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

6.2.1. METAPHORICAL CONSTRAINTS: THE INVARIANCE 
PRINCIPLE. 
It is commonly agreed among metaphor researchers that not everything from the 
source domain gets mapped onto the target domain. Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 52) call 
this partial map of the structure of the source domain the ‘used’ part of metaphor (cf. 
also Johnson 1987: 106).
In the case of tactile and olfactory perception, which is characterised by the set of 
properties defined in Table 6.1 above, this statement means that not all these properties 
are ‘used’ in the target domain but only a selection of them.
However, in order to constrain metaphorical mappings it is not enough to say that 
there is a selection of the source domain. On the contrary it is necessary to show exactly 
what it is that is partially mapped and what constraints are applied to that selection. 
Attempts to constrain the mapping process in metaphorical production and 
comprehension can be found in Lakoff’s (1993) ‘Invariance Principle’, i.e. 
“metaphorical mappings preserve the cognitive topology of the source domain in a way 
consistent with the inherent structure of the target domain” (1993: 215).
The basis of the Invariance Principle is presented implicitly but not analysed in 
Lakoff and Turner (1989). The idea that not everything is transferred from the source 
domain to the target domain is suggested, when these authors discuss how the maxim of 
quantity guides us to exclude various components of the source and target domains from 
the metaphorical mapping. 
This basis is formulated as the ‘Invariance Hypothesis’ in Lakoff (1989, 1990). 
This hypothesis claims that “metaphorical mappings preserve the cognitive topology 
(that is, the image-schema structure) of the source domain” (1990: 54). In other words, 
the topological properties of entities in the source domain of a metaphorical mapping are 
mapped as properties of the corresponding entities in the target domain. 
Re-examining this hypothesis, Brugman (1990) points out several problems
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, 
one of which concerns the question of which domain’s properties are preserved in a 
metaphorical mapping. That is to say, it is not clear enough from the formulation of the 
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See also Turner (1990a, 1991: 172-182, 1996: 108-109), Iwata (1995). 

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano 
Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 
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Invariance Hypothesis whether the source domain properties that are transferred create 
the image-schematic structure in the target domain or not. 
According to Turner (1990b, 1993), what matters is the image-schematic 
structure of the target domain. This structure must be preserved, and the image-
schematic structure of the source domain that takes part in the mapping must be 
consistent with that preservation. 
Taking into account these problems, Lakoff (1993) reformulates the Invariance 
Hypothesis and proposes the ‘Invariance Principle’. This principle makes explicit two 
claims. Not only must both source and target domain properties be taken into account, 
but also target domain properties must be seen as playing a central role in determining 
the properties preserved. 
The Invariance Principle is useful in order to constrain the nature of metaphorical 
mappings: that is to say, it is not possible to map from the source domain structure that 
does not preserve the inherent structure of the target domain. The only problem with this 
principle is that it does not show exactly what part of the source domain is the one that 
must be consistent with the structure of the target domain. 
As a solution, I propose the processes called Property Selection. These 
processes will show not only how some of the set of properties that characterise the 
source domain are mapped onto the target domain, but also what properties are mapped. 
It is precisely by this selection of properties from the source domain in the target domain 
that metaphorical mappings are constrained. The properties selected in the target domain 
must be part of the properties identified in the source domain and no others. The number 
of properties from the source domain preserved in the extended meanings is not an issue, 
as this is not the same in each extension. What is important is the fact that there is a 
transfer of only some properties from the source to the target domain. 
The fact that all the examples in the following subsections are taken from English 
does not mean that Property Selection Processes are language specific. In Chapter 2, it 
was shown how these extended meanings are cross-linguistic, they are also found in the 
other two languages under investigation – Basque and Spanish. Therefore, it is assumed 
that Property Selection Processes are applicable to any language. 

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano 
Polysemy and metaphor in perception verbs 
In the following subsections, it is shown how these processes work in the 
semantic fields of tactile and olfactory verbs.