Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs: a cross-linguistic study

2.3.6. SUMMARY
In this section the main cross-linguistic extended meanings of the five sense 
perception modalities have been analysed. Meanings particular to Basque, English and 
Spanish have been also briefly discussed. In the sense of vision four groups of extended 
meanings have been presented: intellection group, with meanings such as ‘to 
understand’, ‘to foresee’, ‘to imagine’ and ‘to judge’; social group including ‘to meet’, 
‘to visit’ among others; reliability group with ‘to find out, to ascertain’, ‘to make sure’ 
and ‘to take care’, and finally other meanings such as ‘to witness’ and ‘to refer’. ‘To 
heed, to pay attention’, ‘to obey’, ‘to be informed’ and ‘to understand’ are the extended 
meanings discussed in the sense of hearing. In the sense of touch four meanings are 
presented, ‘to partake of food’, ‘to affect’, ‘to reach’ and ‘to deal with’. ‘To trail 
something’, ‘to guess’, ‘to suspect’ and ‘to investigate’ are the meanings included in the 
sense of smell. Finally, in the sense of taste we have the meanings ‘to experience 
something’ and ‘to produce a feeling’ in the verbs, together with the meanings ‘likes, 
dislikes’, ‘judgements of aesthetic, intellectual, artistic or social matters’ and ‘delicacy’ 
found in the taste nouns. 
The high number of extended meanings in the sense perception verbs indicates 
that this semantic field is highly polysemous. The fact that many of these meanings are 

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano 
Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 
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found in three different unrelated languages, Basque, English and Spanish, points out 
that these extensions of meaning are not language particular, but a cross-linguistic 
phenomenon, although not all languages share precisely the same meaning transfers. 
2.4. CONCLUSIONS 
In this Chapter I have analysed the semantic field of sense perception from a 
cross-linguistic point of view using Basque, English and Spanish as the main reference 
languages. 
In Section 2.2 the physical meanings of this semantic field are discussed. 
Following Viberg’s (1984) and Gisborne’s (1996) classification of perception verbs on 
the basis of the semantic role of their subjects, perception verbs are divided into three 
types: experience, activity and percept. These physical meanings are regarded as 
prototypical because they are the central meanings that these verbs convey. In Section 
2.3 non-prototypical or extended meanings of the sense perception verbs are analysed. 
These meanings are only those resulting from activity and experience verbs alone. The 
great number of meanings discussed in this analysis shows that this semantic field is 
highly polysemous and that most of these meanings are not particular to one language, 
but shared by at least the three languages used in this research.
In this chapter I have analysed the different meanings of perception verbs. I have 
presented ‘raw’ data from the languages analysed. The aim of the rest of this thesis is to 
try to make sense of the reasons why and how these meanings are conveyed by this