More than Five II : 共感覚が浮き彫りにする感覚(英語の場合)

This paper is a continuation of Yamada (1992), which deals with Japanese synesthetic metaphors. I showed that the adjectives of dimension, movement, and mood were found in Japanese synesthetic metaphors, modifying the experiences of a sense, and argued that these adjectives were functioning as lexemes of sense like the commonly known five senses -touch, taste, smell, vision, and hearing-, in the linguistic system of Japanese. In this paper, synesthetic metaphors are examined, and it is argued that the same three senses exist in English. Expressions like deep sound, quiet color, and cheerful color, which synesthetically describe sensory experiences, indicate that there are some other senses other than the commonly known five. If these expressions are synesthetic metaphors, the adjectives must be words proper to some sense. But they can not be classified into the five senses. These adjectives can be classified into three groups by the meaning and by the senses they can modify. Each group consists of words of dimension, movement, and mood. This result is quite similar to that of Yamada (1992) on Japanese synesthetic metaphors, and this coincidence suggests the possibility that these three senses are universal. With three new senses, I present a new schedule an adjective transfers from one sensory modality to another, on the basis of Williams' (1976). The fact that the three senses can be formed into the schedule of senses provides evidence that the adjectives of dimension, movement, and mood hold the status of lexemes of sense in the language of English.

公開日:2010年1月24日で登録したコンテンツは、国立情報学研究所において電子化したものです。