Siahaan, Poppy (2022). Indonesian basic olfactory terms: more negative types but more positive tokens. Cogn. Linguist, 33 (3). S. 447 - 481. BERLIN: DE GRUYTER MOUTON. ISSN 1613-3641

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Abstract

The present study investigates the semantics of a dozen basic smell terms in Indonesian using data from a large corpus of written register. Examining how these smell terms lexicalize some odors but not others raises questions that are central to our understanding of the language of olfaction. How are smell terms structured? What does the structure of smell terms tell us about human behavior? By applying cluster analysis, the present study reveals that the Indonesian odor lexicon is structured based on one dimension correlating with pleasantness. The large dataset of a written corpus enables the present study to reveal the differences in lexicalization and frequency: Indonesian smell terms have more negative types but more positive tokens in texts. This novel approach to investigating smell terms allows us to take a step closer toward our goal of understanding olfactory vocabulary, as data on token frequency are difficult to obtain in studies of (unwritten) minority languages. This key finding supports the Pollyanna Hypothesis: people tend to use positive words more often than negative words, but the negative words convey more information.

Item Type: Journal Article
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCIDORCID Put Code
Siahaan, PoppyUNSPECIFIEDUNSPECIFIEDUNSPECIFIED
URN: urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-656769
DOI: 10.1515/cog-2021-0092
Journal or Publication Title: Cogn. Linguist
Volume: 33
Number: 3
Page Range: S. 447 - 481
Date: 2022
Publisher: DE GRUYTER MOUTON
Place of Publication: BERLIN
ISSN: 1613-3641
Language: English
Faculty: Unspecified
Divisions: Unspecified
Subjects: no entry
Uncontrolled Keywords:
KeywordsLanguage
LANGUAGE; ODOR; PERCEPTION; CATEGORIES; SENSE; SMELLMultiple languages
Linguistics; Language & LinguisticsMultiple languages
URI: http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/65676

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