Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs: a cross-linguistic study
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5.2.1. Typology of 1
st order properties As has been discussed in the previous section, properties are organised according to the relation between the three main elements in perception: the perceiver (PR), the object perceived (OP) and the perception (P). Following this parameter, properties are divided into three groups: (i) those resulting from the relation between the PR and the OP, (ii) those resulting from the relation between the PR and the P, (iii) those resulting from the relation between the OP and the P. Let us examine what they are and how they correspond to each sense. (i) Properties resulting from the relation between the PR and OP: these properties are drawn from the physiology of the senses. The properties belonging to this first group (PR Æ OP) are • to be perceived. This property has a negative value in the senses of vision, hear and smell; and a positive value in the senses of touch and taste. Although it is true that in the first three cases, light waves, sound waves and chemical particles in the air must reach us in order B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 145 to be perceived, we do not perceive these stimuli as having direct physical contact with us, as in the other two cases of touch and taste (Sekuler and Blake 1994: 6). • perceived. This property has a negative value in the case of vision and hearing; and a positive value in the remaining three senses. On the basis of this property, vision and hearing have been classified as ‘far senses’, because the eyes and the ears can pick up information coming from remote sources. Touch, smell and taste have been considered ‘near senses’, because their stimuli must be in the vicinity of the PR (Sekuler and Blake 1994: 6-7; 27). In the case of touch and taste, property and the OP already presupposes that the OP is near the PR. In smell, this sense works more effectively if the odorous substance is in the vicinity of the nose 121 . • This property has a positive value in hearing, smell and taste; and a negative value in vision and touch. In order to perceive smells, it is necessary to inhale air into our nostrils; we take a breath and let the air come inside us, in our lungs. Each breath passes air over our olfactory sites; when we inhale, we smell odours, the odours enter our bodies. In a similar way, if we want to taste food or drink, we must place the OP inside our mouth, or touch it with the tip of our tongue, where most of our taste buds are (Gibson 1966: 144). Perhaps the reason why we feel that these senses are internal lies in the fact that the nose, the mouth and the ears have holes or cavities and as a consequence, we perceive the stimuli of these senses as coming inside our body. However, as pointed out in Section 5.1, this is only our perception of how these senses work. In fact, in physiological terms, all senses must be internal. The light waves enter the eye, and the skin vibrations do also trigger the mechanoreceptors that will carry the neural input to the spinal cord. 121 It is interesting to note here that unlike the other senses the source that emits the odorous substance does not have to be present, i.e. where the PR is. The fact that the volatile chemicals from an odorous substance can be kept in the air is what, for example, allows animals such as the dog to follow the track left by other animals (Gibson 1966: 1948). B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 146 • perceived. This property only applies to the sense of touch. The sense of touch allows us to experience, what Gibson (1950) denominated, ‘space perception’. We can perceive the layout of spaces as long as there are objects in these spaces; that is to say, we perceive the general layout of environmental surfaces and the particular layout of the surfaces of an object being manipulated, but a completely empty space is unperceivable. In this sense, “the surface of an organism is actually a boundary between the organism and its environment” (Gibson 1966: 101). Therefore, when we touch something, we are invading the space of that thing / person we are touching. The spaces occupied by the PR and the OP are put together, converge; however, neither of them can trespass each other’s spaces (Ibarretxe-Antuñano 1999c). • perceiving. This property only applies to vision and hearing. In both senses, it is possible to localise the source of stimulus as well as the direction of the stimulus. In vision, the location of the OP in the environment relative to the PR’s current position is called ‘egocentric direction’ (Sekuler and Blake 1994: 215). This provides us with two- dimensional information: up/down, right/left. As explained in Section 5.1.1.1, the information in the two-dimensional egocentric co-ordinate system is preserved in the two dimensional retinal image. Vision gives us information about another dimension too: depth perception, i.e. how far the OP is from the PR. In hearing, one can also identify the direction from which the sounds are coming. This ability present from the day of birth is called ‘sound localisation’ (Butterworth and Castillo 1979; Wertheimer 1961). The spatial location of sounds refers to two directions: ‘azimuth’ (horizontal direction of a sound in relation to the PR’s head), and ‘elevation’ (vertical direction) (Sekuler and Blake 1994: 359). Taking into account the second parameter specified for the classification of these properties, namely the distribution of these properties in the senses, the properties are applicable to all the five senses. The properties B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 147 hand, are classified as B level properties, as their distribution in the senses is restricted to only particular ones. (ii) Properties resulting from the relation between PR and P. In this group, the properties included are • an object, and distinguishes one object from another 122 . This property has a positive value in all the senses, as all of them detect their corresponding stimuli (light, sound, mechanical disturbances, volatile substances, and soluble substances) with their corresponding receptors (eyes, ears, body, nose, and taste buds). Let us illustrate this property with an example from the sense of smell. If we are in a room without any particular smell and a person starts preparing some coffee, we immediately smell the new odour; we detect that new smell, which we later recognise as coffee. After a while, we get used to the smell of coffee and no longer smell it consciously. But if somebody enters the room, that person will detect the smell of coffee straight away. This well-documented phenomenon (cf. Ahlstrom et al. 1986) is called ‘odour adaptation’, i.e. the decrease of sensitivity to an odour after a prolonged exposure to it. Some people believe this is due to the unique capability of olfactory cells to die and reproduce themselves. Similar processes of adaptation are also found in taste (Sekuler and Blake 1994: 446). • the P. This property is negative in smell and positive in the other senses. When we use the sense of vision, for instance, if we see a dog we immediately recognise that entity as a dog, unless we have sight problems or we have never seen a dog before. This does not happen with smell. Smells are difficult to identify. The reason why we are never a hundred per cent sure about what we are smelling lies in the fact that olfactory fibres individually can detect that some odorous substance is present. However, they are 122 In perceptual terms, detection and discrimination are two different hierarchically ordered perceptual processes (first we need to detect the object and then distinguish that object from other objects, see Sekuler and Blake 1994: 141). These two processes are present in the five senses. They therefore, do not add any relevant information for our purpose, namely, to create a typology of properties to differentiate the senses from each other. Thus, detection and discrimination are treated as one property in our analysis. B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 148 unable to provide unequivocal information about the identity of that substance. Consequently, people can smell an odour, but cannot tell what odour they are smelling (Engen 1960, 1982). Furthermore, smells are difficult to name. In De Anima (c. 320 BC) Aristotle already pointed out the fact that the sense of smell lacks an independent classification similar to that of other senses such as taste (sweet, bitter…), and in fact, the situation nowadays has not changed. There have been various attempts 123 to classify smells, such as Henning’s ‘Smell Prism’ (1916) and Schiffman’s ‘Multidimensional Scaling’ (1974). Unfortunately, as Buck (1949:1024) remarks, “the only widespread popular distinction is that of pleasant and unpleasant smells – good and bad smells […] this is linguistically more important than any similar distinction, that is, of good and bad, in the case of the other senses”. Otherwise, the terms used for defining a smell are taken either from other senses, primarily from taste (cf. sweet) and touch (cf. pungent, originally ‘pricking’) or by naming the object that emits the smell, as the smell of an apple. This does not happen in the other senses. For example, as discussed in Section 5.1.1.1, vision can offer us information about the colour of the OP. If we look at dictionaries, many colour names are listed. But as shown in studies such as Berlin and Kay (1969), Ratliff (1976), in everyday language only a dozen colour names are needed. Although the identification of colours varies among people, there is a great deal of agreement on names for only those few basic colours (Boynton and Olson 1987). Another case is the classification of different tastes. Although there has been and still are different opinions about the basic tastes (see Schiffman and Erickson 1980), it is now commonly agreed that there are four basic distinct categories: sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. • This property has a negative value in hearing and smell and a positive value in vision, touch and taste. In these three sense modalities, the PR can choose whether to look at something, or to touch something 124 or to put something in his mouth. However, 123 For a complete discussion on the topic of the classification of odours, see Sekuler and Blake (1994: 414-418). Glamble (1921) is a good review and critique on Henning’s method. 124 This (Gibson 1966). B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 149 in the case of hearing and smell, the PR does not have control over the perception. It is true that the PR can block the perception by putting his fingers on his ears or nose, but usually we perceive by these senses unconsciously. Unless we suffer from any kind of hearing or olfactory disorder, we perceive through these senses all the time. Studies in smell (Badia 1995) indicate that we smell a wide variety of odours throughout every day and night of our lives, but without being aware of them at all. Only when a smell pleases, annoys, warns or brings a memory do we stop to take notice of it. The values assigned to the senses relative to this property are the default values; that is to say, usually this is the way in which these sense modalities are perceived. However, it is important to bear in mind that this property depends on the role of the PR that performs the perceptual process. In perception, the PR can be an active PR or a passive PR (see Section 2.2. for the linguistic implications of this distinction). In every sense modality, the PR can perform an active perception, in which case the property value of mentioned that we smell all the time, even when we are asleep, but always without being conscious of it. This is the default situation for the sense of smell and therefore and we want to know what it smells like we are not perceiving its fragrance in a passive way, we are active PRs. In this case, the value of the property • another element. This property has a negative value in hearing, and a positive value in the rest of the senses. In all the senses but in hearing, the PR perceives the OP directly. If we want to look at something we just have to open our eyes and direct them to what we want to perceive. If we want to touch something we have to put some part of our body, usually our hand, in contact with the OP. If we want to taste something, we have to put it in our mouth. This does not hold in the case of hearing. We cannot hear a sound unless it is produced by a third element. In a way, the PR is dependable upon the element that emits the sound. It is in this sense that we understand hearing as a mediated perception. B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 150 Taking into account the second parameter (the distribution of these properties in the senses), the properties are considered A level properties because they are applicable to all the five senses. There are no B level properties identified in this group. (iii) Properties resulting from the relation between OP and P. This group comprises the properties seem to be particular to only some specific senses and not applicable to others. • This property is only applicable to touch. Active touch is one of the most reliable methods that we have to explore our environment. As Sekuler and Blake (1994: 380) put it “when the other senses conflict, touch is usually the ultimate arbiter”. However, when exploring an object via the sense of touch, actions can change the OPs. The extremities are not only exploratory sense organs, but also performatory motor organs (Gibson 1966: 99). We can not only explore things with our hands but also alter them. • the perception to be successful. This property is only applicable to touch and taste. The skin is stimulated by the smallest mechanical disturbance. With only a very brief touch on a surface, it is possible to tell how firm, smooth this surface is. It is even possible to tell the temperature of the surface (Gibson 1966: 109 calls this ‘touch temperature’). Although sensitivity in the different areas of the tongue varies (Collings 1974), when we put into contact the tip of the tongue with a sugar cube, we only need a couple of seconds to decide that it is sweet. Studies (Miller and Bartoshuk 1991) show that for most people, the highest sensitivity is to bitter tastes. It could be argued that this property should be applicable to vision, as we do not need to look at things too long in order to identify them. For instance, if we are driving our car and a police car passes near us, we need only a few seconds to recognise it as a police car. However, the fact that we identify the car as a police car straight away is not the result of a visual perceptual process, but the result of an inferential process. That is to say, we are able to recognise the car because of the context we are in – driving our car on a road –, because of our familiarity with the visual clues associated with a police car: flashing lights of different colours, white cars with fluorescent lines and so on. In other words, based on the context and our familiarity with the OP, we infer that B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 151 the car is a police car. The same argument can be applied to hearing. It does not take too much time to recognise familiar sounds, somebody calling out our name, to understand sounds in our own language. This is not based on the perceptual process itself – as it is in touch and taste – but on our familiarity with the OP and the context in which the OP is found. • This property is only applicable to vision and taste. Vision is the sense upon which Western society relies most. We tend to make judgements based on the information we receive from what we see. The judgements carried out on the basis of taste perception are of a different kind. People can rate various tastes along the dimension of pleasant / unpleasant. These judgements are called ‘taste hedonics’ (Sekuler and Blake 1994: 449). Download 1.39 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
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