Cover not available
Part of
The Linguistics of Olfaction: Typological and Diachronic Approaches to Synchronic Diversity
Edited by Łukasz Jędrzejowski and Przemysław Staniewski
[Typological Studies in Language 131] 2021
► pp. 369–402

Smelling over time

The lexicon of olfaction from Latin to Italian

Sensory anthropologists have described societies that, compared to Western ones, attribute to the sense of smell a more prominent cultural role, and linguists are bringing evidence that a higher sociocultural status of smell tends to be reflected in language by a richer and more elaborated olfactory lexicon. Given that the relative prominence of one sense within the sensorium has been shown to vary not only across societies, but also over time, such variation may be expected to have linguistic reflections. This study explores whether and how the olfactory lexicon has changed from Latin to Italian. Is the alleged increased “deodorization” of contemporary Western societies associated with changes in the lexicon? The data show that, contrary to expectations, the overall size of the olfactory lexicon did not undergo appreciable changes. However, it progressively became more oriented toward the negative pole of evaluation (i.e., the expression of unpleasant smells). Implications and possible explanations are discussed in the light of the linguistic and sensory-historical literature.
Keywords: olfactory lexicon, Latin, Italian, diachrony
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: Olfaction in culture and language
  • 2.The lexicon of olfaction: Properties and organization
  • 3.Latin
    • 3.1Verbs
    • 3.2Nouns
    • 3.3Adjectives
  • 4.Old Italian
    • 4.1Verbs
    • 4.2Nouns
    • 4.3Adjectives
  • 5.Contemporary Italian
    • 5.1Verbs
    • 5.2Nouns
    • 5.3Adjectives
  • 6.Discussion and conclusions
    • 6.1The overall size of the olfactory lexicon did not change
    • 6.2There has been a shift toward the negative pole of evaluation
  • Acknowledgments
  • Abbreviations
  • Notes
  • Primary sources (corpora and dictionaries)
  • References
Published online: 26 April 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.131.13str
References (105)
Primary sources (corpora and dictionaries)
A Latin Dictionary = Lewis, Charlton. T. & Short, Charles. (eds). 1958. A Latin Dictionary . Oxford: Clarendon Press (1st edn. 1879).Google Scholar
Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages = de Vaan, Michiel. 2008. Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages . Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana (GDLI)  = Battaglia, Salvatore. (ed.). 1961–2002. Grande Dizionario della Lingua Italiana . Torino: Utet.Google Scholar
ItTenTen corpus. <[URL]> (12 January 2021)
Lexicon totius latinitatis = Forcellini, Egidio, Furlanetto, Giuseppe, Corradini, Francesco & Perin, Giuseppe. (eds). 1940. Lexicon totius latinitatis . Padova: Typis Seminari (1st edn. 1864–1887).Google Scholar
Lo Zingarelli = Cannella, Mario & Lazzarini, Beata (eds). Lo Zingarelli 2017. Vocabolario della lingua italiana . Bologna: Zanichelli.
OVI = Corpus OVI (Opera del Vocabolario Italiano) dell’italiano antico . <[URL]> (12 January 2021).
Oxford Latin Dictionary = Glare, Peter (ed.). 1968–1982. Oxford Latin Dictionary . Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Sabatini-Coletti = Sabatini, Francesco & Coletti, Vittorio. 2008. Dizionario della lingua italiana . Milano: Rizzoli Larousse.Google Scholar
Tesoro della Lingua Italiana delle Origini (TLIO). <[URL]> (12 January 2021).
Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (TTL), online version. <[URL]> (12 January 2021).
Tommaseo-Bellini = Tommaseo, Nicolò & Bellini, Bernardo. 1861–1879. Dizionario della lingua italiana . Torino: Società l’Unione tipografico-editrice.Google Scholar
Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca. 1612. <[URL]> (12 January 2021).
Vocabolario della lingua latina = Castiglioni, Luigi & Mariotti, Scevola. 1996. Vocabolario della lingua latina . Torino: Loescher (1st edn. 1966).Google Scholar
References
Alač, Morana. 2017. We like to talk about smell: A worldly take on language, sensory experience, and the Internet. Semiotica 215: 143–192. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Allan, Keith & Burridge, Kate. 2006. Forbidden Words. Taboo and the Censoring of Language. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Allen, Kate. 2015. Odor in Roman Literature. PhD dissertation, University of Michigan.
Aschmann, Herman P. 1946. Totonac categories of smell. Tlalocan 2(2): 187–189. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Batty, Clare. 2015. Olfactory objects. In Perception and its Modalities, Dustin Stokes, Mohan Matthen & Stephen Biggs (eds), 222–246. Oxford: OUP.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bechtel, Friedrich. 1879. Über die Bezeichnungen der sinnlichen Wahrnehmungen in den indogermanischen Sprachen. Ein Beitrag zur Bedeutungsgeschichte. Weimar: Hermann Böhlau.Google Scholar
Berlin, Brent & Kay, Paul. 1969. Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Betts, Eleanor. 2017. Senses of the Empire: Multisensory Approaches to Roman Culture. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boisson, Claude. 1997. La dénomination des odeurs: Variations et régularités linguistiques. Intellectica 24(1): 29–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bradley, Mark (ed.). 2015. Smell and the Ancient Senses. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2015. Introduction: Smell and the ancient senses. In Smell and the Ancient Senses, Mark Bradley (ed.), 1–16. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Buck, Carl Darling. 1949. A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages. Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Burenhult, Niclas & Majid, Asifa. 2011. Olfaction in Aslian ideology and language. The Senses & Society 6(1): 19–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burridge, Kate & Benczes, Réka. 2019. Taboo as a driver of language change. In The Oxford Handbook of Taboo Words and Language, Keith Allan (ed.), 180–198. Oxford: OUP.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Candau, Joël. 2016. Foreword. In Words for Odours: Language Skills and Cultural Insights, Melissa Barkat-Defradas & Elisabeth Motte-Florac (eds), xiii–xxi. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Classen, Constance, Howes, David & Synnott, Anthony. 1994. Aroma: The Cultural History of Smell. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Classen, Constance. 1993. Worlds of Sense: Exploring the Senses in History and across Cultures. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 1999. Other ways to wisdom: Learning through the senses across cultures. International Review of Education 45(3–4): 269–280. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Corbin, Alain. 1982. Le miasme et la jonquille. L’odorat et l’imaginaire social, XVIIIe-XIXe siècles. Paris: Aubier Montaigne.Google Scholar
Cornford, Francis MacDonald. 1997. Plato’s Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato. Indianapolis IN: Hackett. (1st edn. 1935, Routledge).Google Scholar
Croijmans, Ilja & Majid, Asifa. 2016. Not all flavor expertise is equal: The language of wine and coffee experts. PLoS ONE 11(6): e0155845. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cuzzolin, Pierluigi & Haverling, Gerd. 2009. Syntax, sociolinguistics, and literary genres. In New Perspectives on Historical Latin Syntax: Syntax of the Sentence [Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 180(1)], Philip Baldi & Pierluigi Cuzzolin (eds), 19–64. Berlin: De Gruyter.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Sousa, Hilário. 2011. Changes in the language of perception in Cantonese. Senses & Society 6(1): 38–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Digonnet, Rémi. 2016. Métaphore et olfaction: Une approche cognitive. Paris: Honoré Champion Editions.Google Scholar
Dubois, Danièle. 2000. Categories as acts of meaning: The case of categories in olfaction and audition. Cognitive Science Quarterly 1: 35–68.Google Scholar
. 2007. From psychophysics to semiophysics: Categories as acts of meaning. A case study from olfaction and audition, back to colors. In Speaking of Colors and Odors [Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research 8], Martina Plümacher & Peter Holz (eds), 167–184. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ehrlichman, Howard & Bastone, Linda. 1992. Olfaction and emotion. In Science of Olfaction, Michael J. Serby & Karen L. Chobor (eds), 410–438. New York NY: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Engen, Trygg. 1982. The Perception of Odors. New York NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Evans, Nicholas & Wilkins, David. 2000. In the mind’s ear: The semantic extension of perception verbs in Australian languages. Language 76(3): 546–592. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fabbian, Maria Chiara. 2012. Naso d’autore. L’odorato nella cultura e nella storia letteraria italiana (Auteur Nose. Olfaction in Italian Culture and Literary History). Ravenna: Longo Editore.Google Scholar
Floyd, Simeon, San Roque, Lila & Majid, Asifa. 2018. Smell is coded in grammar and frequent in discourse: Cha’palaa olfactory language in cross-linguistic perspective. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 28(2): 175–196. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
François, Alexandre. 2008. Semantic maps and the typology of colexification: Intertwining polysemous networks across languages. In From Polysemy to Semantic Change: Towards a Typology of Lexical Semantic Associations [Studies in Language Companion Series 106], Martine Vanhove (ed.), 163–215. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Graffi, Giorgio. 1980. Su alcune costruzioni “pseudorelative” (On some “pseudo-relative” constructions). Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 5: 117–139.Google Scholar
Guasti, Maria Teresa. 1993. Causative and Perception Verbs: A Comparative Study. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier.Google Scholar
Harvey, Susan Ashbrook. 2006. Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination. Berkeley CA: University of California Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Henshaw, Victoria, McLean, Kate, Medway, Dominic, Perkins, Chris & Warnaby, Gary. 2018. Designing with Smell: Practices, Techniques and Challenges. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hombert, Jean-Marie, Mouélé, Médard, Rouby, Catherine, Schaal, Benoît & Sicard, Gilles. 2016. Basic odour terms in Li-Wanzi (a Bantu language spoken in Gabon): An experimental approach. In Words for Odours: Language Skills and Cultural Insights, Melissa Barkat-Defradas & Elisabeth Motte-Florac (eds), 135–146. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Howes, David. 1986. Le sens sans parole: Vers une anthropologie de l’odorat. Anthropologie et Sociétés 10(3): 29–46. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2018. Senses and Sensation. Critical and Primary Sources, Vol. 2: History and Sociology. London: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Ibarrexte-Antuñano, Iraide. 1996. Semantic extensions in the sense of smell. Anuario del Seminario de Filología Vasca ‘Julio de Urquijo’ 30(2): 631–643.Google Scholar
. 1999. Metaphorical mappings in the sense of smell. In Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics. Selected Papers from the 5th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Amsterdam, 1997 [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 175], Raymond W. GibbsJr. & Gerard J. Steen (eds), 29–45. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jakubíček, Miloš, Kilgarriff, Adam, Kovář, Vojtěch, Rychlý, Pavel & Suchomel, Vit. 2013. The TenTen Corpus Family. In 7th International Corpus Linguistics Conference, 125–127Lancaster.Google Scholar
Jurafsky, Daniel. 2014. The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu. New York NY: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Jütte, Robert. 2005. A History of the Senses. From Antiquity to Cyberspace. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Keller, Andreas. 2017. Philosophy of Olfactory Perception. New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kleiber, Georges & Vuillaume, Marcel. 2011. Pour une linguistique des odeurs: Présentation. Langages 181: 3–15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koenen, Mieke. 1997. Lucretius’ olfactory theory in De rerum natura IV . In Lucretius and his Intellectual Background, Keimpe A. Algra, Mieke H. Koenen & Pieter H. Schrijvers (eds), 163–177. Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Adademie van Wetenschappen.Google Scholar
Kövecses, Zoltán. 2019. Perception and metaphor: The case of smell. In Perception Metaphors [Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research 19], Laura J. Speed, Carolyn O’Meara, Lila San Roque & Asifa Majid (eds). 327–346. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kutzelnigg, Artur. 1984. Die Verarmung des Geruchswortschatzes seit dem Mittelalter. Muttersprache 94: 328–345.Google Scholar
Krifka, Manfred. 2010. A note on an asymmetry in the hedonic implicatures of olfactory and gustatory terms. In Between the Regular and the Particular in Speech and Language, Susanne Fuchs, Philip Hoole, Christine Mooshammer & Marzena Żygis (eds), 235–245. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Lee, Amy Pei-Jung. 2015. Lexical categories and conceptualization of olfaction in Amis. Language and Cognition 7(3): 321–350. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lilja, Saara. 1972. The Treatment of Odours in the Poetry of Antiquity. Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica.Google Scholar
Luján, Eugenio R. 2010. Semantic change. In Continuum Companion to Historical Linguistics, Silvia Luraghi & Vit Bubenik (eds), 286–310. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Maiden, Martin. 1995. A Linguistic History of Italian. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Majid, Asifa & Burenhult, Niclas. 2014. Odors are expressible in language, as long as you speak the right language. Cognition 130(2): 266–270. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Majid, Asifa, Senft, Gunter & Levinson, Stephen C. 2007. The language of olfaction. In Field manual, Volume 10, Asifa Majid (ed.), 36–41. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.Google Scholar
Majid, Asifa. 2015. Cultural factors shape olfactory language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 19(11): 629–630. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Medjo Mvé, Pither. 2016. Basic odour vocabulary in two Fang varieties (Gabon): A language diversity-based approach. In Words for Odours: Language Skills and Cultural Insights, Melissa Barkat-Defradas & Elisabeth Motte-Florac (eds), 189–208. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Migliorini, Bruno. 1960. Storia della lingua italiana (History of the Italian language). Firenze: Sansoni.Google Scholar
Moeran, Brian. 2011. The colours of smell: Perfume advertising and the senses. Paper presented at The American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting 2011, Montreal, Canada <[URL]> (12 January 2021).
Monopoli, Davide & Cacciari, Cristina. 2009. Il linguaggio letterale e figurato nelle descrizioni dell’esperienza sensoriale: l’olfatto è davvero un senso “senza parole”? (Literal and figurative language in sensory experience descriptions: Is olfaction really a sense “without words?), Paradigmi XXVII (1): 147–162.Google Scholar
Mouélé, Médard. 1997. L’apprentissage des odeurs chez les Wanzi: Note de recherche. Enfance 50: 209–222. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Meara, Carolyn & Majid, Asifa. 2016. How changing lifestyles impact Seri smellscapes and smell language. Anthropological Linguistiscs 58(2): 107–131. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2020. Anger stinks in Seri: Olfactory metaphor in a lesser-described language. Cognitive Linguistics 31(3): 367–391. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Potter, David S. 1999. Odor and power in the Roman Empire. In Constructions of the Classical Body, James I. Porter (ed.), 169–189. Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Ramat, Paolo. 1985. Review of Butterworth, B., Comrie, B. & Dahl, Ö., Explanations for Language Universals. Lingua 66: 375–387.Google Scholar
Rindisbacher, Hans J. 2015. What’s this smell? Shifting worlds of olfactory perception. KulturPoetik 15(1): 70–104. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Salvi, Giampaolo & Lorenzo, Renzi (eds). 2010. Grammatica dell’italiano antico (Old Italian grammar). Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Shmelev, Alexei. 2016. Semantic shifts as sources of enantiosemy. In The Lexical Typology of Semantic Shifts, Päivi Juvonen & Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm (eds), 67–93. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Skytte, Gunver. 1976. L’analisi dei costrutti infinitivi con i verbi fattitivi e i verbi di percezione (Analysis of infinitive constructs with factitive and perception verbs). ACISc 2: 87–94.Google Scholar
Smith, Mark M. 2007. Producing sense, consuming sense, making sense: Perils and prospects for sensory history. Journal of Social History 40(4): 841–858. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spaeth, John W. 1922. Martial and Morley on smells. Classical World 16(6): 46–47.Google Scholar
Squillace, Giuseppe. 2010. Il profumo nel mondo antico. Con la prima traduzione italiana del “Sugli odori” di Teofrasto (The Fragrance of the Ancient World. With the First Italian Translation of Theophrastus’ “On odours”). Firenze: Olschki.Google Scholar
Staniewski, Przemysław. 2016. Das Unantastbare beschreiben: Gerüche und ihre Versprachlichung im Deutschen und Polnischen [Warschauer Studien zur Germanistik und zur Angewandten Linguistik 25]. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2017. Geschmack und smak – sprachliche Aspekte der gustatorischen Wahrnehmung im Deutschen und Polnischen. Beiträge zur Fremdsprachenvermittlung, Sonderheft 25: 223–247.Google Scholar
Stevens, Benjamin Eldon. 2008. The scent of language and social synaesthesia at Rome. Classical World 101(2): 159–171. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. Smell and sociocultural value judgment in Catullus. Classical World 109(4): 465–486. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Strik Lievers, Francesca. 2007. Italian perception verbs. A corpus-based study. In Language Resources and Linguistic Theory, Andrea Sansò (ed.), 167–179. Milano: Franco Angeli.Google Scholar
. 2015. Synaesthesia: A corpus-based study of cross-modal directionality. Functions of language 22(1): 69–94. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Strik Lievers, Francesca & Winter, Bodo. 2018. Sensory language across lexical categories. Lingua 204: 45–61. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Strik Lievers, Francesca & De Felice, Irene. 2019. Metaphors and perception in the lexicon: A diachronic perspective. In Perception Metaphors [Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research 19], Laura J. Speed, Carolyn O’Meara, Lila San Roque & Asifa Majid (eds), 85–104. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Strudsholm, Erling. 1995. Relativa predicativa o pseudorelativa. Considerazioni sintattiche, semantiche e pragmatiche (Predicative relative or pseudo-relative. Syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic considerations). In La subordination dans les langues romanes (Subordination in the Romance Languages), Hanne Leth Andersen & Gunver Skytte (eds), 163–179. Kopenhagen: Université de Copenhague.Google Scholar
Sweetser, Eve. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics. Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects of Semantic Structure [Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 54]. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Toner, Jerry. 2015. Smell and Christianity. In Smell and the Ancient Senses, Mark Bradley (ed.), 158–170. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Viberg, Åke. 1984. The verbs of perception: A typological study. Linguistics 21(1): 123–162.DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2001. Verbs of perception. In Language Typology and Language Universals: An International Handbook, Vol. II ., Martin Haspelmath, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible (eds), 1294–1309. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Viberg, Åke. 2015. Sensation, perception and cognition. Swedish in a typological-contrastive perspective. Functions of Language 22(1): 96–131. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2019. Phenomenon-based perception verbs in Swedish from a typological and contrastive perspective. Syntaxe & Sémantique 20: 17–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wawrzyniak, Sandra. 2016. Kunuka kama... or on the Swahili perception of smells. In Words for Odours: Language Skills and Cultural Insights, Melissa Barkat-Defradas & Elisabeth Motte-Florac (eds), 147–166. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Winter, Bodo. 2016. Taste and smell words form an affectively loaded and emotionally flexible part of the English lexicon. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 31(8): 975–988. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wnuk, Ewelina, Laophairoj, Rujiwan & Majid, Asifa. 2020. Smell terms are not rara: A semantic investigation of odor vocabulary in Thai. Linguistics 58(4), 937–966. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

HOLOVATSKA, Nataliia
2024. THE DYNAMICS OF ENGLISH SENSORY VERBS MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS. Germanic Philology Journal of Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University :848 ► pp. 59 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. 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.