Rethinking basic taste terms

Abstract

The general consensus about four basic tastes, sweet, bitter, sour and salty, is rooted in Aristotle’s writings. This inventory was expanded with the addition of umami (or savoury) in the early years of last century, a taste that wasn’t fully scientifically recognized until the mid-1980s. Work on this area of human cognition from various fields – psychology, physiology, chemistry and particularly food science – has led to new discoveries that allow us to have a better understanding of the mechanism of taste. However, linguistic work on this aspect of human perception is lacking. Questions remain to be asked as to the size of the vocabulary of basic tastes, and how language can reflect the organization of the taste domain. This paper proposes to look at basic tastes by examining Chinese historical texts with an aim to reveal how the ancient Chinese people classified and categorized tastes. It will be demonstrated that the Chinese concept of “taste” boasts a long history, going back to pre-historic times. The word for “taste”, 味 wèi, can also refer to “smell; flavour.” The term is primarily used as a category noun, which gets borrowed into Japanese to become the head element -mi of the compound word umami in Japanese. Significantly, a form with a similar sound shape, 美 měi, was found in ancient Chinese with the meaning “tasty”, an adjective describing the taste, flavour of fresh meat, akin to “savoury.” This indicates that we are dealing with a morphological process or doublet in this semantic field. It also indicates that the idea of “good taste, tasty, savoury” existed long before that of umami. Equally important is the form with related meaning, 鲜 xiān, which is made up of two graphic forms, “fish” （鱼） + “lamb” （羊）. This form etymologically denotes the flavour of fresh fish, now carrying the sense of “fresh, delicious, tasty, savoury” in Chinese, which further illustrates the point. Still another form, 旨 zhǐ “(n) good flavour; pleasant taste,” is the source of the meaning of umami, as defined in Japanese dictionaries. Several other tastes are also analysed. Their implications for the expansion of basic tastes are discussed. The connections between the taste domain and olfaction domain are explored, with insights from some neighbouring languages.