Perception verb complements in Akatek, a Mayan language

2 1. INTRODUCTION
nite that-complements can be of at least two kinds. Either they express
something that can only be interpreted as a proposition as in
(3) or they can refer to perceptible processes as in (4).
(4) Jonathan saw that his daughter was climbing on a chair.
In the latter case it cannot be excluded that, next to expressing a
proposition, the event of his daughter's climbing on a chair is also
perceived (Dretske, 1969). This point of view is explained in more
detail in section 1.
This thesis investigates PVCs in English and in Akatek. The focus
is on the comparative analysis of the structural and semantic characteristics
of the PVC types in both languages. Therefore, the study is
mainly descriptive and data oriented. Typologically, I combine a partial
approach, i.e. limiting the investigation to PVCs, with a comparative
approach, i.e. comparing the PVC types of at least two languages.
The results obtained from the detailed investigation and comparison of
English and Akatek PVC systems are embedded in a wider typological
perspective that necessarily is much less detailed in analysis.
The structure of this introductory chapter is as follows. In section
1, observations regarding perception in language from a philosophical
point of view are presented. The main purpose is to di erentiate
among types of seeing and speaking about seeing. In section 2, the
reader is introduced to di erent typological approaches. Section 3 provides
information regarding the sources and types of data used for the
investigation of Akatek. In section 4, I present the research strategy
followed in this thesis. Finally, in section 5, goals and outline of the
thesis are put forward.
1. What we see and what we saywe see
The purpose of this section is to distinguish di erent types of seeing:
without cognitive processing or with cognitive processing. I am
not interested in the philosophical discussions relating to perception
and the mind (refer to Dretske (1995); Vendler (1984)). Instead,
the following observations taken from Dretske (1969) regarding the
di erenttypes of seeing shall serveasanintroduction to the intricacies
connected to speaking primarily about seeing, but also about hearing
and feeling, and in a more restricted sense about smelling and tasting.
At this point, I ignore the role of structural types used to express
di erent types of seeing. This issue is dealt with in later chapters.
As is explained further below, we can see in a non-epistemic or in
an epistemic way. The non-epistemic type of see is characterized by