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

5.4. conclusions 
In this chapter, I have characterised the semantic field of sense perception in 
terms of properties. These properties are to be considered the bodily basis upon which 
our sense-related vocabulary is based. The description of this bodily basis is crucial for 
my study. They will provide the devices necessary to explain and constrain not only why 
some source domains are mapped onto very specific target domains and not others, but 
also what elements can take part in the creation of extended meanings. 
Section 5.1 has described the physiology of the five senses and the way in which 
human beings understand the perceptual processes. In Section 5.2, a typology of the 
main prototypical properties that characterise the source domain of sense perception was 
presented. The independence of description of the source domain is guaranteed by the 
fact that these properties are based on physiological and psychological studies on the 
senses. They are not simply the result of a post hoc analysis of the semantic extensions 
found in the target domain (see Keysar and Bly 1995; Murphy 1996, for a discussion on 
this issue). These properties are classified following three parameters: (i) the relation 
between the PR, the OP and the P, (ii) the applicability of the properties to the senses, 
and (iii) the interrelation among properties. The distribution of these properties in each 
sense is shown in Table 5.5.
Finally, in Section 5.3, the differences between these properties and the semantic 
features used in Componential Analysis have been stated. These properties are not 
considered to be innate atomic conceptual units that, when combined differently, form 
the meanings of different words. They are rather taken as shorthand ways of referring to 
the defining properties used to describe how we perceive through the senses. 

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano 
Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 
161
VISION HEAR TOUCH SMELL TASTE 
no
> no
> yes
> no
> yes
> 
no
> no
> yes
> yes
> yes
> 
no
> yes
> no
> yes
> yes
> 
yes
> no
> yes
> yes
> yes
> 
yes
>
yes
> yes
> 
yes
> yes
> yes
> yes
> yes
> 
yes
> yes
> yes
> no
> yes
> 
yes
> no
> yes
> no
> yes
> 
yes
>
yes
>
yes
> 
yes
> 
yes
> 
yes
> hyp. 
yes
>
hyp. 
yes
>
yes
>
yes
> 
Table 5.5: Organisation of 1
st
and 2
nd
order properties in the sense modalities. 
In the following chapter, it will be discussed how the properties defined in this 
chapter constrain and explain how some meanings are conveyed by certain perception 
verbs and not others. I concentrate on the semantic extensions of only two sense 
perceptions: smell and touch. Based on the properties that describe these two senses, I 
propose a solution for two of the problems left unsolved by other approaches: how to 
account for physical extended meanings and how to constrain what is generally known 
by cognitive linguists as the ‘used’ part of metaphor. This solution is called ‘Property 
Selection Processes’. 

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