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

3.1. Vision 
There are four possible roots that words related to the sense of sight may have in 
Indo-European (IE) languages. Sight seems to be etymologically linked with words 
related to ‘light’, ‘eye’ and ‘knowledge’. According to Buck (1949) the following are the 
IE roots: 
IE *weid-: in words related to ‘to see’ in Greek, Latin (videre ‘see’) and Balto-
Slavic languages and in words related to ‘to know’ in Greek, Celtic, Germanic and Indo-
Iranian. It is not clear which of these meanings is the first one. On the one hand, ‘to 
know’ can be considered as a secondary development starting in the perfective: ‘have 
seen’ > ‘know’. On the other hand, the view that both ‘to see’ and ‘to know’ come from 
a common ‘recognise’ is also held. 
IE *derk- as in Welsh drych ‘sight, appearance’. 
IE *spek- as in Latin aspicere ‘to look’. 
IE *ok
w
- in most of the words for ‘eye’, cf. Lat oculus, Sp ojo, It occhio. 
IE *leuk- in words for ‘light, bright’, cf. Lat lux ‘light’, Gk leukos ‘white’. 
In general, some of the words meaning ‘to see’ (experience) can also be used in 
the sense of ‘to look’ (activity). The case of Greek blepo ‘see’ is interesting in that the 
meaning seems to have shifted in the opposite direction: ‘look’ > ‘see’. 

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano 
Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 
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Some words related to ‘to look’ are also connected to the notion of ‘to watch’, ‘to 
guard’, for example Greek horao ‘see’. 
Therefore, sight is related etymologically with knowledge, light, and guarding. 
What makes these etymological links interesting is not only their role among IE 
languages, but the fact that in other languages, which are non-IE and whose words for 
sight are not related to these roots described above, the words for sight also develop the 
same meanings. As discussed in Section 2.3.1, the Basque verb ikusi, which is not 
related to any of these IE roots, can also mean ‘to understand’. Thus it seems that the 
connection between the domain of vision and that of knowledge is very deep and that it 
goes beyond etymological roots. 
The English verb see comes from ME seen < OE seon, cognate of OHG sehan (G 
sehen) and Mdu sîen (Du zien). All these forms come from Oteut *seh
w
< PreTeut *seq
u
. 
The English verb look comes from OE locian, which is an OTeut verb type *lôkôjan ‘to 
see’, ‘to look’. 
There are two main vision verbs in Basque: ikusi and begiratu. Both are found in 
the first written text in Basque in 1545 (Etxepare). Ikusi seems to be a very old verb in 
Basque. The proto-form could have been *ekusi, which changed into ikusi, as a result of 
vowel assimilation
84
. Although currently the synthetic forms of this verb are no longer 
widely used, they were very frequent in the 16
th
century, for example, nik da-kus-at 
(I.
ERG
see) ‘I see’
85
. The etymological origin of begiratu < *bigiratu has been widely 
discussed in the literature. On one hand, it can be regarded as having derived from the 
word begi ‘eye’ + -ra ‘allative case’ + -tu ‘verbal ending’, but many scholars seem to 
agree on its Latin origin from the verb vigiliare or the noun vigilia. According to 
Michelena (1964:102), the influence of begi ‘eye’ has been secondary and a product of 
folk etymology. The evidence to support the Latin origin comes from the fact that 
begiratu means ‘to look at’, ‘to watch’ in the West, whereas in the east
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it means ‘to 
84
Michelena (1988), Hualde et al. (1995), and Trask (1997) are good surveys of the state of art in 
Basque historical linguistics. 
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The verb entzun ‘to hear’ also has these synthetic forms, as for example nik da-nzu-t (I.
ERG
hear) ‘I hear’. Both verbs entzun and ikusi are regarded as words of Basque origin and the fact that they 
have these synthetic forms supports this claim (See Gomez and Sainz (1995)). 
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East dialects such as Labourdian and Zuberoan are more conservative than those in the West; 
therefore the meaning ‘to keep’, ‘to preserve’ should be considered older. 

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano 
Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 
94
keep’, ‘to preserve’, which is a meaning closer to its Latin cognate. Another common 
verb of sight in Basque is behatu (1545). This verb seems to be used in the place of 
begiratu in the eastern varieties (Etxepare, 1545
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), with the meaning of ‘to look at’. 
Michelena ([1985] 1990: 221) relates this verb with the word belarri ‘ear’, which in the 
eastern dialects is beharri. If this origin is true it would be an interesting point as it 
would be a counter-example of Viberg’s (1984) hierarchy of sense perception, because it 
reverses the order proposed by him, from hearing to vision instead of from vision to 
hearing (see Section 2.2 above).
The Spanish verb ver comes from Lat videre. Ver is a common verb used in all 
dialects and it has been in use since the first written texts in the same form, apart from an 
early veder in Berceo (13
th
century)
88
.
The Spanish verb mirar comes from Lat mirari ‘to amaze’, ‘to astonish’. In the 
12
th
and 13
th
centuries the meaning of mirar was the etymological meaning in Latin ‘to 
amaze’. In the 14
th
century, this meaning evolved towards the meaning ‘to contemplate’, 
but still with an emphasis on the curiosity factor. Finally, in MSp this verb substitutes 
the OSp catar and comes to mean to ‘to look at’. According to the Corominas and 
Pascual (1983)(henceforth DCECH) this development is common to Portuguese and 
Catalan, whereas in the other Romances, the meaning ‘to contemplate’ has been kept 
until the present day. This meaning has also been also kept in the Basque verb miraritu 
‘to amaze’, derived from the noun mirari ‘miracle’.