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

polysemy’.
In sum, I argue that when we analyse the meanings that take place in a semantic 
field, we need to distinguish and address two different sides.
On the one hand, we need to establish its ‘conceptual polysemy’, i.e. the 
conceptual mappings that take place between different domains of experience. This 
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It is important to bear in mind that although these lexical items are not the same cross-
linguistically, they cannot just have any semantic content. The choice of what lexical items co-occur with 
the perception verb is constrained by the ‘verb property requirement’ as explained in Section 7.2.2. 

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe Antuñano
Chapter 2: The Semantic Field of Sense Perception 
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conceptual polysemy is constrained by the different properties that characterise the bodily 
basis of the semantic field under analysis; in our case, the bodily basis of sense 
perception defined in Chapter 5. Because this bodily basis is shared by and common to all 
humans with the same cultural background, conceptual polysemy is cross-linguistic. 
On the other hand, it is necessary to establish which elements are involved in the 
creation of such conceptual polysemy, and to what extent their semantic content 
participates in the creation of such extended meanings. The choice of what elements are 
required is constrained by the verb-property requirement. This requirement only allows 
those elements whose semantic content does not clash with the bodily basis of the 
semantic field under investigation (see Section 7.2.2). Graduable polysemy establishes 
and classifies the importance of the semantic content of these elements in the creation of 
such conceptual polysemy in three different degrees of compositionality (see Section 
7.2.1). The results obtained in this part of the analysis are to be considered language 
specific. 
I would like to finish this section with a brief mention of how this dichotomy may 
affect the processes that we use to map one domain of experience onto a different 
domain, namely metaphor and property selection. 
Property Selection processes are defined as the selection of some of the properties 
from the set of prototypical properties that characterise the source domain in the target 
domain. These processes show exactly what part of the source domain is used, not only in 
metaphorical expressions, but also in physical extended meanings. 
Metaphor is a cognitive tool that – in conjunction with property selection 
processes – structures the mappings between a physical domain and an abstract domain. 
The main function of both cognitive devices is to account for and structure the 
different semantic extensions of the semantic field under study, that is to say its 
conceptual polysemy. 
Property Selection and metaphorical processes are constrained by the bodily basis 
of the semantic field under investigation; they are the cognitive tools that we have to map 
and structure our conceptual systems experientially. Therefore, we ought to include them 
in the first part of our analysis, the one that tackles cross-linguistic conceptual polysemy. 

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe Antuñano
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However, they are also affected by the overt realisation of the conceptual 
polysemy, because – as stated in the discussion on graduable polysemy in Section 7.2.1 – 
metaphorical and physical extended meanings are triggered by the semantic content of 
the different elements that co-occur in the same sentence to a bigger or smaller degree.
Recall that three different degrees of graduable polysemy have been established 
according to the degree of influence that the semantic content of the different lexical 
items that co-occur in the same sentence has in the overall meaning. (i) Unpredictable 
cases of polysemy were those cases where it is not possible to predict what the 
interpretation is by means of the choice of arguments (John touched Mary), (ii) verb-
driven extensions were those in which the semantic content of the perception verb is most 
decisive for the meaning (Mary can smell danger from miles away), and (iii) argument-
driven extensions were those where the semantic content of the argument determines the 
meaning (John hardly touched the food). 
I have shown in this section that these three degrees are not the same cross-
linguistically because languages have different strategies to express conceptual polysemy. 
This implies that the way in which these two cognitive devices are accessed is specific to 
each particular language. In other words, metaphor and property selection processes 
belong to the conceptual, cross-linguistic side because they structure our conceptual 
systems experientally, but because what actually triggers these mappings is the bigger or 
smaller interaction of the semantic content of the co-occurring elements, then it follows 
that these two cognitive devices are also constrained by the way in which graduable 
polysemy affects each particular language. 
This is an interesting point because it may explain why and how different the 
evolution of the meaning in some lexical items is from a cross-linguistic point of view. 
Take, for example, the case of the verbs chosen in this study for tactile perception, 
namely Eng touch, Bq ukitu, and Sp tocar. In English, the metaphorical extended 
meaning ‘to affect (emotionally)’ is an unpredictable case of polysemy (see Section 7.2.). 
In Basque and Spanish, on the other hand, the inclusion of a lexical item(s) with a very 
specific semantic content is necessary in order to access this meaning, they are verb-
driven extensions instead. The fact that the English verb does not require so much ‘help’ 
from the other elements of the sentence for the creation of this meaning may indicate that 

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B. Iraide Ibarretxe Antuñano
Chapter 2: The Semantic Field of Sense Perception 
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a semantic change is a step closer to happen in English than in the other two languages, 
where the ‘help’ of other elements is still required
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. Further research into this area is 
necessary to support this hypothesis.