"One of the most fundamental capacities of language is the ability to express what speakers see, hear, feel, taste, and smell. Sensory Linguistics is the interdisciplinary study of how language relates to the senses. This book deals with such foundational questions as: Which semiotic strategies do speakers use to express sensory perceptions? Which perceptions are easier to encode and which are 'ineffable'? And what are appropriate methods for studying the sensory aspects of linguistics? After a broad overview of the field, a detailed quantitative corpus-based study of English sensory adjectives and their metaphorical uses is presented. This analysis calls age-old ideas into question, such as the idea that the use of perceptual metaphors is governed by a cognitively motivated 'hierarchy of the senses'. Besides making theoretical contributions to cognitive linguistics, this research monograph showcases new empirical methods for studying lexical semantics using contemporary statistical methods"--.

• Sensory Linguistics
• Editorial page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Table of contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Sensory linguistics
  • 1.1 Introduction
  • 1.2 Contributions of the book
    • 1.2.1 Descriptive contributions
    • 1.2.2 Theoretical contributions
    • 1.2.3 Methodological contributions
  • 1.3 Overview of the book
• Part I. Theory
• 2. The five senses folk model
  • 2.1 Introduction
  • 2.2 Issues with the five senses model
  • 2.3 A useful fiction
  • 2.4 Clarifications
• 3. Sensory semiotics
  • 3.1 The sensory semiotic toolkit
  • 3.2 Depicting sensory perceptions with icons
  • 3.3 Identifying perceptual qualities with indices
  • 3.4 Describing perceptual qualities with arbitrary symbols
  • 3.5 Technical language
  • 3.6 Metaphor
  • 3.7 Summary
• 4. Ineffability
  • 4.1 Introduction
  • 4.2 Ineffability and related notions
  • 4.3 Ineffability of what?
    • 4.3.1 Differential ineffability of the senses
    • 4.3.2 Proper and common sensibles
    • 4.3.3 Ineffability of subjective experience
    • 4.3.4 The ineffability of fine perceptual detail
    • 4.3.5 Ineffability of multisensory experience
    • 4.3.6 Why ineffabilities are necessary
  • 4.4 Explanations of the ineffability of the senses
    • 4.4.1 Cognitive-architectural explanations
    • 4.4.2 Limits of language explanations
    • 4.4.3 Communicative need explanations
    • 4.4.4 Evaluating explanations of ineffability
  • 4.5 Shifting semiotic strategies
  • 4.6 Conclusion
• 5. The Embodied Lexicon Hypothesis
  • 5.1 Introduction
  • 5.2 Embodiment, mental imagery, and perceptual simulation
  • 5.3 The evidence for perceptual simulation
  • 5.4 The Embodied Lexicon Hypothesis
  • 5.5 Relations to other theories
  • 5.6 Emotional meaning
• 6. Synesthesia and metaphor
  • 6.1 Introduction to synesthesia
  • 6.2 Characterizing synesthetic metaphors
  • 6.3 The importance of terminology
  • 6.4 Canonical synesthesia and metaphor
    • 6.4.1 The prevalence criterion
    • 6.4.2 Different mappings
    • 6.4.3 Deliberate versus involuntary mappings
    • 6.4.4 No evidence for a connection
  • 6.5 Summary of differences
• 7. Synesthetic metaphors are not metaphorical
  • 7.1 Introduction
  • 7.2 Conceptual metaphor theory
    • 7.2.1 Primary metaphor
    • 7.2.2 Metonymy
  • 7.3 What are synesthetic metaphors?
  • 7.4 The extent of the literal
    • 7.4.1 The role of multisensory perception
    • 7.4.2 Categorical intuitions
  • 7.5 Evaluation and conceptual conflict
    • 7.5.1 Conceptual conflict
    • 7.5.2 The role of evaluation
    • 7.5.3 The metaphor way of dealing with evaluation
  • 7.6 Conclusions
• 8. The hierarchy of the senses
  • 8.1 Introduction
  • 8.2 Different versions of the hierarchy
  • 8.3 Conclusions
• 9. Explaining the hierarchy of the senses
  • 9.1 A multicausal approach
  • 9.2 Overview of explanatory accounts
    • 9.2.1 Perceptual accounts
    • 9.2.2 Lexical composition and ineffability
    • 9.2.3 Evaluation
    • 9.2.4 Gradability
    • 9.2.5 Iconicity
    • 9.2.6 Idiosyncratic explanations
  • 9.3 Evaluating the different explanatory accounts
    • 9.3.1 Evaluating perceptual accounts
    • 9.3.2 Evaluating ineffability-based accounts
    • 9.3.3 Evaluating evaluation-based accounts
    • 9.3.4 Evaluating gradability-based accounts
    • 9.3.5 Evaluating iconicity-based accounts
    • 9.3.6 Evaluating idiosyncratic explanations
  • 9.4 The multivariate road ahead
• Part II. A case study of sensory adjectives
• 10. Methodological foundations
  • 10.1 Theory and method
  • 10.2 Cognitive linguistic commitments
  • 10.3 The Reproducibility Commitment
  • 10.4 Reproducibility: Two examples
    • 10.4.1 Synesthetic metaphors
    • 10.4.2 Semantic prosody
  • 10.5 A manifesto for norms
  • 10.6 “Fuck nuance”?
  • 10.7 Comparison to other approaches in empirical semantics
  • 10.8 Limitations
  • 10.9 Statistics
• 11. Norming the senses
  • 11.1 Classifying sensory words
  • 11.2 Avoiding circularity
  • 11.3 Comparison to other approaches
• 12. Dominance relations and specialization of sensory words
  • 12.1 Introduction
  • 12.2 Dominance relations between the senses
    • 12.2.1 Predictions
    • 12.2.2 Dominance in perceptual strength ratings
    • 12.2.3 Dominance relations in categorical word counts
    • 12.2.4 Dominance in distributional characteristics
  • 12.3 Modality exclusivity
    • 12.3.1 Specialization of sensory vocabulary
    • 12.3.2 A baseline for modality exclusivity
    • 12.3.3 A better baseline for modality exclusivity
    • 12.3.4 Modality exclusivity differences between the senses
  • 12.4 Conclusions
• 13. Correlations and clusters
  • 13.1 Introduction
  • 13.2 Correlations between the senses
  • 13.3 Clustering the senses
  • 13.4 Revisiting the five senses model
• 14. Semantic preferences of sensory words
  • 14.1 Introduction
  • 14.2 Cosine similarities
  • 14.3 Correlations within adjective–noun pairs
    • 14.3.1 Predictions
    • 14.3.2 Correlation analysis
  • 14.4 The structure of multisensoriality
• 15. Frequency, semantic complexity, and iconicity
  • 15.1 Introduction
  • 15.2 Word frequency
  • 15.3 Dictionary meaning counts
  • 15.4 Iconicity
  • 15.5 Conclusions
• 16. The evaluative dimension
  • 16.1 Introduction
  • 16.2 Existing linguistic evidence for taste and smell emotionality
  • 16.3 Absolute valence of sensory words
  • 16.4 The semantic prosody of sensory words
  • 16.5 Positive versus negative valence
  • 16.6 Conclusions
• 17. Re-evaluating the hierarchy of the senses
  • 17.1 Introduction
  • 17.2 What counts as evidence for the hierarchy?
  • 17.3 Analysis and results
  • 17.4 Deconstructing the hierarchy of the senses
  • 17.5 Emotional valence and iconicity predict metaphor choice
  • 17.6 Conclusions
• Part III. Conclusion
• 18. Conclusion
  • 18.1 Core themes
    • 18.1.1 The five senses folk model redux
    • 18.1.2 The Embodied Lexicon Hypothesis
    • 18.1.3 Metaphor
    • 18.1.4 Ineffability and the composition of the sensory vocabulary
    • 18.1.5 Methods
  • 18.2 Applications
  • 18.3 Future directions
  • 18.4 Conclusions
• References
• Subject index