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

1.2.4. SUMMARY 
In this section, three approaches to polysemy have been presented. The 
traditional approach defines polysemy as the case when a lexical item has a range of 
different meanings. Polysemy can be differentiated from homonymy by using a set of 
criteria, such as the etymology, the unrelatedness of meaning, the central or core 
meaning as well as some ambiguity tests. It has been argued that this model is mainly 
concerned with a descriptive analysis of polysemy, without addressing questions such as 
why and how polysemy is created.
For Cognitive Semantics, a lexical item is polysemous when it has multiple 
meanings related in a systematic way. These related meanings are using meaning chains 
or ICMs. This framework provides a good explanation for the reasons why meanings are 
related to specific lexical items, but it fails to account for the way in which such 
polysemous senses are created.

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano 
Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 
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The last approach is Pustejovsky’s Generative Lexicon. Polysemous senses are 
understood as manifestations of the same basic meaning in different contexts. A strong 
compositionality model, consisting of four levels of representation for a lexical item, and 
generative connecting devices explains these senses. This framework seems the most 
suitable for explaining how the semantic content of different lexical items interacts in 
order to create polysemous senses. 
1.3. organisation of the thesis 
This introductory chapter has set out the nature and scope of the work, explaining 
the purpose of examining the domain of perception verbs, and outlining the theoretical 
context and orientation of the study. Chapter 2 presents a synchronic typological study 
of the different meanings that perception verbs can convey in the three languages under 
investigation: English, Basque and Spanish. These data will be used in support and 
illustration of the discussions in the various parts of the study. Firstly, this chapter will 
focus on the prototypical physical meanings in perception verbs; their classification 
according to the semantic roles of the arguments that those verbs take, and the 
hierarchies that have been established in this semantic field. Secondly, it will offer a 
detailed account of the different non-prototypical extended meanings, both physical and 
metaphorical, that these verbs can convey from a cross-linguistic point of view. It will 
also include polysemous senses that are only particular to each of these languages. 
Chapter 3 is a brief diachronic-etymological account of these perception verbs in 
these three languages. This chapter aims to provide further support for some of the 
theoretical claims put forward in the course of this thesis, not to discuss in detail either 
how or why these perception verbs have evolved the way they have, or what their 
etymological origin is – this falls beyond the scope of this thesis. 
Chapter 4 reviews two approaches to meaning extension. Sweetser’s (1990) 
semantic account of perception verbs, and Pustejovsky’s (1995) Generative Lexicon. It 
sets out the advantages and gaps that need to be addressed in both approaches.
Chapter 5 describes the physiology of the five senses and the way in which 
human beings perceive these perceptual processes. I present a typology of the properties 
that characterise the source domain of sense perception. This typology is considered to 

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano 
Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 
40
be the bodily basis that motivates the different mappings originated from the physical 
domain of perception. 
In Chapter 6 I investigate how extended meanings derived from the source 
domain of physical perception, both physical and metaphorical, are constrained by the 
typology of properties described in Chapter 5. I introduce the processes called ‘Property 
Selection’ which show what properties are transferred from one domain of experience 
onto the other. 
Chapter 7 explores the question of how the polysemous senses of perception 
verbs are obtained: Are they the result of the meaning of the perception verb only, or the 
result of the interaction between the semantics of that verb and the other elements that 
co-occur in the same sentence? It also explains the implications for the study of cross-
linguistic polysemy.
In Chapter 8 I summarise the main findings in this thesis and propose a new 
model for the analysis of polysemy. This model is composed of two complementary 
parts: (i) ‘Conceptual Polysemy’ explains the different conceptual mappings that exist 
between different domains of experience; (ii) ‘Graduable Polysemy’ explains how these 
conceptual mappings are overtly expressed by lexical items in different languages. 
Finally, I point out other areas for further research. 

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano 
Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 
41