This question requires a fairly complex answer. First, taste in the everyday sense is actually a combination of taste and smell. The sense of taste is mediated by taste buds, and consists strictly of salt, sour, sweet, and bitter (and umami according to mostly the Japanese researchers). Smell, on the other hand, has an indefinitely large number of qualities, which do not constitute a simple dimensionality. And smell has many more types of receptors (dozens, and perhaps many more) whereas color has only three. Further, the questioner is correct that most smells are identified as "like something," rather than a pure odor-related descriptor. Bill Cain holds that odor is used to identify objects and help us decide what to do with them, rather than to describe them verbally. It is well known that odors are hard to label, and also that odor makes more direct connections to the limbic system than other senses. Hope this helps. don Donald McBurney University of Pittsburgh who has become mainly a lurker and frequently a zapper of most postings from TIPS because of the silly nature of many exchanges. Michael J. Kane wrote: > Hi Tipsters, > > Although the question below came to me from one of my friends, not one of my > students, it's interesting and I can't answer it. Any ideas from S&P or > language experts? > > -Mike > > >I think I asked you this before, but why do we have so many names for > >colors, but so few for smell and taste? It could be argued that smell and > >taste are at least as important to humans as sight, at least in an > >evolutionary sense, right? And there are at least as many different kinds of > >receptors for smell and taste as there are for vision, right? > > > >Yet, you don't hear people say, "That shirt is colored like a tree." But you > >do hear, "That smells like citrus." Or the ever-popular, "That tastes like > >chicken." If I asked you what color my carpet was, you could give me a one > >word answer, and it would be an adjective. But if I said, what does an old > >book smell like, what do you say? Or, how does the flavor of grouper differ > >from the flavor of an apple? > > ************************************************ > Michael J. Kane > Department of Psychology > P.O. Box 26164 > University of North Carolina at Greensboro > Greensboro, NC 27402-6164 > email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > phone: 336-256-1022 > fax: 336-334-5066
