smell and taste

[Steven Schaufele]

Paul Hopper writes:

> I read somewhere that physiologically there are only three basic
> tastes, taste being a quite primitive sense: sweet, bitter/sour, and
> salt - other tastes are perceived by the olfactory sense.

That's certainly not how i understood it.  What i picked up at some
point in youth was the understanding that physiologically there are four
elemental taste-sensations.  `Sweet' is picked up primarily at the tip
of the tongue, `salt' more towards the center of the tongue, `sour'
along the edges, and `bitter' in the back of the tongue.  And other
taste-sensations are due to various combinations of these, in many but
perhaps not all cases also including olfactory sensations.

For me at least, there definitely is a difference between `sour' and
`bitter': `sour' is what characterizes citrus fruits like oranges,
lemons, and grapefruit; it's due to the presence of certain (relatively
simple?) acids, hence the German `Sauer' to mean `acid'.  `Bitter' is
the taste of spinach or of unsweetened chocolate; i don't know what sort
of substance causes this gustatory reaction, but it's definitely
different from `sour' (and, in my experience, it takes a certain amount
of familiarity -- and maturity? -- to appreciate `bitter' tastes; i've
always enjoyed the sour taste of citrus fruits, but i had to learn to
like bitter things like spinach!)

Paul's further suggestion, that we give examples of specific items
representing particular tastes, is a good one and i have tried to follow
it here.  It may be possible to define visual and auditory experiences
in some purely objective way without reference to specific, real-world
stimuli, but as far as i've been able to tell it is not possible to do
so wrt gustatory or olfactory sensations.

Best,
Steven
--
Steven Schaufele, Ph.D., Asst. Prof. of Linguistics, English Department

Soochow University, Waishuanghsi Campus, Taipei 11102, Taiwan, ROC

(886)(02)2881-9471 ext. 6504     fcosw5 at mbm1.scu.edu.tw

http://www.prairienet.org/~fcosws/homepage.html



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