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

partake of food’ in tactile verbs. 
(28) John 
hardly touched the food
As was explained in Section 7.2.1, this meaning is inferred not only because of 
the verb touch, but also because of the direct complement the food and the adjunct 
hardly. What led this extended meaning to be classified as argument driven is the fact 
that without either of these two elements it would not be possible to obtain this meaning 
in particular. Now we need to recall the properties selected in this meaning in Chapter 6; 
these properties are yes
>, yes
> and yes
>. In this example, the 
property yes
> is being highlighted by the adjunct hardly, which refers to a 
‘small quantity of something’. In fact, if we remove this adverb from the sentence, the 
extended meaning of ‘partake’ disappears completely, and the sentence John touched the 
food comes to infer the prototypical physical meaning of touch as an activity verb
150
.
even if she is far away from you (Barcelona p.c). What exists and must be present in the metaphorical cases 
is an abstract counterpart of . 
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It is important to recall here the way in which the OP was represented in Figures 5.3 and 5.5 in 
Section 5.2.3. The OP in smell was a discontinuous line square, and the OP in touch was a continuous line 
instead. These lines represented the way in which perception was carried out through these senses, as well 
as the nature of those OPs. Whereas in smell, the boundaries of the OP are vague, not well defined, in 
touch, the boundaries of the OP are. 
150
It is important to point out that the property yes
> is still present in this prototypical 
physical meaning; it forms part of the set of prototypical properties that characterise this sense perception 
(see Chapter 5). 

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe Antuñano
Chapter 2: The Semantic Field of Sense Perception 
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In verb-driven semantic extensions, it is also possible to observe how some of the 
properties selected are distributed or highlighted by the different elements that co-occur 
in the sentence. For example, in (29) at Tenerife highlights one of the properties that is 
selected in the extended meaning ‘to reach’, the property yes
>, that refers to the 
fact that the ship has reached her end-point, the ship has arrived at her destination, i.e. 
Tenerife. 
(29) The 
ship 
touched at Tenerife
An interesting example is the extended meaning ‘to deal with’. As argued in 
Chapter 6, this meaning selects the properties yes
> and yes
> in a 
sentence like I wouldn’t touch that business. However, when this meaning specifically 
refers to dealing with something superficially as in (30), the property yes
> is 
also selected. 
(30) He 
barely touched on the incident in his speech 
As is the case in the other examples discussed above, in (30) the property 
yes
> is highlighted by the adverb barely. This is corroborated if we look at 
examples like (31), where instead of an adverb like barely we include an adverbial 
expression like many times, for a long time. 
(31) I 
have 
already 
touched that topic many times in the meeting 
In this case, the meaning is no longer ‘to deal with something superficially’, we 
have dealt with that topic so many times that we are now very familiar with it.