[Lingtyp] Sensory copulas

[Alon Fishman]

Dear all,

I am investigating what Åke Viberg has called sensory copulas (also known
as copulative perception verbs, flip perception verbs, source-based verbs,
SOUND-class verbs, etc.), e.g., English *sound*, German *klingen*, Polish
*brzmieć*, Russian *zvuchit*, Hebrew *nishma*. My working definition is
that these are (i) perception verbs which (ii) take a perceived entity
(rather than a perceiving entity) as their grammatical subject, and (iii)
require a predicative or clausal complement.

Right now I am specifically interested in adjectival/adverbial complements,
and their mapping to 2 potential readings: a
descriptive/perceptual/attributary reading (where *X sounds P* roughly
means ‘X has a P sound’), and an inferential/evidential reading (where *X
sounds P* roughly means ‘It sounds like X is P’). I’ve so far noted 3
patterns:

1) One type of complement is allowed, and it can have both readings. This
is the case with English, German, Dutch, Swedish (*sounds bad/*badly* is
ambiguous) as well as Polish (which in contrast allows adverbial but not
adjectival complements).


2) One type of complement is allowed, with only one possible reading. This
appears to be the case with Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (*suona
bene/*buono* is only descriptive, *sembra *bene/buono* is only inferential).


3) Both types of complements are allowed, each with a different reading.
This is the case in Hebrew (*nishmaim ra* is descriptive, *nishmaim raim*
is inferential) and apparently Russian (*zvuchit* *ploxim/ploxo*).

I am looking for similar verbs and any observations/recent work about them,
in any language, but especially non-European languages. To be clear, I’m
interested in all perception verbs, not just sound verbs (I used them above
just for ease of comparison). If you’d rather not post here, feel free to
send me an email at alonfishm at gmail.com. I’d greatly appreciate your help!

Best regards,

Alon Fishman

Postdoctoral researcher, The Open University of Israel
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