37.1574, Diss: English; Psycholinguistics, Semantics: Irene Bolumar Martínez: "Multimodal Polysemy in English Perception Verbs: An Experimental and Corpus-Based Approach to the Senses of Touch, Taste and Smell"

Mon Apr 27 19:05:02 UTC 2026

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1574. Mon Apr 27 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.1574, Diss: English; Psycholinguistics, Semantics: Irene Bolumar Martínez: "Multimodal Polysemy in English Perception Verbs: An Experimental and Corpus-Based Approach to the Senses of Touch, Taste and Smell"

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Date: 24-Apr-2026
From: Irene Bolumar [irene.bolumarm at um.es]
Subject: Multimodal Polysemy in English Perception Verbs: An Experimental and Corpus-Based Approach to the Senses of Touch, Taste and Smell

Institution: University of Murcia
Program: English Philology Department
Degree Date: 2026
Level: PhD

Author: Irene Bolumar Martínez

Dissertation Title: Multimodal Polysemy in English Perception Verbs:
An Experimental and Corpus-Based Approach to the Senses of Touch,
Taste and Smell

Dissertation URL:
https://fseneca.es/cms/sites/default/files/IRENE%20BOLUMAR.pdf

Linguistic Field(s): Psycholinguistics
                     Semantics

Subject Language(s): English (eng)

Dissertation Director(s): Javier Valenzuela, Daniel Alcaraz-Carrión

Dissertation Abstract:

The study of polysemy, understood as the coexistence of several
related meanings within a single word, provides a window into the
cognitive mechanisms that structure and generate meaning. Polysemy is
not defined solely by the multiplicity of senses, but by the processes
that create and link them, making it both a lexical and a conceptual
phenomenon. Although linguistic and psycholinguistic research has
extensively examined how speakers select the appropriate sense of
polysemous words, one question remains unclear: how meaning is
disambiguated when verbal information is insufficient or access to
contextual cues is limited.
This thesis adopts the view that language is inherently multimodal:
beyond words, other communicative modalities, such as gestures,
contribute to meaning construction. Because gestures naturally
co-occur with speech and can convey information inaccessible through
verbal analysis alone, this research explores their potential role in
the disambiguation of polysemous expressions. While previous work has
investigated linguistic ambiguity from multimodal perspectives, no
research has specifically examined whether gesture can disambiguate
polysemous expressions.
Within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics, this thesis analyzes
how speakers use both speech and gesture to differentiate meanings
associated with three English perception verbs: touch, taste and
smell. These verbs are particularly relevant because they express both
physical and figurative meanings. Combining corpus analysis and
experimental studies, the thesis investigates how co-speech gestures
and linguistic markers—primarily intensifiers and negation—contribute
to semantic differentiation.
The first article examines the verb touch in the multimodal corpus
NewsScape and identifies 302 co-speech gestures. The findings show
that, when expressing the physical meaning, speakers tend to touch
external elements (other-touch), whereas the emotional meaning is
typically expressed through self-touch. The most frequent
gesture—touching one’s chest (chest-touching gesture)—systematically
aligns with the emotional meaning and reflects the metaphor THE HEART
IS A CONTAINER FOR EMOTIONS. Additionally, the physical meaning
frequently co-occurs with negation, while the emotional meaning
commonly appears with intensifiers and the pronoun me.
The second article presents three experimental studies that analyze
the interpretation of touch in ambiguous contexts. Results demonstrate
that observers can infer the meaning of the verb solely from gestural
information: gesture location and handshape influence interpretation
when speech is ambiguous. Reaction-time data further show that
processing varies depending on the observed gesture, confirming its
role in semantic interpretation.
The third article extends the analysis to taste and smell. Although
gestures facilitate meaning differentiation in touch, no consistent
gestural patterns are found for distinguishing literal from figurative
meanings in taste and smell. Regarding linguistic markers, object
quantifiers emerge as the most frequent markers in the literal
meanings of both verbs.
Overall, the findings show that gestures play a key role in meaning
differentiation for touch but not for taste and smell, while
linguistic markers contribute discriminative information to varying
degrees depending on the verb. The main limitations include the
smaller size of the gestural datasets for taste and smell and the
constraints of audiovisual material. Future research should
incorporate additional levels of analysis, such as prosodic patterns,
and examine these strategies from a cross-cultural perspective.

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