Colocaciones sensoriales: el tacto y el dominio del intelecto

Abstract

In this paper, I ponder on the connection between the sense of touch, generally associated with the expression of emotion, and some mental activities related to the notions of knowledge or intellection. This connection has been previously considered in different contexts: Cultural History of the Senses, Philosophy, Cognitive Linguistics and, in particular, Sensory Linguistics. The main objective is to find out how this correlation manifests linguistically in Spanish producing multi-word lexical units, specifically collocations. I thus try to determine which lexical units linked to touch make up the structure of these collocations and what types of tactile properties are related to these units. Considering the data extracted from the combinatory dictionary REDES, the existence of «tactile» collocations representing the materialization of the perception metaphor understanding is touching has been verified. The conclusion reached is that the sense of touch is a productive source domain in the Spanish language, becoming the basis for the creation of a large number of collocations linked to the domain of meta intellect.