Perception verb complements in Akatek, a Mayan language

3. TYPES OF MEANING EXTENSION 31
b. I heard that Mary smoked grass: True, as long as the
source of information is not questionable.
c. I feel that she has burned the cake: Uncertain.
Viberg (1984), 157
The passive PVs see, hear, and feel -aswell as the copulative PVs
look like, sound like, feel like - are used in English to express sensory
evidence (Chafe, 1986). As opposed to PVs embedding nite thatcomplements,
however, passive PVs with ing-clauses as complements
express a high degree of certainty no matter which PV is used:
(15) a. I see her coming down the hall. ! She's coming down the
hall. Chafe (1986), 267
b. I hear her taking a shower. ! She's taking a shower.
Chafe (1986), 267
c. I feel something crawling up my leg. ! Something is
crawling up my leg. Chafe (1986), 267
As a preliminary generalization, a verb higher up in the hierarchy
expresses a cognitive meaning that carries a higher degree of certainty
than a verb lower in the hierarchy. One way to explain this observation
is that human communication is transmitted through the senses
of vision, hearing and marginally also touch, while the senses of
smell and taste do not serve this purpose. Not even in cultures
where the senses of smell and taste play an important social role do
they extend their meaning into the cognitive domain as for example
in Warlpiri (Caplan, 1973). This claim is opposed to Viberg's crosslinguistic
observations presented in Table 3 and the observation that
in English smell and taste can take abstract NP complements. Viberg
observed cognitive extensions for all ve sense modalities, while `social'
extensions seem to be restricted to vision, hearing and touch. 6
There is a neuro-anatomical explanation for the division between
vision, hearing, and touch on the one hand and smell and taste
on the other (Caplan, 1973). Information obtained by the senses of
smell and taste is perceived via di erent neuro-anatomical pathways
than information obtained by the senses of vision, hearing and
6 In German there is an extension from nicht riechen konnen `not be able to
smell' to `dislike a person':
(i) Sie kann ihn nicht riechen.
she can.3s him not smell
`She cannot stand him.'