactic patterns for Romanian olfactive verbs 343
- Smelling over time 369
- To what extent can source-based olfactory verbs be classified as copulas? 403
- Typology of metaphors with the olfactory target domain in the Polish perfumery discourse 449
- Languages index 475
- Subjects index 477
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Preface and acknowledgments vii
- List of contributors ix
- Rendering what the nose perceives 1
- Why is smell special? 35
- The domain of olfaction in Basque 73
- On olfactory terminology in Georgian and other Kartvelian languages 113
- Let me count the ways it stinks 137
- Olfactory, gustatory and tactile perception in Beja (North-Cushitic) 175
- How to smell without a verb “to smell” in Fon 199
- How to talk about smell in Japanese 221
- An overview of olfactory expressions in Formosan languages 251
- Olfactory words in northern Vanuatu 277
- Alternating smell in Modern Hebrew 305
- Syntactic patterns for Romanian olfactive verbs 343
- Smelling over time 369
- To what extent can source-based olfactory verbs be classified as copulas? 403
- Typology of metaphors with the olfactory target domain in the Polish perfumery discourse 449
- Languages index 475
- Subjects index 477
