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

particular group of verbs and no other. 
In the following chapter the etymology of the verbs used in the analysis will be 
discussed. The objective of this chapter is to provide further support for the claim that 
meanings evolve from a physical domain to a more abstract domain. It is also the aim of 
this chapter to show how words that are not etymologically related convey the same 
meanings.

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano 
Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 
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CHAPTER 3: THE ETYMOLOGY OF PERCEPTION 
VERBS. 
In the previous chapter I have given a synchronic analysis of the semantic field 
of perception verbs in English, Basque and Spanish. This analysis offers us a picture of 
what meanings are conveyed by these perception verbs in present-day English, Basque 
and Spanish. However, perception verbs have not always contained the same meanings 
in the past. Semantic change occurs as a step by step process over time, such that at any 
given period a word may have several meanings and over time some of these meanings 
will remain, while others will change or disappear. Thus, the study of polysemy in 
perception verbs presented in the previous chapter can be considered as only one stage 
in the semantic development of these verbs.
In order to understand why perception verbs have their present-day meanings it is 
necessary to examine how their meanings have developed and what the sources of 
perception verbs in these three languages are. Etymological information is very useful 
because as Sweetser puts it, “through a historical analysis of ‘routes’ of semantic 
change, it is possible to elucidate synchronic semantic connections between lexical 
domains; similarly, synchronic connections may help to clarify reasons for shifts of 
meaning in past linguistic history” (1990: 45). In this chapter, an etymological study of 
perception verbs is presented both as background information for some of the claims 
made in this thesis and as a basis for future research into semantic change in this field. 
The study of semantic change underwent a long period of relative neglect. It was 
generally regarded as whimsical, random and irregular, mainly because it did not offer 
as many tractable data to systematic analysis as other fields in Linguistics, such as 
Phonology and Syntax. The creation of general rules that could explain how and why 
these changes took place was thought to be impossible (Hock 1986: 308). As a 
consequence, most of the studies in this area focused on individual changes rather than 
on the search for regular semantic changes, which could provide some generalisations 

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano 
Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 
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and constraints
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. It was not until the last twenty years that Ullmann’s statement that in 
semantic change “the existence of […] regularities is in most cases extremely hard to 
demonstrate, and their very possibility is still doubted by many scholars” (1957: 154) 
was questioned and disputed. 
Researchers within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics, such as Sweetser 
(1990)(see Chapter 4), have challenged this view. They have shown that there are certain 
types of semantic change that are regular and recurrent enough to be predictable. It is 
important to remember that, as pointed out in Section 1.1.1, the traditional Saussurian 
dichotomy between synchrony and diachrony is not strict within this framework. 
Meanings are cognitive structures embedded in our patterns of knowledge and belief, 
and therefore it can be said that the same social, functional and cognitive motivation 
present in historical changes is also observable in ongoing changes. In other words, if we 
can provide a model that accounts for how and why polysemy occurs in a semantic field 
in present-day language, it will be possible to apply the same constraints and parameters 
to the study of how and why semantic evolution occurs in the same semantic field. 
Unfortunately a thorough analysis of the semantic changes in perception verbs is 
beyond the scope of this thesis. Here I base my analysis on present-day meanings of 
these verbs. Stemming from these data I propose a model that accounts for the reasons 
why, as well as for the ways in which, these meanings are conveyed by this semantic 
field in particular (see Chapters 5, 6, 7). Whether the framework put forward in this 
thesis can be applied, as predicted, to the study of semantic development remains a 
question for future research. The etymology of perception verbs
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presented in this 
chapter will help to stimulate such a research by providing a useful basis that may have 
predictive applications. 
The etymological descriptions that follow will be used as further support for 
some of the claims put forward in this thesis. These descriptions support the cross-
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Traditional accounts for semantic change can be found in Antilla (1972), Bloomfield (1935, 
1983[1914]), Hock (1986), Jeffers and Lehiste (1979), Ullmann (1957, 1962), among others. McMahon 
(1994) is a good survey of both traditional and more recent approaches in semantic change. 
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Most of the information gathered in this chapter is drawn from etymological dictionaries (see 
special section in Bibliography), as well as specialised books on the subject. As it is not my aim to 
propose new etymologies or to disclaim any of those already in existence, I have limited myself to report 
what my sources have said about the etymological origins of these verbs. 

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano 
Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 
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linguistic character of the semantic extensions presented in Chapter 2. The languages 
used in this analysis belong to different language families. English and Spanish are both 
Indo-European, but the former is a Germanic language, whereas the latter is a Romance 
language. Basque is not etymologically related to either. It is an isolated language. The 
fact that the perception verbs in these languages are not etymologically related, but at the 
same time show the same polysemous senses, gives further evidence for the cognitive 
linguistic tenet that these semantic extensions are motivated by our bodily, physical, 
social and cultural experiences. The bodily basis of the semantic extensions in 
perception verbs is presented in Chapter 5 and Chapter 6 shows how it may constrain the 
creation of such extended meanings.
It is to the description of the etymology of these perception verbs that we now 
turn.