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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Mouton July 31, 2018

Synaesthesia in Chinese: A corpus-based study on gustatory adjectives in Mandarin

  • Qingqing Zhao EMAIL logo , Chu-Ren Huang and Yunfei Long
From the journal Linguistics

Abstract

This study adopted a corpus-based approach to examine the synaesthetic metaphors of gustatory adjectives in Mandarin. Based on the distribution of synaesthetic uses in the corpus, we found that: (1) the synaesthetic metaphors of Mandarin gustatory adjectives exhibited directionality; (2) the directionality of Mandarin synaesthetic gustatory adjectives showed both commonality and specificity when compared with the attested directionality of gustatory adjectives in English, which calls for a closer re-examination of the claim of cross-lingual universality of synaesthetic tendencies; and (3) the distribution and directionality of Mandarin synaesthetic gustatory adjectives could not be predicted by a single hypothesis, such as the embodiment-driven approach or the biological association-driven approach. Thus, linguistic synaesthesia was constrained by both the embodiment principle and the biological association mechanism.

Acknowledgements

This research is supported by a grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (RG-12-D-16) and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Central Research Grant G-YBGM.

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Appendix The distribution of Mandarin synaesthetic gustatory adjectives based on the Sinica Corpus

Source domainTarget domains
TASTESMELLVISIONHEARINGTOUCH
Intensity adjectives
dàn ‘not salty/ of mild taste’27247780
nóng ‘of intense taste’2917520
chún ‘of intense taste’1000
濃醇 nóng-nóng ‘of intense taste’1000
Quality adjectives
tián ‘sweet’111150
甘甜 gān-tián ‘sweet’1000
甜美 tián-měi ‘tasty’028260
gān ‘sweet’3000
甘美 gān-měi ‘tasty’0010
xiān ‘tasty’18400
鮮美 xiān-měi ‘tasty’0200
xīn ‘hot (in taste)’3000
‘hot (in taste)’08902
辛辣 xīn-là ‘hot (in taste)’7000
xián ‘salty’7000
‘bitter’18411
suān ‘sour’80066
Published Online: 2018-07-31
Published in Print: 2018-08-28

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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