Project 1: Analyzing the community-specific word meanings
The sense of taste has long been neglected by aesthetic studies. The tasting word lists created by sommeliers may help us articulate the tacit feelings of the taste, but their “nominal way” of describing something trivializes our personal taste experience. To better describe taste’s Aesthetic Quality (Sibley, 1959), I argue that we should study the functions of verbs and adjectives (and adjectival nouns). I believe the usage-based, encyclopaedic semantics of the adjectives for taste will open the door to the aesthetics of taste.
Aim-1 Describing unexplained meanings of tasting terms (-2025)
Backgrounds
- The meanings of words are not fixed but depend on the context and community.
- For example, the term “rich taste” is used in wine to describe a sweet, tannic taste, while in coffee, it refers to a roasted aroma or a thick bitterness.
Research Strategy
- A usage-based approach: Describe the meaning of verbs, adjectives, and adjectival nouns by examining a co-occurrence relationship of the terms that appear in an original Sake description corpus (120,000 words in Japanese). Based on the computed co-occurrence scores, I defined the referent and the sense of the target term in a bottom-up and abductive fashion.
- Encyclopedic semantics rather than a “dictionary view”; Describe the dynamic and pragmatic aspect of the meanings of the word.
- Sense-making theory: The sense of a single word cannot be determined a priori; rather, the sense is cooperatively “made” during the communication process and the co-occurrence relationships.
Preliminary Results and Significance
Using this approach, I defined 16 target terms (adjectives and adjectival nouns)[1]And eight verbs[2]. For example, I found that the tasting term “clear” in Japanese sake means “sweetness” and “lightness” by analyzing co-occurrences in the corpus. This research is groundbreaking in that it clarified the non-dictionary meaning of the word “clear” and other words as aesthetic terms by analyzing its co-occurrence relations.
Impact
This series of studies shows that behind the identification of certain words as aesthetic terms of taste appreciation, there are two underlying stages of word sense extension: (1) metaphorization and (2) acculturation by the linguistic community. The significance of this study is that it not only defines aesthetic terms by example but also explains their formation as a cognitive process.
Project 2: Establishing an aesthetics of taste based on language
Aim-2 Pragmatics of Onomatopoeias
Backgrounds
- Onomatopoeia is one of the features of the Japanese language and is regarded as essential for young children’s language development.
- It is not listed in the sommelier’s glossary but frequently appears in Japanese reviews of the wine.
- That is, it is used not to express a definite sense but to express the threshold of what may or may not be verbalized.
Significance
Previous onomatopoeias Studies = Seek words’ meaning in onomatopoeias themselves (intrinsic theory).
- Phonology: What kind of mental image does the phoneme evoke? (e.g.ざらざらZara-Zara: the sound of Z represents friction.)
- Morphology: seeking meaning in word forms (e.g., ぷっくりpukkuri = X-ri form)
On the other hand, I focus on the functional (extrinsic) aspect of onomatopoeias. I have been investigating the mechanisms of onomatopoeia usage by analyzing what onomatopoeia represents in a particular context, speech field, and co-occurrence relationship with other words.
Preliminary Results[3][4]
- Onomatopoeias represent the breaking points, turning points, and changing processes of taste rather than stable states. Therefore, ideophones can be distinguished from general adverbs, which mainly describe the states and manners of objects or events.
- Onomatopoeias co-occur with relatively abstract expressions of taste.
- Onomatopoeias are used to express the sense of ‘appearing’ or ‘finishing’ of flavors.
[1] Fxyma, H. (2022). Clear Is Sweet: Defining Aesthetic Sake Taste Terms with a Usage-Based Approach. In The Language of Food in Japanese. Cognitive perspectives and beyond, edited by Kiyoko Toratani, Converging Evidence in Language and Communication Research, 25: 192–230. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
[2] Fxyma, H. (2020). Defining the Verbs for “Understanding and Interpretation” of Japanese Sake, In T. Ogata (Eds.), Bridging the Gap Between AI, Cognitive Science, and Narratology with Narrative Generation. (Chapter 4). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.
[3] Fxyma, H., Imai, M., & Tanaka, S. (2017). The Usage Mechanism of Japanese Ideophones in the Description of Taste: Morphological and co-occurrence analysis of the description of wines and sakes. International Journal of Computational Linguistics Research, 8(3), 109–122.
[4] 福島宙輝, 田中茂範. (2016). 味覚表現における音象徴語の使用原理. 人工知能学会誌, 31(6).
Aim-1 | Applying the Buddhist and Oriental epistemology to the taste perception
Significance
Methods for analytical sensory evaluation of taste exist, but there is no first-person description of the phenomenon in the mouth and nose. In this project, focusing on taste’s temporality and spatial qualities, I will develop a model of the in-mouth experience.
Research Strategy
- I focus on non-linear temporality, particularly circular temporality. Circular temporality is the cyclical time that is the basis of our lives, such as agriculture and biological rhythms.
- Circular temporality is a core idea in Asian and especially Buddhist epistemology.
- I aim to apply the epistemology of time and space found in Buddhist and Oriental philosophy to the epistemology of taste.
- In the future, I intend to reflect more strongly on Buddhist philosophy. I am seeking to develop a model of the senses that reflects the ideas of point time 点時間 and empty time 空時間.
- I am presenting my ideas at a special interest group of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI SIG-LSE).