Encoding of source in verbs of perception

[Urmas.Sutrop at EKI.EE]

Dear Steffen Haurholm-Larsen,

It is quite common even in German dialects, in Saami languages and Nenets
and Selkup.

Nenets:
xalya fish,  xalya-ya(s’) fish-ODOR-INF to smell of fish

Middle High German:

fisch fish, fisch-ein-en fish-ODOR-INF to smell of fish

The so-called german Rhine dialects: fisch-ez-en

East Middle German: fisch-enz-en

Alemannic, Swabian, and Bavarian-Austrian: fish-el-en

Northern Saami:
Guolle fish, guolle-njad’dit    fish-GUSTAT.VERB to taste of fish

See my paper Odorative denominal verbs in Samoyedic, Sami, and German.
In: Congressus nonus internationalis Fenno-Ugristarum. Tartu 2000. Pars
VI, p. 271-279. Tartu, 2001.

Best wishes,
Urmas Sutrop


-- 
Eesti Keele Instituudi direktor ning
Tartu Ülikooli antropoloogilise ja etnolingvistika professor
--
Director of the Institute of the Estonian Language, Tallinn, and
professor of anthropological and ethnolinguistics at the University of Tartu



> Dear subscribers,
>
> It has been observed that such concepts as SEE, HEAR, TOUCH, TASTE and
> SMELL are in some languages encoded together in just a couple of verbs
> while other languages have more (see Åke Viberg's "Verbs of Perception"
> in /Language Typology and Universals: An International Handbook
> /(2001)). Furthermore, there may be a distinction between 'experience'
> and 'source' and for the latter, the source may be included in a
> peripheral NP, e.g. 'my hands smell _of fish_'.
>      But how common is it for the source NP to be lexically encoded in
> the verb? In Garifuna, an Arawak language spoken in Central America
> traditionally by a fishing people, there are two verbs for the emission
> of (bad) smell: /hingi/- 'stink' and /hase/- 'smell of fish'. Is it
> common for languages to encode culturally salient NP smell sources (or
> other source NPs) into verbs of perception?
>
> Best,
>
> Steffen Haurholm-Larsen
> Universität Bern
>