Perception verb complements in Akatek, a Mayan language

1. WHAT WE SEE AND WHAT WESAY WE SEE 5
This confusion can be largely avoided by two factors: past tense and
third person reports. In rst person reports like (12), past tense indicates
that enough time has passed for the speaker to identify something
that she may not have identi ed at the moment of perceiving. The advantage
of third person reports is that the speaker has the necessary
distance in perspective and time in order to identify something which
the perceiver may not be able to do, as for example in (13).
(12) I saw a bus, but, at the time, did not know what it was.
Dretske (1969), 37
(13) He sees the bus but cannot make out what it is.
Dretske (1969), 37
The speaker generally tries to anticipate the level of identi cation of
the object of perception that the perceiver could have gained and hence
selects words for the description of the perception that she thinks most
adequate.
A qualifying device can be employed if one wants to distinguish
the speaker's perspective in third-person perceptual reports from the
perspective of the perceiver. For example, a report suchashe saw three
camels can be quali ed by ::: but, of course, he did not realize they
were camels in order to show that the perceptual report does not imply
that the perceiver must have correctly identi ed the camels.
In sum, we do not necessarily recognize or identify the objects or
events we perceive. In other words, perceiving does not automatically
involve cognitive processing.
However, our visual perception is generally said to be our main
source of information regarding the content and the nature of our
world. It is therefore not surprising that we can use see to refer to
the acquisition of knowledge not only by our visual ability but also in a
way that is completely unrelated to that ability. Two usages of seeing
that are distinguished that rely on visual information: primary and
secondary epistemic seeing. Primary epistemic seeing is de ned in
the following way:
(14) S sees that b is P in a primary epistemic way if(Dretske
(1969), 79 .):
1. b is P
2. Sseesn b
3. The conditions under which S seesn b are such that b
would not look L, the way itnow looks to S, unless it
was P