Abstract:
Perception verbs exhibit varied semantic attributes, encompassing both perceptual and non-perceptual senses. If semantic extension of perception verbs shares the common patterns across areas and language families. This paper, based on a dataset covering 825 languages, employs colexification with the methodology of “optimal community detection” to discover the interplay between perceptual and non-perceptual meanings of perception verbs. This investigation identifies four typical colexification patterns of perception verbs: <controlled activities perceptional meaning, noncontrolled experience perceptional meaning>, <controlled activities perceptional meaning, action meaning>, <noncontrolled experience perceptional meaning, cognitive meaning>, and <perceptional meaning, sense organ meaning>. Subsequently, it examines the relationships between these colexification patterns, macroareal distribution, and genealogical classification. The result shows significant disparities in colexification patterns across macroareal divisions (
p=1.205e−12), stressing distinct areal-specific tendencies. In contrast, distinctions based on genealogical classification appear insignificant, highlighting the prevalence of intra-areal universals. Additionally, the methodological framework presented here are adaptable for lexical polysemy and multifunctionality of function words on a broader scale.