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Smell Is Coded in Grammar and Frequent in Discourse: Cha'palaa Olfactory Language in Cross‐Linguistic Perspective
Author(s) -
Floyd Simeon,
Roque Lila San,
Majid Asifa
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of linguistic anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.463
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1548-1395
pISSN - 1055-1360
DOI - 10.1111/jola.12190
Subject(s) - linguistics , perspective (graphical) , grammar , psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , philosophy
It has long been claimed that there is no lexical field of smell, and that smell is of too little validity to be expressed in grammar. We demonstrate both claims are false. The Cha'palaa language (Ecuador) has at least 15 abstract smell terms, each of which is formed using a type of classifier previously thought not to exist. Moreover, using conversational corpora we show that Cha'palaa speakers also talk about smell more than Imbabura Quechua and English speakers. Together, this shows how language and social interaction may jointly reflect distinct cultural orientations towards sensory experience in general and olfaction in particular.