ZhongHuangDong Bodilysensationandembodiment JCLPREPRINT
ZhongHuangDong Bodilysensationandembodiment JCLPREPRINT
© 2021 by the Journal of Chinese Linguistics. ISSN 0091-3723/ Bodily sensation and
embodiment: A corpus-based study of gustatory vocabulary in Mandarin Chinese. By Zhong
et al. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Embodiment has been the tenet of several linguistic theories accounting for
how language conceptualizes cognitive and bodily experiences. Studies on
linguistic synesthesia and sensory lexicon strengthened the embodiment
account by showing that the mapping patterns amongst sense modalities
likewise exhibited a tendency from the more embodied to the less
embodied. This paper reports a corpus-based study of gustatory vocabulary
in Mandarin Chinese to explore the interaction between embodied senses
and conceptual embodiment. We first observed that the perception of là 辣
‘spicy’ and má 麻 ‘numbing’ was chemesthesis derived from a chemical
reaction from the body. In addition, the concept of taste was found capable
of being depicted by variegated non-taste lexical items from less embodied
sensory domains. This study posits that gustatory properties as abstract
cognitive categories are likely to be derived from more embodied senses,
yet when the quality of gustatory sensation is the focus, less embodied
senses can be adopted to modify it. Corroborated with other recent studies,
1
2 JOURNAL OF CHINESE LINGUISTICS (PREPRINT)
KEYWORDS
Embodiment Mandarin gustatory vocabulary Linguistic synesthesia
Sensory modality
1. INTRODUCTION
Human beings live by five senses to experience the world, namely,
visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and tactile sensations, or more
commonly known as vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch senses.1 These
five sense modalities are established as both the traditional and the
scientifically conventionalized categories of basic human perception. How
human beings perceive the world through the five physiological senses and
how such perceptions are encoded in human language have received
constant scrutiny, yet they have not been studied with the same intensity.
Previous linguistic studies were voluminous on vision, notably on color
terms (e.g., Berlin and Kay 1969; Wierzbicka 1990; Kay 2009). This can
be attributed to the dominance of vision in Western culture (e.g., Classen
1997; Levinson and Majid 2014), as well as among perceptual qualities
(e.g., Strik Lievers and Winter 2018). To bring in a slightly different
perspective, this paper primarily investigates how gustatory sensation, or
taste, is expressed in Mandarin Chinese, and its relationship with other
senses. We attempt to present a more distinctive and fine-grained picture
of how Chinese people discuss gustatory perception and its related
concepts with support from corpus data.
Tastes of food are traditionally categorized into wǔ-wèi 五味 ‘five
tastes; five flavors’ in Chinese culture: sweet, sour, bitter, spicy, and salty,
as exemplified in the classic text Lüshi Chunqiu 吕氏春秋 (Lü 2010, 279)2:
五味三材…调和之事,必以甘酸苦辛咸…
Wǔ wèi sān cái…tiáo hé zhī shì, bì yǐ gān suān kǔ xīn xián…
BODILY SENSATION AND EMBODIMENT 3
‘For the five tastes and the three ingredients…for the task of
harmonizing and blending, one must use sweet, sour, bitter,
spicy, and salty…’
Given the doubt cast by the above studies on the long-standing five
tastes taxonomy and the embodiment-oriented explanation of linguistic
synesthesia in Mandarin Chinese, the relationship between perception and
language merits a closer look. This paper examines real-life uses of taste-
related concepts on the biological basis of gustatory sensation. Given the
standard account of gustatory sense as the second most embodied sense
after tactile sense (cf. Williams 1976; Zhao, Huang, and Long 2018; Zhao,
Xiong, and Huang 2019), we try to explore the following three research
questions:
2. BACKGROUND
2.1 Là 辣‘spicy’ as a Non-taste Taste
As mentioned in the above section, xīn 辛 and the later use of là 辣
are pertinent to the taste sensation in Mandarin Chinese. According to the
experimental results in Chen et al. (2019), the gustatory sense is rated by
Mandarin speakers the most dominant for là 辣 ‘spicy’ (with the score of
4.97, compared to 2.40 through smell, 1.41 via vision, 0.83 by touch, and
0.12 via hearing; the rating system is from 0 to 5). This significant score
disparity indicates that là 辣 ‘spicy’ is perceived as taste rather than any
other sense in Mandarin Chinese. Moreover, in the series of linguistic
synesthesia studies in Mandarin Chinese (e.g., Zhao, Huang, and Long
2018; Zhao, Huang, and Ahrens 2019; Zhao, Xiong, and Huang 2019), là
辣 ‘spicy’ is treated as belonging to the gustatory sense. Their argument
mainly stemmed from Archaic Chinese5, such as the examples illustrated
previously in Lüshi Chunqiu and the Xunzi 荀子6:
6 JOURNAL OF CHINESE LINGUISTICS (PREPRINT)
甘苦咸淡辛酸奇味,以口异。
Gān kǔ xián dàn xīn suān qí wèi, yǐ kǒu yì.
‘various tastes, such as sweetness, bitterness, the salty taste,
the mild taste, the hot taste, sourness, are differentiated by
the mouth.’
(Zhao, Huang, and Long, 2018, 1175).
若人之于滋味,无不说甘脆…
Ruò rén zhī yú zīwèi, wú bù shuō gān cuì...
‘Speaking of flavors, everyone likes what is sweet and
crisp…’
Sweet is what human beings can sense through the taste receptor cells found
in the taste buds on the tongue, whereas there is no such taste receptor to
account for crisp. The etymology of cuì 脆 ‘crisp’ is from cuì 脃, referring
to small, tender, and fragile things in the flesh (Xu 1963, 90). It hints that
the original understanding of wèi 味 might involve both gustatory and
tactile sensations.
It turned out that wèi 味 was instantiated as an “umbrella term” that
went beyond the gustatory sensation to embrace all the sensory words in
the early Chinese Buddhist texts (Xiong and Huang 2016). For example,
wèi 味 in the Āgamas 阿含经 employs lexical items from all five senses
to produce Buddhist expressions, i.e., sèwèi 色味 ‘form-taste’, shēngwèi
声味 ‘sound-taste’, xiāngwèi 香味 ‘smell-taste’, and chùwèi 触味 ‘touch-
taste’. In addition, when wèi 味 ‘taste’ is collocated with zhuó 着 ‘attach’
to form a verb wèizhuó 味着 ‘attach to; attract’, it connects internal organs
with external objects:
眼味着色…耳味着声…鼻味着香…舌味着味…身味着触…
yǎn wèizhuó sè…ěr wèizhuó shēng…bí wèizhuó xiāng…shé
wèizhuó wèi…shēn wèizhuó chù…
‘eye-taste attracts forms…ear-taste attracts sounds…nose-
taste attracts smell…tongue-taste attracts taste…body-taste
attracts tangibles…’
(Xiong and Huang 2016; Huang and Xiong 2019)
5. PERCEPTION OF TASTE
As mentioned in Section 1, the five traditional tastes, i.e., suān 酸
‘sour’, tián 甜 ‘sweet’, kǔ 苦 ‘bitter’, là 辣 ‘spicy’, and xián 咸 ‘salty’
constitute the major qualities of taste sense in Chinese culture, even though
là 辣 ‘spicy’ is testified being treated as chemesthesis rather than the
gustatory sensation in the preceding section. In this section, we would like
to check whether the concept of wèidào 味道 ‘taste; smell’ strictly or
loosely follows its definition with the data presented in the corpus Chinese
Web 2017 (zhTenTen11). It is noted that the vocabulary being categorized
into different sensory domains mainly follows two lines: (1) if their
original meaning is pertinent to that sense (cf. Zhao, Xiong, and Huang
2019); for example, even though měi 美 ‘beautiful’ is commonly used in
the visual domain in modern Chinese, its etymology originated in the taste
sense (denoting the delicious taste of a big sheep 15) made it a gustatory
adjective in Zhao, Xiong, and Huang (2019); (2) if the perception is
deemed dominating in that word (cf. Chen et al. 2019), for instance, the
ratings received by the adjective nóngliè 浓烈 ‘of intense taste-scorching’
in gustatory and olfactory senses were extremely close to each other - 4.48
versus 4.40, we had no choice but to choose the more dominant one that
won out by a tiny margin. Other words not listed in Zhao, Xiong, and
Huang (2019) or Chen et al. (2019) will mainly be categorized in terms of
their original meanings that can be traced in Shuowenjiezi (Xu 1963) or
their frequent usages as demonstrated by the corpus data.
the collocations that fall into these two categories will be examined first.
For our current purpose, we limited the grammatical relations to the words
that wèidào 味道 ‘taste; smell’ modifies and the modifiers of wèidào 味道
‘taste; smell’, which are mostly adjectives. Following an exhaustive search
for collocations in the two grammatical relations with all irrelevant words
excluded, 55 gustatory related and 19 olfactory related items were
identified, as presented in Tables 4 and 5.
Table 4 (continued)
Gustatory related logDice Gustatory related logDice
Modifies/Modifiers score Modifies/Modifiers score
xiāngtián-kěkǒu 香
tiánxiāng 甜香
15 6.06 43 甜可口 ‘sweet and 3.94
‘sweet and fragrant’
tasty’
qīngtián 清甜 shuǎngkǒu 爽口
16 6.02 44 3.93
‘limpid-sweet’ ‘tasty and refreshing’
jí xiān 极鲜
17 6.01 45 sè 涩 ‘astringent’ 3.53
‘extremely savory’
chúnhòu 醇厚 ‘of
suānshuǎng 酸爽
18 intense taste of wine- 5.99 46 3.45
‘sour and tasty’
thick’
tiánsuān 甜酸 ‘sweet
19 5.97 47 má 麻 ‘numbing’ 3.43
and sour’
xiánxiān 咸鲜 ‘salty
20 5.85 48 gānliè 甘冽 ‘sweet’ 3.36
and savory’
tiánnì 甜腻 ‘sweet huǒlà 火辣 ‘hot and
21 5.81 49 2.98
and cloying’ spicy’
chúnhé 醇和 ‘mellow chúnměi 醇美
22 5.57 50 2.69
and mild’ ‘mellow and tasty’
xiānnèn 鲜嫩 ‘savory
23 nì 腻 ‘fatty; greasy’ 5.55 51 2.61
and tender’
suānliūliū 酸溜溜 gānměi 甘美 ‘sweet
24 5.53 52 2.53
‘sour’ and tasty’
chúnxiāng 醇香/
25/ xiāngchún 香醇 tiánrùn 甜润 ‘sweet
5.51 53 2.17
26 ‘mellow and and moist’
fragrant’
suāntián 酸甜 ‘sour féiměi 肥美 ‘fatty
27 5.51 54 2.13
and sweet’ and tasty’
gānchún 甘醇 ‘sweet
28 kǔ 苦 ‘bitter’ 5.42 55 and intense taste of 2.06
wine’
Table 6 (continued)
Tactile related logDice Tactile related logDice
Modifies/Modifiers score Modifies/Modifiers score
bīngliáng 冰凉
5 wēnhé 温和 ‘warm’ 3.75 13 2.48
‘icy cold’
6 cìjī 刺激 ‘irritating’ 3.56 14 gānzào 干燥 ‘dry’ 2.44
róuhuá 柔滑
7 shīrùn 湿润 ‘moist’ 3.54 15 1.5
‘soft and smooth’
xìnì 细腻 ‘fine and
8 3.38
smooth’
(1) 奶酪温和的味道可以中和一下辣味。
Nǎilào wēnhé de wèidào kěyǐ zhōnghé yīxià làwèi.
cheese warm DE taste can balance once spicy-taste
‘The mild taste of cheese can balance the spicy taste.’
(2) 夏季特有的豆面,其香喷喷又凉爽的味道绝对是美味。
Xiàjì tèyǒu de dòumiàn, qí xiāngpēnpēn yòu
summer exclusive-have DE bean-noodle it savory and
liángshuǎng de wèidào juéduì shì měiwèi.
cool DE taste absolutely is tasty
‘The bean noodle exclusively for summer is absolutely tasty with its
delicious and cool taste.’
The above table shows that the main feature of these visual-related
adjectives is that they are much more abstract than words from other
sensory domains, and most of them are related to simplicity, purity, and
BODILY SENSATION AND EMBODIMENT 23
(4) 这道茶最适合配点心来用,因为茶味不浓,相比其他性格强烈的
饮品,它清新淡雅的味道不会抢了点心的风头。
Zhè dào chá zuì shìhé pèi diǎnxīn lái yòng, yīnwèi
this CL tea most suit match dim-sum come use because
cháwèi bù nóng, xiāngbǐ qítā xìnggé qiángliè de yǐnpǐn,
tea-taste no intense compare other personality strong DE drink
tā qīngxīn dànyǎ de wèidào bù huì qiǎng le diǎnxīn
it fresh simple-elegant DE taste no will grab LE dim-sum
de fēngtóu.
DE limelight
‘This tea goes best with dim sum. As it is not too overbearing, unlike
other strong-flavored drinks, its fresh and elegant taste will not
outshine dim sum.’
(5) 让白兰地微妙而精致的味道取悦你的味蕾。
Ràng báilándì wéimiào ér jīngzhì de wèidào qǔyuè
let brandy delicate and exquisite DE taste please
nǐ de wèilěi.
you DE taste-bud
‘Let the delicate and exquisite taste of brandy please your taste buds.’
bodily feelings? (2) Why can the less embodied senses, i.e., the olfactory
and visual senses, transfer to the more embodied sense, i.e., gustatory sense?
(3) Why are no auditory-related adjectives used to modify the gustatory
sense? Accounting for these doubts might help to address our last research
question of how gustatory sense interacts with those more embodied and
those less embodied senses.
First, the reason for spicy and numbing being misunderstood as taste
sense might be the similarity between them and those bona fide taste senses
in terms of acquiring method. Just as how we perceive sweetness and
bitterness, the spicy and numbing feelings are also perceived through the
oral cavity in the process of eating. Such feelings, moreover, are produced
by spices such as chili pepper and Sichuan pepper, which Chinese people
normally consider as condiments together with salt, sugar, MSG, vinegar,
etc. that create various tastes. Therefore, although spiciness and numbness
activate different receptors from genuine tastes, ordinary Chinese people
would and could not distinguish these receptors from taste buds which are
all located in the oral cavity, and would simply regard the spicy and
numbing feelings as flavors added to the food akin to the sweet, sour, or
salty taste. With such tactile members in the gustatory family, it is thus
natural to use the more embodied tactile sense to express bodily tastes such
as spiciness and numbness. In addition, being non-taste chemesthesis, the
spicy and numbing feelings yet do interact with tastes, which makes the
tactile and gustatory senses more intertwined. Except for the relieving
effect of sweetness on the burning sensation produced by capsaicin as
mentioned earlier, spicy and numbing also display a close relation with
bitterness in the later stage of consuming hotpot, instantiated by phrases
such as yuè-zhǔ-yuè-kǔ 越煮越苦 ‘the longer it cooks, the bitterer it gets’.
The cause of this phenomenon can be found in Green and Schullery (2003)
that capsaicin is capable of stimulating a subset of taste neurons that
respond to bitter substances, and when applied to small areas of the tongue,
capsaicin can produce a bitter taste as well as a sensory irritation. Based on
language use, furthermore, Dong, Zhong, and Huang (2018) found that the
spicy and numbing flavors usually make it harder for diners to perceive
tastes. It can be backed by neurological findings that chili pungency and
anesthetic constituents containing Sichuan pepper may reduce the taste
intensity of foods (Prescott and Stevenson 1995; Rong et al. 2016).
BODILY SENSATION AND EMBODIMENT 25
(6) 这款燃气灶亮丽的外观设计,充满着时尚的味道。(VISION)
Zhè kuǎn ránqìzào liànglì de wàiguān shèjì, chōngmǎn zhe
this CL gas-stove bright DE exterior design full-of ZHE
shíshàng de wèidào.
fashion DE taste
‘The external design of this brand of gas stoves is full of fashionable
taste.’
(7) 每一首歌都能听出用心的味道。(HEARING)
Měi yī shǒu gē dōu néng tīng chū yòngxīn de wèidào.
each one CL song all can listen out attentive DE taste
‘Each song sounds very attentive.’
(8) 爱情故事真的很美好,像是找回了青春的味道。
Àiqíng gùshì zhēn de hěn měihǎo, xiàng shì zhǎo huí le
love story really DE very beautiful seem is find back LE
qīngchūn de wèidào.
youth DE taste
‘Love stories are really beautiful; it is like rediscovering one’s
youthful days.’
On the other hand, when the focus is on the quality of sensation, i.e.,
the desirability and pleasantness of taste, as shown in the visual-related
examples, it is reasonable to use more conceptual and basic senses to
modify the less embodied sense. For example, apart from the visual
adjectives discussed above, various personality-related items were also
identified in the corpus that echo the depiction of taste as a human being.
These items include pǔshí 朴 实 ‘sincere and honest’, huópō 活 泼
‘vivacious’, tiáopí 调皮 ‘naughty’, bàdào 霸道 ‘overbearing’, zhāngyáng
张扬 ‘unabashed’, hánxù 含蓄 ‘introverted’, and dānchún 单纯 ‘simple’,
which in actuality illustrate either plain/bland or strong/rich tastes, see (9)
– (11):
(9) 尽管味道很朴实,但是松软的饼体已经让人爱不释口。
Jǐnguǎn wèidào hěn pushí, dànshì sōngruǎn de bǐngtǐ
although taste very simple but fluffy DE cake-texture
yǐjīng ràng rén ài-bù-shì-kǒu.
already let people eat-more-of-it
‘Although its taste is very simple, the fluffy texture is enough to make
one want to eat more of it.’
(10) 茶瓦纳冰摇桃桃绿茶带来了清新活泼的味道。
Cháwǎnà bīngyáo táotáo lǜchá dài lái le qīngxīn
TEAVANA ice-shake peach green-tea bring come LE fresh
huópō de wèidào.
lively DE taste
‘TEAVANA shaken iced peach green tea brings a fresh and lively
taste.’
(11) 这锅霸道的味道充斥了每个人的鼻腔。
Zhè guō bàdào de wèidào chōngchì le měi gè rén
this pot overbearing DE taste fill-up LE each CL person
de bíqiāng.
DE nasal-cavity
‘The strong smell from this pot fills up everyone’s nose.’
7. CONCLUSION
We demonstrate in this study that the traditional view of spicy and
numbing being one of the basic taste senses is not valid linguistically.
Furthermore, we also showed that the Chinese language contains a versatile
28 JOURNAL OF CHINESE LINGUISTICS (PREPRINT)
NOTES
REFERNCES
BERLIN, Brent, and Paul Kay. 1969. Basic Color Terms: Their
Universality and Evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.
BRYANT, Bruce P., and Mezine Igor. 1999. Alkylamides that produce
tingling paresthesia activate tactile and thermal trigeminal neurons.
Brain Research 842(2): 452–460.
CHEN, I-Hsuan, Qingqing Zhao, Yunfei Long, Qin Lu, and Chu-Ren
Huang. 2019. Mandarin Chinese modality exclusivity norms. PLoS
ONE 14(2): 1–18.
CLASSEN, Constance. 1997. Foundations for an anthropology of the
senses. International Social Science Journal 49(153): 401–412.
Dictionary Editing Office, Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences 中 国社 会科 学 院 语言 研究 所 词典 编辑 室 . 2016.
Xiandai Hanyu cidian (Diqi ban) 现代汉语词典 ( 第 7 版) (The
contemporary Chinese dictionary [7 th ed.]). Beijing: Shangwu
yinshuguan.
DONG, Sicong, Yin Zhong, and Chu-Ren Huang. 2018. How do non-tastes
taste? A corpus-based study on Chinese people’s perception of spicy
and numbing food. In Proceedings of the 32 nd Pacific Asia Conference
on Language, Information and Computation: 25 th Joint Workshop on
Linguistics and Language Processing, 858–866. Stroudsburg, USA:
Association for Computational Linguistics.
DUAN, Yucai 段玉裁. 2007. Shuowenjiezi Zhu 说文解字注 (Commentary
on explaning graphs and analyzing characters). Nanjing: Fenghuang
chubanshe.
FIRTH, John Rupert. 1957. A synopsis of linguistic theory 1930–1955. In
Studies on Linguistic Analysis: Special Volume of the Philological
Society, edited by John Rupert Firth, 1–32. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
GREEN, Barry G. 1996. Chemesthesis: Pungency as a component of flavor.
Trends in Food Science & Technology 7(12): 415–420.
———. 2016. Introduction: What is chemesthesis? In Chemesthesis:
Chemical Touch in Food and Eating, edited by Shane T. McDonald,
David A. Bolliet and John E. Hayes, 1–7. Chichester, West Sussex:
Wiley Blackwell.
GREEN, Barry G., and Matthew T. Schullery. 2003. Stimulation of
bitterness by capsaicin and menthol: Differences between lingual
BODILY SENSATION AND EMBODIMENT 31
感官体验与具身认知
——基于语料库的汉语味觉词汇研究
钟隐 黄居仁 董思聪
香港理工大学 香港理工大学 哈尔滨工业大学(深圳)
摘要
具身认知(Embodiment)是研究人类语言概念表征的重要途径。前人对
语言中的通感(linguistic synesthesia)及感官词汇的实证研究发现感官之
间会因感官体验(bodily sensation)程度的不同呈现不同的映射规律。一
般来说感官体验度较高(more embodied)的感官(如触觉、味觉)会更趋
向于映射至体验度较低(less embodied)的感官(如视觉、听觉等)。本文
基于语料库对汉语味觉词汇进行详尽考察,并对感官体验与具身认知问
题展开讨论。我们主要分析两种现象:1)从生理学角度看不属于味觉感
知的“辣”和“麻”长期被汉语母语者视为味觉;2)汉语母语者在描述
食物味道时,会使用大量不属于味觉的其他感官词汇,而这些词汇有些
更是来自感官体验度较低的感官。本文提出,味觉作为较为抽象的认知
范畴,可借助感官体验度较高的词汇对其进行描述;但当人们需要强调
味觉特性时,体验度较低的感官词汇同样也可对味觉加以表达。本文的
分析进一步说明了具身认知对语言概念化研究的多重功能。
关键词
具身认知 汉语味觉词汇 通感 感官体验