1 Linguistic Expression of Perception and Cognition: A Typological Glimpse

Abstract

Every language has a way of talking about seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. In about a quarter of the world's languages, grammatical evidentials express means of perception (visual, and non-visual) and information source in general. Lexical verbs covering perception and cognitive processes may or may not form a special subclass of verbs. Their meanings vary. In some languages verbs of vision subsume cognitive meanings (knowledge and understanding). In others, cognition is associated with a verb of auditory perception, touch, or smell. Grammatical, and lexical, expression of perception and cognition share a number of features. 'Vision' is not the universally preferred means of perception. In numerous cultures, taboos are associated with forbidden visual experience. Vision may be considered intrusive and aggressive, and linked with access to power. In contrast, 'hearing' and 'listening' are the main avenues for learning, understanding and 'knowing'. The studies presented in this book set out to explore how these meanings and concepts are expressed in languages of Africa, Oceania, and South America. The final section of this chapter offers an overview of the volume.

Vision verbs dominate in conversation across cultures, but the ranking of non-visual verbs varies

“…This evidence provides strong support for the vision dominance hypothesis, suggesting a "common core" of human experience in perceptual language (cf. Evans and Wilkins 2000: 561-562), and is contrary to the relativist predictions of Aikhenvald and Storch (2013).…”

“…And while Wilkins (1998, 2000) found support for Viberg's hierarchy in regard to polysemous extensions across sense modalities, they argued that in Australian languages audition was a more important source for cognition meanings than was vision. Against this backdrop, Aikhenvald and Storch (2013) have recently questioned the validity of Viberg's and Sweetser's linguistic claims, arguing that the language samples used by these researchers are not representative of the world's languages. According to them " [t]here is hardly any doubt that universal claims concerning the preferred status of 'vision' (e.g., Viberg 1983;Sweetser 1990) are highly Eurocentric, and do not hold for the majority of non-Western societies" (Aikhenvald and Storch 2013: 3).…”

Smell Is Coded in Grammar and Frequent in Discourse: Cha'palaa Olfactory Language in Cross‐Linguistic Perspective

“…The terms for smell, and to some extent also taste, lean toward the nominal domain, in part because—like many nouns in the language—they are complex words derived from a root and a classifier. As discussed above, this is typologically relevant because classifiers typically single out categories such as gender or shape, but so far have not been attested to classify smells and tastes (Seifart :726; Aikhenvald and Storch :36).…”

“…Seifart (:726) notes that cross‐linguistically “properties that lack high cue validity, such as color, sound, feel, taste, or smell, do not play a role in any nominal classification system attested so far”. Aikhenvald and Storch () observe that smell‐based grammatical categories are unattested in any linguistic domain; for example, they point out that there are no known olfaction‐specific evidentials (2013: 3) and that “Neither hearing nor smell nor taste appear to be grammaticalised in other areas of linguistic structure: for instance, our cross‐linguistic study of classifiers reveals these parameters never surface in any classifier type (Aikhenvald 2000), or in any other verbal or nominal category” (Aikhenvald and Storch :36). While the Cha'palaa smell classifier plays a relatively minor role in the nominal lexicon compared to European or African gender markers, it represents the first known case of a nominal smell classifier, raising the question of whether such notable grammaticalization may be linked to the salience of smell in Chachi society.…”

Sensation, perception and cognition

“…The hierarchy received strong support from a well-documented study of around 60 Australian languages by Evans & Wilkins (2000). Interesting exceptions are discussed in Maslova (2004) and Nakagawa (2012), whereas Aikhenvald & Storch (2013) are more critical and express a general skepticism about 'hierarchies' . (I think the sense-modality hierarchy is still valid, but I cannot enter into a discussion here.…”