Universal meaning extensions of perception verbs are grounded in interaction

1.2 Perception verbs and their meanings
Basic perception verbs often have additional meanings that do not refer to literal sensory experience, also known as “transfield meanings” (following Matisoff 1978). ^[1] Such meanings are often presented as metaphorical extensions from embodied physical experience to more abstract domains, although some examples may speak more to the idea of metonymic rather than strictly metaphorical extension (cf. alsoTraugott and Dasher 2002). We use transfield for situations where we observe a linguistic association between perception and another semantic domain. Generally, we follow François’ (2008) “colexification” approach, in that we remain largely agnostic as to whether polysemy or semantic vagueness is the true characterization for each individual perception verb discussed.
The semantic domain of cognition is especially relevant to perceptual polysemies. Sweetser (1990) proposed that cognition is linked to the faculty of vision — over and above the other senses — so that sight words will commonly be found in reference to cognitive states and processes (such as knowing, understanding, deducing, etc.). In contrast, Evans and Wilkins (2000) found that many Australian languages link audition most strongly to cognitive processes (see also Vanhove 2008). Others have suggested that additional sensory domains (e.g., smell, Storch 2013) have cognition-related meanings. Accommodating the idea that the individual senses most emblematic of cognition show cultural variability, Ibarrexte-Antuñano’s (2008)proposed a more general ‘understanding-is-perceiving’ association, arguing that perception verbs are routinely used to convey notions of comprehension and knowledge cross-linguistically (see also Viberg 1983: 157–158). Another potentially universal polysemy pattern is that hearing verbs extend to meanings that concern linguistic communication (e.g., ‘obey’) through the common association of audition and the reception of speech (Sweetser 1990; Evans and Wilkins 2000; Vanhove 2008). It has not previously been tested whether the proposed universality of cognitive and communicative meanings is observable in spontaneous language use in different communities.
The semantic associations of perception verbs are, of course, not limited to cognition and linguistic communication. The languages investigated here add in particular to the burgeoning research on the polysemy of multi-sense verbs (e.g., Enghels and Jansegers 2013; Jansegers et al. 2015), and demonstrate the value of examining verbs of touch, taste and smell, which are yet to receive the same level of scrutiny as sight and hearing verbs (Burenhult and Majid 2011; Ibarretxe-Antuñano 2006; Wälchli 2016; see alsoClassen 1997).
As well as associating with other semantic domains, perception verbs can be discourse markers that regulate interaction and manage interpersonal relations. For several European languages, especially Romance and Germanic, there is a rich field of inquiry into the discourse functions of basic perception verbs in spoken language (e.g., Brinton 2001; Fagard 2010). Individual forms have been described as serving a wide range of tasks, for example directing the attention of the addressee to upcoming talk (e.g., Romero Trillo 1997; Waltereit 2002), encoding politeness (Chodorowska-Pilch 2008), launching courses of action (Sidnell 2007), expressing apology or adversity (Enghels and Jansegers 2013; Jansegers and Gries 2017), and making claims of evidential vindication (Kendrick in press). These functions tend to go beyond our traditional understanding of polysemy (see discussion in Jansegers and Gries 2017) as they do not always exemplify a change in meaning so much as an extension to a specialized interpersonal function (although, this general path of subjectification or pragmaticization is of course well-explored in regard to language change more generally).
Beyond Germanic and Romance languages, discourse uses of perception verbs are certainly reported (e.g.,Aikhenvald 2010: 247; Levinson 2010: 2744; Thanassoula 2013: 257) but are less often a focus of research. Again, this is especially the case for touch, taste, smell and multi-sense verbs. Overall, discursive practices with perception verbs demonstrate the importance of perceptual language as a tool for testing or demonstrating common ground and a shared reality (Dahl 2000; Majid and Levinson 2011), but it remains unclear how widespread and entrenched such practices are, and what cross-linguistic patterns exist (Fedriani et al. 2012; Majid 2013).
Finally, this study also examines intrafield extensions of perception verbs in conversation — that is, where a word that pertains to one perceptual modality is used to talk about another perceptual modality (see also a related literature on “synaesthetic metaphor”, springing from Ullmann 1945 and Williams 1976). From a diachronic perspective, Viberg (1983) argued that (at least with regard to certain verb classes) intrafield sense extensions were likely to be unidirectional, moving from higher to lower on a proposed hierarchy of the senses (see>hear>touch, taste, smell). For example, a verb meaning ‘see’ could shift over time to (also) mean ‘hear’, but not vice versa. Subsequent research has tended to support this claim (Evans and Wilkins 2000), although exceptions have also been identified (e.g., Maslova 2004; Nakagawa 2012). From a synchronic perspective, one is struck by Viberg’s under-explored suggestion that intrafield meanings become possible where a perception verb is used with transfield meaning (1983: 140–141), and we examine this idea further here.
We now introduce our language sample and procedures for compiling and analyzing the data (Section 2), describe the transfield, discourse and intrafield meanings of perception verbs found therein (Section 3), and then turn to discussion of our findings (Sections 4–5).
2 Data and methods