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

partidua
eten egin zuten. 
victory.
ABS
taste.
HAB
beginning.
ABS
.
PL
AUX
-when
(they.
ERG
)
match.
ABS
break 
make 
AUX
‘When they started to savour the taste of victory, they cancelled the
match’ 
(
ELH
) 
These two examples of taste mean ‘enjoy’, however, they are not the same. In 
(127) the connection with the actual physical sense of taste is more dominant. The 
meaning of ‘enjoy’ is made implicit by the word plazerrak ‘pleasure (pl.)’, but without it 
(127) might have meant ‘experience’ or ‘try’. On the other hand (128) is not so close to 
the physical meaning. It is true that a victory is something positive, especially if you are 
the person that is winning, however, if we change the sentence to something similar like 
(129), the meaning changes from taking pleasure in winning to taking pleasure in the 
defeat of the opposing side. 
(129) They 
started 
to 
taste the other team’s defeat 
To lose a game cannot be considered as something positive and therefore the 
object itself does not imply this positiveness as in (127), but it does imply enjoyment on 
the part of the subject. However in (130) the object overrides the positive implicature. 
(130) The 
Romans 
tasted defeat at the hands of a Barbarian army 
(131) Le 
gusta jugar al
fútbol 
he.
DAT
likes
play
to-the football 
‘He 
likes 
playing 
football’ 
Although the meaning ‘to enjoy’ exists in Spanish as in (131), the opposite 
feeling is also possible: 

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano 
Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 
85
(132) Me 
supo mal
el
decírselo 
I.
DAT
tasted badly the
tell-him-it.
ACC
‘I didn’t like to tell him so’ 
This sentence can be also said with gustar as in (133). 
(133) No 
me 
gustó el
decírselo 
NEG
I.
DAT
liked 
the 
tell-him-it.
ACC
‘I didn’t like to tell him’ 
In these examples, the feeling that is produced is not good or enjoyable, but just 
the opposite. Instead of having two differentiated meanings, ‘to enjoy’ and ‘to dislike’, 
‘to produce a feeling’ could be considered the superordinate and ‘to enjoy’ the 
hyponym. 
It is also worth noting that in these two examples, when the feeling produced is 
that of a negative quality, the use of a negative
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form is required. This seems to indicate 
that these verbs, when used without any qualifying adjectives or adverbs, imply a 
positive meaning
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. This is also the case in the nouns derived from these verbs. 
Apart from these cross-linguistic meanings, the sense of taste in Spanish has 
more meanings. This sense is quite unique in Spanish. While in other Romance 
languages the cognates of the Spanish verb saber have kept only one of two meanings 
from the Latin sapere ‘to taste’, ‘to know’
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, in Spanish both meanings are still in use. 
The physical percept meaning discussed in Section 2.2 and the meaning ‘to know’
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as 
in (134). 
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This is also possible in Basque. For example, 
(5) 
Joni
futbola
ez
zaio
gustatzen 
john.
DAT
football.
ABS
NEG
AUX
like.
HAB
‘John doesn’t like football’ 
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The role played by the different arguments that verbs take in the overall meaning of the 
sentence is discussed in Chapter 7. 
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The etymology and development of this verb is explained in Chapter 3. 
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The kind of knowledge expressed in the verb saber is the same as that encoded in G wissen or 
Fr savoir. 

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano 
Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 
86
(134) María 
sabe la
lección 
mary
knows the
lesson 
‘Mary knows the lesson’ 
In this section I have analysed the related and non-related extended meanings of 
the sense of taste in English, Basque and Spanish. These are summarised in Table 2.8. 
Meanings English 
Basque 
Spanish 
‘to experience something’ 
√ 
√ 
√ 
‘to produce a feeling’ 
√ 
√ 
√ 
‘to know’ 
√ 
Table 2.8: Extended meanings in taste in English, Basque and Spanish.