Información sobre tesis doctoral: Ibarretxe, I. POLYSEMY AND METAPHOR IN PERCEPTION VERBS: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC STUDY. Department of Linguistics, University of Edinburgh

Carlos Subirats-Rüggeberg subirats at ICSI.BERKELEY.EDU
Thu Oct 12 05:44:13 UTC 2000 

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                    Información sobre tesis doctoral:
     Ibarretxe-Antuñano, Iraide. 1999. POLYSEMY AND METAPHOR IN
PERCEPTION VERBS: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC STUDY. PhD Thesis. Department of
Linguistics, University of Edinburgh (Gran Bretaña).
____________________________________________________________

1. Autora:
   Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano

2. Título:
   POLYSEMY AND METAPHOR IN PERCEPTION VERBS: A CROSS-LINGUISTIC STUDY

3.1 Número de páginas: 239 pags
3.2 Palabras clave: Polysemy, metaphor, embodiment, cognitive
    semantics, perception verbs, cross-linguistic

4. Fecha de defensa:
   October 1999

5. Departamento, centro o laboratorio en el que se ha desarrollado la
   tesis:
   Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics
   University of Edinburgh (Gran Bretaña)

6. Director de la tesis:
   Dr. Ronnie Cann

7. Proyecto o línea de investigación en el que se incluye:
   Cognitive Semantics

8. Resumen:

    Polysemy is the term used in semantic analysis to describe the
situation in which a word has two or more related meanings. No matter
how simple this definition seems to be, polysemy is not a clear-cut
concept. For decades, linguists from different schools have been trying
to give a sound account of what polysemy is and how it can be accounted
for. Unfortunately, it is still true that polysemy remains a somehow
muddy field in linguistic research.

    The main purpose behind the present study is the analysis of the
polysemy that exists in perception verbs in English, Basque and Spanish.
Perception verbs in these languages not only convey meanings related to
the physical perception of each sense modality (vision, hearing, touch,
smell and taste), but they are used to express other meanings as well
(‘to meet’ as in I’ll see you at seven, ‘suspicion’ as in to smell
fishy, ‘to experience’ as in to taste success). The aim is, therefore,
to find out which semantic extensions are found in this semantic field,
but also to put forward hypotheses as to why and how these polysemous
senses happen.

    Why it is possible that, for instance, the verb to see can mean both
‘to perceive with one’s eyes’, but also ‘to understand’ as in I see what
you mean. Why whenever we want to express that we are emotionally moved
we use the verb to touch (as in deeply touched), but we cannot use any
other perception verb such as to smell, to hear to convey the same
meaning. In other words, the question is why these semantic extensions
seem to occur between very specific conceptual domains and not others.

    The reasons why these semantic extensions take place are important,
but the question of how these meanings are obtained is equally crucial.
How these semantic extensions are carried out, that is how two different
conceptual domains, such as physical visual perception and intellection
are connected, and brought together. How is it possible to shift from a
physical domain to a more abstract domain? How many elements take part
in the creation of the polysemy found in these verbs?

    And finally, this study will address the issue of how universal
these polysemous senses are to be considered; that is to say, whether
these semantic extensions are particular to one language or shared by
different unrelated languages. For this purpose, three languages from
different families have been chosen: two Indo-European languages,
English (Germanic) and Spanish (Romance), and Basque, a
non-Indo-European language, apparently related to nothing else at all.
In this thesis, I will tackle these questions and provide a framework
which will shed some light on the study and understanding of polysemy.


                          OUTLINE OF THE THESIS
    Chapter 1 sets 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 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.


                            TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS POLYSEMY?
1.1. Theoretical Framework: Cognitive Linguistics?
 1.1.1. Main tenets in Cognitive Linguistics
 1.1.2. Methodological Principles
 1.1.3. Summary
1.2. The state of the art in Polysemy
 1.2.1. Traditional approaches to polysemy? What is homonymy?
 1.2.2. Cognitive Semantics
 1.2.3. Summary
1.3. Organisation of the thesis

CHAPTER 2: THE SEMANTIC FIELD OF SENSE PERCEPTION
2.1. Sources of the Language material
2.2. Physical meanings in perception verbs
2.2.1. Semantic classifications of perception verbs
2.2.2. Cross-linguistic data: Basque and Spanish
2.2.3. Summary
2.3. Non-prototypical meanings in perception verbs
2.3.1. Vision
2.3.2. Hearing
2.3.3. Touch
2.3.4. Smell
2.3.5. Taste
2.3.6. Summary
2.4. Conclusions

CHAPTER 3: THE ETYMOLOGY OF PERCEPTION VERBS
3.1. Vision
3.2. Hearing
3.3. Touch
3.4. Smell
3.5. Taste

CHAPTER 4: PROBLEMS IN POLYSEMY
4.1. Sweetser’s Mind-as-body conceptual metaphor
 4.1.1. Discussion
4.2. Pustejovsky’s Generative Lexicon
 4.2.1. Discussion
4.3. Conclusions

CHAPTER 5: PERCEPTION, THE SENSES AND OUR LANGUAGE
5.1. Perception and the senses
5.1.1. Physiology of the senses
5.2. Properties in sense perception
5.2.1. Typology of 1st order properties
5.2.2. Summary
5.2.3. Typology of 2nd order properties
5.2.4. Summary
5.3. Properties vs. semantic features
5.4. Conclusions

CHAPTER 6: PROPERTY SELECTION PROCESSES
6.1. Perception and Language
6.1.1. The property <correction of hypothesis>
6.1.2. The property <contact>
6.1.3. Summary
6.2. Property Selection processes in touch and smell
6.2.1. Metaphorical constraints: the invariance principle
6.2.2. Property Selection processes in Touch
6.2.3. Property Selection processes in Smell
6.3. Conclusions

CHAPTER 7: CONSTRAINTS ON POLYSEMY
7.1. Introduction
7.1.1. Brugman’s analysis of over
7.1.2. Cross-linguistic polysemy
7.1.3. Summary
7.2. Tactile and Olfactory polysemy: An alternative approach
7.2.1. Graduable polysemy
7.2.2. Verb-property requirement
7.2.3. Summary
7.3. How universal is polysemy?
7.4. Conclusions

CHAPTER 8: CONCLUSIONS
8.1. A new model for polysemy
8.2. Possible directions for further research

BIBLIOGRAPHY
General Bibliography
Dictionaries


8. Dirección postal, fax o correo-e del autor:

     IRAIDE IBARRETXE-ANTUÑANO
     DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS
     UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY
     1203, DWINELLE HALL
     BERKELEY CA-94720-2650
     USA
     Fax: +1-510-643-5688
     mailto:iraide at socrates.berkeley.edu
     http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~iraide

9. Posibilidad de obtener un ejemplar de la tesis:
   Contactar con la autora

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