Perception verb complements in Akatek, a Mayan language

1. THE LEXICAL FIELD 23
the perceived entity as their grammatical subject as shown in example
(2-c), i.e. they are source based verbs, and thereby di er from active
and passive PVs. Active and passive PVs di er from each other in
that the former refer to unbounded volitional processes that a human
agent consciously controls as in example (2-a) while the latter denote
uncontrolled, non-volitional states as in (2-b).
(2) a. Peter listened to the birds.
b. Peter heard the birds.
c. Peter sounded happy. Viberg (1984), 125
As shown in examples (2-a) to (2-c), for the sense modality ofhearing,
the English language lexicalizes three di erent verbs: the active
PV listen to, the passive PVhear, and the copulative perception verb
sound. However, this is not the case for all sense modalities in English.
For example the sense of smell is only lexicalized as one PV, namely
smell, which can function as an active, a passive and a copulative verb
as shown in examples (3-a) to (3-c), respectively.
(3) a. Peter smelled the cigar.
b. Peter smelled cigars in the room.
c. Peter smelled good. Viberg (1984), 125
In Table 1 the lexicalization pattern of PVs in English is shown. Distinct
active, passive, and copulative PVs are only lexicalized for the
sense modalities of vision and hearing. This indicates that vision
and hearing have a more prominent role than the other sense modalities,
i.e. touch, smell, and taste, for which there are no distinct
lexicalizations for active, passive and copulative PVs.
Table 1. The basic paradigm of active, passive and copulative
verbs of perception in English (after Viberg
(1983))
Sense Active PVs Passive PVs Copulative PVs
modality
Vision look (at) see look
Hearing listen hear sound
Touch feel feel feel
Smell smell smell smell
Taste taste taste taste
Earlier research has shown that perception expressions referring to
the sense of vision in English show greater syntactic, morphological