Differential coding of perception in the world's languages

Abstract

Is there a universal hierarchy of the senses, such that some senses (e.g., vision) are more accessible to consciousness and linguistic description than others (e.g., smell)? The long-standing presumption in Western thought has been that vision and audition are more objective than the other senses, serving as the basis of knowledge and understanding, whereas touch, taste, and smell are crude and of little value. This predicts that humans ought to be better at communicating about sight and hearing than the other senses, and decades of work based on English and related languages certainly suggests this is true. However, how well does this reflect the diversity of languages and communities worldwide? To test whether there is a universal hierarchy of the senses, stimuli from the five basic senses were used to elicit descriptions in 20 diverse languages, including 3 unrelated sign languages. We found that languages differ fundamentally in which sensory domains they linguistically code systematically, and how they do so. The tendency for better coding in some domains can be explained in part by cultural preoccupations. Although languages seem free to elaborate specific sensory domains, some general tendencies emerge: for example, with some exceptions, smell is poorly coded. The surprise is that, despite the gradual phylogenetic accumulation of the senses, and the imbalances in the neural tissue dedicated to them, no single hierarchy of the senses imposes itself upon language.

Keywords: cross-cultural; cross-linguistic; ineffability; language; perception.

Fig. 1.

Languages (and researchers) contributing to the study. Locations indicate field sites where data were collected.

Fig. 2.

Boxplots of codability (measured by Simpson’s diversity index) plotted by domain and language (0 indicates low codability; 1 indicates high codability). English shows the predicted high codability for color, shape, and sound, and low codability for touch, taste, and smell, but other languages exhibit different hierarchies.

Fig. 3.

The hierarchy of the senses across languages according to the mean codability of each domain, with the presumed universal Aristotelian hierarchy on Top. There is no universal hierarchy of the senses across diverse languages worldwide.

Fig. 4.

Factors that explain codability: (A) Codability is higher for a domain if more abstract terms are used to refer to it (regression line from a mixed-effects model). (B and C) Codability is higher for larger populations (raw data with regression line from a mixed-effects model) (B) and communities with formal schooling (C). (D) Codability of sounds is higher for communities with specialist musicians. (E and F) Codability for shape is higher for communities with more access to formal schooling (E) and patterned pottery (F). (G) Codability for angular shapes is higher for communities that live in angular houses. (H) Hunter-gatherers have higher codability for smell than other communities.

Fig. 5.

Strategies for describing perceptual stimuli across languages. For each domain and language, the proportion of abstract, source-based, and evaluative responses are plotted.