BASIC NOTIONS OF SENSORY LINGUISTICS

Abstract

The article considers the key notions of sensory linguistics, which deals with the system of linguistic representations of physiological indicators of the five senses – sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Sensory linguistics is the study of how language relates to the senses. Sensory perception is the reflection of certain properties of objects during their immediate action on a sense organ. According to the amount of perceived information, vision ranks first and hearing ranks in second place, followed by the subordinate senses of smell, taste and touch. Perceptual language describes physical feelings using words based on the five senses, with the lexical level being the most significant. The inequality of perceptual sensations, as well as the different number of linguistic signs of their expression, is reflected in the vocabulary of the language. Linguists suggest that there is more lexical differentiation for visual concepts than for the other senses. Sensory words belong to different parts of speech: nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs, since all words perform a nominative function. Perceptual features expressed by nouns are objectified; adjectives express perceptual features that do not evolve in time and are inseparable from objects; verbs express dynamic perceptual features, and adverbs express perceptual features as secondary qualities, i.e. qualities of another (dynamic or static) quality. Perceptuality can be regarded as a linguistic category. In sensory linguistics, the basic notion is “sensory”, which is used along with the notion “perceptual”. However, in the English tradition, the notion “sensory” is associated with sensation, and the notion “perceptual” – with perception. Linguists use the term “perceptual mode” to refer to a particular type of sensation. The terms denoting perceptual modalities are of Latin origin: “visual”, “audible”, “tactile” (“haptic”), “olfactory”, and “gustatory”. Other frequently used terms are “sensory experience”, “percipient”, and “experimenter”. The term “percipient’ presupposes the actual, available sensory experience gained “here and now”, and the term “experimenter” – the total sensory experience accumulated during a person’s life.