Perception Verbs Research Articles

Embodied constructions

Abstract In Ancient Greek two-place verbs can take three different argument structure constructions, with nominative first arguments and either accusative or genitive or dative second arguments. While the accusative is the default case across all verb classes, the genitive indicates low agentivity of the first participant and low affectedness of the second, and the dative is especially frequent with social interaction verbs. The paper focuses on constructional patterns and construction variation with experiential verbs. Referring to data from experimental psychology, I argue that the distribution of constructions with either accusative or genitive second arguments reflects physical embodiment based on narrow vs. broad attention focus, as also indicated by constructional patterns of perception verbs. Emotion verbs that take the dative indicate potentially interactive situations, including those that involve social judgment, thus conforming to the pattern of interaction verbs and reflecting social embodiment.

Ryle’s Logical Geography of Perception Verbs

Abstract Gilbert Ryle’s account of perception has not become widely known. Moreover, most of the responses to his account have been critical. Ryle’s method was to analyze our everyday use of perception verbs such as ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’, in order to argue that perception is a skill that we learn by doing. His critics concluded that by focusing on the use of perception verbs, Ryle dodged all central problems of perception. The current article aims to rebut this conclusion, by showing how Ryle’s work on perception builds on his logical-geographical method. That method leads Ryle to the conclusion that perceptual skill is a form of knowing how. Perception recipes, defined as shared criteria for correct use of perception verbs, display the normative structure of this knowledge. Although this analysis raises questions of its own, it shows that Ryle was in fact engaging seriously with core philosophical questions about the nature of perception.

Word formation patterns in the perception domain: a typological study of cross-modal semantic associations

Abstract The lexicalization of perception verbs has been of widespread interest as a route into understanding the relationship between language and cognition. A recent study finds global biases in colexification patterns, suggesting recurrent conceptual associations between sensory meanings across languages. In this paper, drawing on a balanced sample of 100 languages, we examine cross-modal semantic associations in word formation. Confirming earlier proposals, we find derived verbs are lower on a proposed Sense Modality Hierarchy (sight > hearing > touch > taste, smell) than the source perception verbs on which they are based. We propose these findings can be explained by verb frequency asymmetries and the general tendency for sources of derivations to be more frequent than their targets. Moreover, it appears certain pairings (e.g., hear–smell) are recurrently associated via word formation, but others are typologically rare. Intriguingly, the typological patterning partially diverges from the patterning reported for colexification in the same domain. We suggest that while colexification is driven by conceptual resemblance between sensory meanings, cross-modal word formations tend to arise from grammaticalization processes of lexical specification, where additional material (e.g., a sensory noun) is collocated to a polysemous verb in order to disambiguate it in context. Together, these processes can account for the typological similarities and divergences between the two phenomena. More generally, this study highlights the need to consider conceptual, communicative and diachronic factors together in the mapping between words and meanings.

The origins of pretend like: A syntactic-semantic puzzle in American English and beyond

Like can be a finite complementizer in present-day varieties of English after a few verbs of perception, apparentness, and/or behavior. Normally, like in this function is an innovation that has replaced the earlier variants as if and as though. Pretend like CP appears to be an exception: it is not clear that a precedent exists in the form of pretend as if or pretend as though. To investigate, this study employs the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) (Davies 2010–), extracting more than 5,000 examples of pretend with CPs between 1900 and 2019. The results offer tentative support for increase in pretend like in recent decades, despite verification that pretend as if and pretend as though were never well-attested. The puzzle of a like complementizer coming to compete with that and Ø complementizers in the absence of as if and as though – which does not happen across other English verbs – is interpreted as analogy on the basis of semantically overlapping verbs of behavior: behave like CP, act like CP, and make (out) like CP. This case study thus illuminates the conditions under which an incoming variant of a morphosyntactic variable can spread to new lexical or grammatical contexts.

Verbs of Auditory Perception and Sound Production and their Frame Characteristics

Verbs of Auditory Perception and Sound Production and their Frame Characteristics

A semantic approach for the analysis of verbs in life sciences texts

ABSTRACT This paper presents a corpusbased study of a group of lexical verbs in eighteenth and nineteenth century scientific texts. The study has a twofold aim. Firstly, it aims to select four types of verb classes (verbs of communication, desire, aspectuals and perception) identified by Levin and Noonan and explore their use in the Corpus of English Life Sciences Texts, a subcorpus of the Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing. Secondly, it aims to determine if the frequency of these verbs varies based on the gender of the authors. Further, the study seeks to ascertain if a shifting pattern could be attested in the use of these verbs throughout the two centuries examined in the corpus, at a time when the scientific register was already becoming established. The findings of the study obtained from the greater or lesser occurrence of the verbs in question over the two centuries indicate which ones were more frequent in Life Sciences texts, whether they were more commonly used either by men or women and whether there was a pattern of continued usage of these verbs in Late Modern English scientific language rather than a shift towards nominalisation in this type of discourse.

Vision Verbs Emerge First in English Acquisition but Touch, not Audition, Follows Second

AbstractWords that describe sensory perception give insight into how language mediates human experience, and the acquisition of these words is one way to examine how we learn to categorize and communicate sensation. We examine the differential predictions of the typological prevalence hypothesis and embodiment hypothesis regarding the acquisition of perception verbs. Studies 1 and 2 examine the acquisition trajectories of perception verbs across 12 languages using parent questionnaire responses, while Study 3 examines their relative frequencies in English corpus data. We find the vision verbs see and look are acquired first, consistent with the typological prevalence hypothesis. However, for children at 12–23 months, touch—not audition—verbs take precedence in terms of their age of acquisition, frequency in child‐produced speech, and frequency in child‐directed speech, consistent with the embodiment hypothesis. Later at 24–35 months old, frequency rates are observably different and audition begins to align with what has previously been reported in adult English data. It seems the initial orientation to verbalizing touch over audition in child–caregiver interaction is especially related to the control of physically and socially appropriate behaviors. Taken together, the results indicate children's acquisition of perception verbs arises from the complex interplay of embodiment, language‐specific input, and child‐directed socialization routines.

Visual perception verbs in Old Anatolian Turkish

Abstract This study aims at describing the verbs of the visual sensory domain in Old Anatolian Turkish (oat), including basic and compound verb forms. We shall specifically focus on intra-field and trans-field meaning extensions of visual perception verbs such as baḳ-, naẓar et-, gör-, and görin-/gözük-. Our findings are based on a corpus consisting of 11 texts both in prose and poetry from the 13th to 15th centuries. There are mainly two types of verbs that conceptualise mental and emotive states through visual perception: one pertains to idiomatic expressions with göz ‘eye’, such as göz-(ün) aç- (eye-poss.acc open), göz-den düş- (eye-abl fall), and göz dut- (eye hold). The second form includes basic verbs including baḳ- (to look at), gör- (to see), naẓar et- (to look at) and gör-in-/göz-ük- (to appear). We shall show that visual perception constitutes a rich source for expressing emotive states, and the use of vision verbs for the expression of emotions is as productive as it is for mental states. Similar to Sweetser’s body is mind metaphor, we suggest that vision is emotion. The domain of visual perception in oat texts displays a strong connection to intellection; however, there is no evidence in our data indicating that the verbs gör- and baḳ- have meaning extension to ‘to know’. The phenomenon-based verbs görin- and gözük- have mainly two meaning extensions: one is related to physical existence, as in ‘occur’ and ‘appear’ in English. When these verbs co-occur with nouns and adjectives, they reflect the speakers’ judgements and beliefs by means of a metaphor.

Inalienable possession (and lack thereof) in Spanish

Abstract This paper revisits the phenomenon of inalienable possession between a dative argument and a body-part noun in Spanish. Specifically, it looks at contexts where the inalienable possession interpretation is obligatory, as in constructions containing monoeventive verbs of perception, and those where the inalienable reading becomes optional, namely with bi-eventive predicates denoting a change of state. I offer a possessor raising and applicative hybrid analysis, whereby the inalienable possessor originates inside the body-part DP and raises to the specifier of an applicative head to license dative case; the position ApplP occupies in the derivation determines the dative’s interpretation as a mere possessor (low applicative), or as an affected possessor as well (middle applicative). Alternatively, cases where the dative is not understood as the inalienable possessor but simply as affected occur when this argument is an additional one originating in the specifier of the middle applicative head, and the possessor of the body-part noun is encoded internally via a clitic or strong possessive, or by means of a genitive PP inside the DP. Thus, I propose the existence of two types of affected applicative heads: (i) one whose specifier is available for the possessor inside the possessum DP to move into to be case licensed, and (ii) another introducing an additional argument in its specifier. Additionally, this analysis accounts for the complementary distribution between dative possessors and possessive determiners in Spanish.

A multimodal approach to polysemy: the senses of touch

Abstract This study investigated whether speakers use multimodal information (speech and gesture) to differentiate the physical and emotional meanings of the polysemous verb touch. We analyzed 302 hand gestures that co-occurred with this perception verb. For each case, we annotated (1) the meaning of touch (physical vs. emotional), (2) the gesture referent speakers physically touched (other-touch vs. self-touch), (3) the personal pronoun following the verb and (4) if they used intensifiers and negation. There were three main findings. First, we have seen that when speakers express the physical meaning, they are likely to reach an external referent (other-touch), but when they imply the emotional meaning, they tend to touch their own body (self-touch). Second, the most frequent co-speech gesture (chest-touching gesture) was associated with the emotional meaning, uncovering the metaphor the heart is container for emotions. Third, this study showed that the physical meaning of touch usually coexists with a wide variety of personal pronouns and negation words; in contrast, the emotional meaning of touch occurs primarily with the pronoun me and it is usually modified by intensifiers. Thus, speakers use both speech and gesture to differentiate the meanings of the polysemous verb touch.

Chinese copy raising and its implications for predication

AbstractThis study examines the copy raising constructions in Chinese and proposes an integrated analysis built on the insights of the prominent proposals from recent years. It argues that the matrix subject in Chinese copy raising is base-generated and requires a coindexed copy in the complement. Though concurring with Landau’s (2011) predication theory that recognizes theta assignment and predication as two ways of semantically licensing an argument, this squib differs from him in assuming that languages like Chinese can be parametrized in not treating the perceptual source as thematic. It is further argued that in Chinese, the perceptual source construal of the subject does not come from theta assignment but rather as an implicature which interprets the matrix subject to be involved in the topic event denoted by the perception verb.

Futuristic Questions in our Thinking: The Case of Apprehensionals in Korean

Korean has a large inventory of apprehen- sionals, the grammatical markers of fear. This study analyzes six apprehensionals that developed from Future and Question, i.e., -lkka, -lkkapwa(se), -lkkamwusewe(se), -lkkatwulyewe(se), -lkkamolla(se), and -lkkasiphe(se), all involving the future marker -l and the question marker -kka. Lexical forms serving the grammaticalization source constructions are the verbs of perception, cognition and emotion, e.g. po- ‘see’, mwusep- ‘be afraid’, twulyep- 'be afraid', molu- ‘not know’, and siph- ‘think’. It is particularly intriguing that there is no logical necessity that the notions such as ‘future’, ‘question’, ‘thinking’, ‘not knowing’, etc. should engender the notion of fear. This strongly suggests that the emergence of the 'fear'-meaning is the result of interaction among the source components, i.e., indeterminacy from the future, lack of confidence from the question, and self-oriented contemplation from the cogitation, among others. In this respect the development exhibits ‘subjectification’ of meaning.

A cross-linguistic comparison of clausal embedding with causative and perception verbs

In Italian, causatives are expressed through a periphrasis make + infinitival V. When the embedded verb is transitive, the embedded subject is generally introduced by a to/by preposition. For this reason, some scholars have analyzed causatives as a verbal complex with a single argument structure, involving a complex functional layer. In this paper, we offer a cross-linguistic comparison of causative clausal embedding. First, we compare Italian causatives with perception verbs, where no prepositions introduce the embedded subject. Then, we compare Italian causatives to those in Balkan languages and Southern Italian varieties which allow finite embedding. We account for the variation in terms of differences in the (+/-) defective status of the embedded clause and in the availability of AGREE operation (inspired by Manzini 2022). We conclude the comparison with Chinese, where no AGREE operation is available and a θ-feature checking operation is at work: embedded subjects check the θ-feature of both verbs as in the control construction (à la Manzini & Roussou2000). We argue that language variation in clausal embeddings relates to the phasal/non phasal status of embedded clauses and to the available syntactic operations.

Verbs of Perception: A Quantitative Typological Study

Abstract: Previous studies have proposed that the lexicalization of perception verbs is constrained by a biologically grounded hierarchy of the senses. Other research traditions emphasize conceptual and communicative factors instead. Drawing on a balanced sample of perception verb lexicons in 100 languages, we found that vision tends to be lexicalized with a dedicated verb, but that nonvisual modalities do not conform to the predictions of the sense-modality hierarchy. We also found strong asymmetries in which sensory meanings colexify. Rather than a universal hierarchy of the senses, we suggest that two domain-general constraints—conceptual similarity and communicative need—interact to shape lexicalization patterns.

Verbs of perception: A quantitative typological study: Supplementary material

Verbs of perception: A quantitative typological study: Supplementary material

Cultural Analysis of Persian Proverbs Including 'EYE' as Sensory Organ and 'SEE' as Perception Verb

Cultural Analysis of Persian Proverbs Including 'EYE' as Sensory Organ and 'SEE' as Perception Verb

Pseudorelative clauses, infinitives, and gerunds with Spanish perception verbs: A comparative view

AbstractIn this paper, we provide a comparative analysis of three constructions that occur with perception verbs like ver (“see”) in Spanish: infinitives, gerunds, and so‐called pseudorelative clauses. We analyze several phenomena regarding the transparency status of the embedded inflected or uninflected clause, such as the availability of long (i.e., matrix) passive, short (i.e., embedded) passive, the occurrence of modal verbs, embedded negation, and left‐peripheral fronting. Our data from acceptability judgment tasks and a Spanish corpus led us to postulate that, albeit their surface similarities, the three examined constructions have different syntactic structures, reflected by their structural integration and the phasal versus nonphasal status of the embedded clause: We argue that gerunds are secondary predicates, while pseudorelatives and infinitives are complements of the perception verb. With respect to the latter two configurations, pseudorelatives are defective CPs (and thus weak phases) that allow (finite) raising‐to‐object, but not raising‐to‐subject. Infinitives, on the other hand, show interspeaker variation with respect to their structural size as voiceP or TP, accounting for variable acceptability judgments.

국어 명사절, 관형절의 논리-의미 유형 연구

Objectives In the clause complexing systems of systemic functional linguistics, the logico-semantic types(LSTs) between ‘clause’ and ‘clause’ are realised in different ways in coordinate clauses, subordinate clauses, and em-bedded clauses. The purpose of this paper is to identify the LSTs of Korean nominal clauses and adjective clauses that are distinct form other embedded clauses.
 Methods SFL's clause complexing system consists of three optinal systems: taxis, LSTs, and repercussions. Among the LSTs of Korean embedded clauses, three are used: [projection], [phenomenon], and [extension]. These are realised in different ways in quotation clauses, nominal clauses, and adjevtive clauses, repectively.
 Results After applying the aforementioned methodology, we were able to establish [phenomenon] of the com-plement participants of mental verbs as the common LST of Korean nominal clauses. Based on this, it was further found that the nominal clause ‘-기’ combined with desrative verbs and emotional verbs has the LST of [phenom-enon_ideas]; and the nominal clause ‘-음’ combined with cognitive verbs has the LST of [phenomenon_facts]; and the nomonal clause ‘-는 것’ combined with perceptual verbs has the LST of [phenomenon_acts]. On the other hand, the LSTs of adjevtive clauses were broadly distinguished as [projection] and [expansion]. The [projection] semantics of adjevtive clauses are mainly realised in the complement clauses of superordinate Projective Nouns and Factual Nouns.
 Conclusions The LSTs between ‘clause’ and ‘clause’ in clause-complexing systems in systemic functional lin-guistics are big research topics. This can be realised in different ways in coordinate, subordinate and embedded clauses. So far, this paper focuses on the LSTs that appear in nominal clauses and adjective clauses, examining them in detail using examples from the Korean language dictionary, and summarising the results. It is hoped that further research could conduct to investigate the LSTs of the entire Korean clause complexing systems.

Сравнительный аффикс -ДЫй и модально-сравнительные показатели, образованные на его основе (на материале алтайского языка)

The paper examines the semantics and functioning of the comparative affix -DYy and modal-comparative markers derived from this affix in the Altai language. -DYy is a common marker in comparative constructions indicating a realistic comparison. Originating as a postposition, it frequently appears in various Turkic languages. In the Altai language, the status of this affix is not unambiguous, being commonly categorized as a postposition-affix, case form, or derivational morpheme. It signifies the comparative relationships of similarity between situations or objects. In modern Altai, -DYy is a part of two participle affixes, namely the comparative -GAndYy and -GAdYy denoting possibility or suggestion and a part of the modal particle nemediy (as if). All these markers are found to preserve, to varying degrees, the semantics of comparison carried by the affix -DYy, and then to develop the semantics of modality. The -GAndYy participles form synthetic comparative polypredicative constructions, with the standard of comparison thought of as not actually existing but serving as an ideal or standard for some event. The -GAdYy participles denote the semantics of potential possibility and suggestion. The particle nemediy conveys the modal meaning of seemingness and probability of action. All the markers under consideration can denote seemingness when combined with verbs of perception. The semantics analysis of the markers containing -DYy has revealed the connection between non-real comparison and modality and the development of semantics of appearance, with the possibility being the next stage of semantic development.

Perception verbs in the Russian dialects of the Amur region and in the northeastern dialect of the Chinese language of Heilongjiang province

The subject of this work is the verbs of perception in the Russian dialects of the Amur region and in the northeastern dialect of the Chinese language of Heilongjiang province. The research material is two dialect dictionaries: "Dictionary of Russian dialects of the Amur region" and "Dictionary of dialects of Heilongjiang province". The study revealed 26 verbal units from the "Dictionary of Russian Dialects of the Amur region" (including 18 verbs and 8 phraseological units with the meaning of visual and auditory perception, as well as perception of smell and touch); 18 verbs with the meaning of visual perception from the "Dictionary of Dialects of Heilongjiang province". The purpose of the study of this article is the comparative classification of perception verbs in the border regions of the Russian Federation and China, separated by the Amur River (in Chinese, Heilongjiang). In developing the classification of the studied language units, continuous sampling, contextual, descriptive-analytical and comparative methods were used. The relevance and novelty of the work lies in the fact that the perceptual verbal vocabulary in the dialects of both ethnic groups is poorly studied; for the first time an attempt was made to study the comparative classification of the verbs of perception of the Russian dialects of the Amur region and the northeastern dialect of the Chinese language of Heilongjiang province; the effectiveness of the study of perception verbs can contribute to the reconstruction of the dialect linguistic picture of the world and the linguistic personality of speakers of the dialect of two different ethnic groups. The main conclusions of this study summarize that perceptual vocabulary connects the world of objective reality with the expression of this world in the language of human communication and that in the dialects of both ethnic groups (in the Russian dialects of the Amur region and in the northeastern dialect of the Chinese language of Heilongjiang province) verbal units with the meaning of visual perception prevail over other groups.