Topic: Spices — a linguistic perspective

[Peripatetic Phil]

“Mapping the Language of Spices: A Corpus-Based, Philological Study on the Words of the Spice Domain” by Gábor Parti.

ABSTRACT

Most of the existing literature on spices is to be found in the areas of gastronomy, botany, and history. This study instead investigates spices on a linguistic level. It aims to be a comprehensive linguistic account of the items of the spice trade. Because of their attractive aroma and medicinal value, at certain points in history these pieces of dried plant matter have been highly desired, and from early on, they were ideal products for trade. Cultural contact and exchange and the introduction of new cultural items beget situations of language contact and linguistic acculturation. In the case of spices, not only do we have a set of items that traveled around the world, but also a set of names. This language domain is very rich in loanwords and Wanderwörter. In addition, it supplies us with myriad cases in which spice names are innovations. Still more interesting is that examples in English, Arabic, and Chinese — languages that represent major powers in the spice trade at different times — are here compared.

FULL TEXT: https://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp338_spices_linguistics.pdf