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The Linguistics of Olfaction
Typological and Diachronic Approaches to Synchronic Diversity
This volume presents novel cross-linguistic insights into how olfactory experiences are expressed in typologically (un-)related languages both from a synchronic and from a diachronic perspective. It contains a general introduction to the topic and fourteen chapters based on philological investigation and thorough fieldwork data from Basque, Beja, Fon, Formosan languages, Hebrew, Indo-European languages, Japanese, Kartvelian languages, Purepecha, and languages of northern Vanuatu. Topics discussed in the individual chapters involve, inter alia, lexical olfactory repertoires and naming strategies, non-literal meanings of olfactory expressions and their semantic change, reduplication, colexification, mimetics, and language contact. The findings provide the reader with a range of fascinating facts about perception description, contribute to a deeper understanding of how olfaction as an understudied sense is encoded linguistically, and offer new theoretical perspectives on how some parts of our cognitive system are verbalized cross-culturally. This volume is highly relevant to lexical typologists, historical linguists, grammarians, and anthropologists.
[Typological Studies in Language, 131] 2021. xiii, 481 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 16 April 2021
Published online on 16 April 2021
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- Preface and acknowledgments | pp. vii–7
- List of contributors | pp. ix–xiii
- Rendering what the nose perceives: An introductionŁukasz Jędrzejowski and Przemysław Staniewski | pp. 1–34
- Why is smell special? A case study of a European language: SwedishÅke Viberg | pp. 35–72
- The domain of olfaction in BasqueIraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano | pp. 73–112
- On olfactory terminology in Georgian and other Kartvelian languagesManana Kobaidze, Revaz Tchantouria and Karina Vamling | pp. 113–136
- Let me count the ways it stinks: A typology of olfactory terms in Purepecha (Mexico)Kate Bellamy | pp. 137–174
- Olfactory, gustatory and tactile perception in Beja (North-Cushitic)Martine Vanhove and Tahir Hamid Mohamed-Ahmed | pp. 175–198
- How to smell without a verb “to smell” in FonRenée Lambert-Brétière | pp. 199–220
- How to talk about smell in JapaneseAnthony E. Backhouse | pp. 221–250
- An overview of olfactory expressions in Formosan languagesAmy Pei-jung Lee | pp. 251–276
- Olfactory words in northern Vanuatu: Langue vs. paroleAlexandre François | pp. 277–304
- Alternating smell in Modern HebrewBar Avineri | pp. 305–342
- Syntactic patterns for Romanian olfactive verbsVirginia Hill | pp. 343–368
- Smelling over time: The lexicon of olfaction from Latin to ItalianFrancesca Strik Lievers | pp. 369–402
- To what extent can source-based olfactory verbs be classified as copulas? The case of German and PolishPrzemysław Staniewski and Adam Gołębiowski | pp. 403–448
- Typology of metaphors with the olfactory target domain in the Polish perfumery discourseMagdalena Zawisławska and Marta Falkowska | pp. 449–474
- Languages index | pp. 475–476
- Subjects index | pp. 477–481
“The Linguistics of Olfaction can be seen as a benchmark in the exploration of olfactory language, and thus of olfaction itself, an often downplayed sensory modality that is deeply connected with our cognitive activities (Holley 1999: 180–181), emotions (Soundry et al. 2011), and memories (Strauch et al. 2019). Consequently, it contributes to the expanding field of sensory linguistics (cf. Winter 2019) and to a deeper understanding of how we perceive and make sense of the world around us.”
Ádám Galac, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest, in Argumentum 17: 871-877 (2021)
“This book can be recommended for those researching the many domains in which typological generalizations are being discovered, providing as it does numerous references to work on other sense
modalities. Its overall theoretical agnosticism, and the sheer lack of barriers to entry in such a novel area of study, make it well approachable for those at the student level, such that it could provide some of the readings for a seminar on cultural or psycholinguistics, typology, and so forth. In fact its many pointers to needed further research might inspire many honors- and graduate-level research projects.”
modalities. Its overall theoretical agnosticism, and the sheer lack of barriers to entry in such a novel area of study, make it well approachable for those at the student level, such that it could provide some of the readings for a seminar on cultural or psycholinguistics, typology, and so forth. In fact its many pointers to needed further research might inspire many honors- and graduate-level research projects.”
David Douglas Robertson, University of Victoria, on Linguist List 32.3678 (2021)
“The Linguistics of Olfaction will be of interest to a wide audience both within linguistics and beyond. Naturally, (lexico-grammatical) typologists have the most to gain from this book, but there is also ample content relevant for linguists interested in metaphor, ideophones, cognitive linguistics, evidentiality, lexicology, and language change. I also recommend this volume to any anthropologists,
historians and cognitive scientists who have an interest in human olfaction and would like to know how smells are encoded across languages, and how this may change (or not change) over time.”
historians and cognitive scientists who have an interest in human olfaction and would like to know how smells are encoded across languages, and how this may change (or not change) over time.”
Thomas Poulton, Monash University, in Linguistic Typology 2022
Cited by (8)
Cited by eight other publications
Ortner, Heike
Hill, Virginia & Adam Ledgeway
Caballero, Rosario & Carita Paradis
Kruspe, Nicole & Asifa Majid
2023. The linguistics of odour in Semaq Beri and Semelai, two Austroasiatic languages of the Malay Peninsula. Studies in Language 47:3 ► pp. 599 ff.
Galac, Ádám
Galac, Ádám
2024. Bold colors, sweeping melodies, offensive smells. International Journal of Language and Culture 11:1 ► pp. 58 ff.
Toratani, Kiyoko
2022. Introduction to the volume. In The Language of Food in Japanese [Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research, 25], ► pp. 1 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.