Revisiting the limits of language: The odor lexicon of Maniq

Abstract

It is widely believed that human languages cannot encode odors. While this is true for English, and other related languages, data from some non-Western languages challenge this view. Maniq, a language spoken by a small population of nomadic hunter-gatherers in southern Thailand, is such a language. It has a lexicon of over a dozen terms dedicated to smell. We examined the semantics of these smell terms in 3 experiments (exemplar listing, similarity judgment and off-line rating). The exemplar listing task confirmed that Maniq smell terms have complex meanings encoding smell qualities. Analyses of the similarity data revealed that the odor lexicon is coherently structured by two dimensions. The underlying dimensions are pleasantness and dangerousness, as verified by the off-line rating study. Ethnographic data illustrate that smell terms have detailed semantics tapping into broader cultural constructs. Contrary to the widespread view that languages cannot encode odors, the Maniq data show odor can be a coherent semantic domain, thus shedding new light on the limits of language.

Vision verbs dominate in conversation across cultures, but the ranking of non-visual verbs varies

“…Smell references appeared in a number of different conversations, in different contexts. Semai's 'olfactory dominance' is in accordance with what we know about the importance of olfaction in Aslian languages and cultures (Burenhult and Majid 2011;Majid and Burenhult 2014;Wnuk and Majid 2014). Jahai and Maniq, languages closely related to Semai, both have a preponderance of verbs dedicated to expressing specific types of odors, a semantic domain that is under-elaborated in most languages (Plank and Plank 1995).…”

“…As the previous discussion illustrates, the perceptual lexicon has been the subject of study from a variety of perspectives, including cross-linguistic surveys based largely on written data and questionnaires (e.g., Viberg 1983;Sweetser 1990;Vanhove 2008;Fedriani et al 2012), participant-observation in particular cultural contexts (e.g., Ritchie 1991; the articles in Majid and Levinson 2011b), and experimental studies (e.g., Dingemanse and Majid 2012;Wnuk and Majid 2014;Majid and Burenhult 2014). However, little is known cross-linguistically about the use of perception words in face-to-face conversation, a primary forum for the sharing, manipulation, and negotiation of perceptual experience through language.…”

“…For example, Siwu, Avatime and Semai all have extensive inventories of ideophones or expressives, "marked words that depict sensory imagery" (Dingemanse 2012), comprising a specialized lexicon for perceptual experience (see also Dingemanse 2011;Tufvesson 2011). Semai has an unusually rich vocabulary for smell terms, a feature that is shared by other members of the Aslian language family (e.g., Burenhult and Majid 2011;Wnuk and Majid 2014), and Duna has a complex evidential system, whereby the information source for 2 For further information on the smaller, less well-described languages discussed, and/or further details on the language of perception in the languages of this study see, e.g. : Avatime, Defina (in press), van Putten (in press); Chintang, Dirksmeyer (2008) …”

What Makes a Better Smeller?

“…But this view has been questioned by data from non-Western cultures (Majid, 2015). Challenging the claim that ''there is no semantic field of smells'' (Sperber, 1975, p. 116), the Aslian languages of the Malay Peninsula have well-articulated lexicons capturing smell qualities (Burenhult & Majid, 2011;Majid & Burenhult, 2014;Wnuk & Majid, 2014). For example, in Jahai, the word haR"t is used for the smell qualities shared between shrimp paste, sap of rubber tree, tiger, feces, musk gland of deer, rotten meat, and so forth; while ltp-it is used for the smell of flowers, perfumes, durian, and bearcat (Arctitis binturong).…”

Field-testing olfactory ability to understand human olfactory ecology

“…There are a small number of papers focused on odor detection in different ecological settings which have resulted in some interesting findingsmainly that non-industrial populations may have a better sense of smell (Sorokowska, Sorokowski, & Hummel, 2014;Sorokowska, Sorokowski, Hummel, & Huanca, 2013;Sorokowski, Sorokowska, & Witzel, 2014) . Research on olfactory language has suggested a similar relationship (Burenhult & Majid, 2011;de Valk, Wnuk, Huisman, & Majid, 2017;Majid & Burenhult, 2014;Majid & Kruspe, 2018;Majid & Levinson, 2011;Majid & Senft, 2011;San Roque, Kendrick, Norcliffe, Brown, Defina, Dingemanse, Dirksmeyer, Enfield, Floyd, Hammond, Rossi, Tufvesson, Van Putten, & Majid, 2015;Wnuk & Majid, 2014). Finally, there is a robust body of research in sensory ecology focused on anthropogenic disruptions to sensory-guided animal behavior (for example, see Boivin, Zeder, Fuller, Crowther, Larson, Erlandson, Denham, & Petraglia, 2016;Jürgens & Bischoff, 2017;Kunc, Lyons, Sigwart, McLaughlin, & Houghton, 2014;Morris-Drake, Kern, & Radford, 2016)-but much less known about the effects on humans (Hoover, 2018a(Hoover, , 2018b.…”