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Title:
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Evidentiality and Perception Verbs in English and German: A corpus-based analysis from the early modern period to the present
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Author:
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Richard Whitt
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Degree Awarded:
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University of California, Berkeley
, Department of German
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Degree Date:
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2008
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Historical Linguistics
Pragmatics
Semantics
Syntax
Text/Corpus Linguistics
Cognitive Science
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Subject Language(s):
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English
German, Standard
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Director(s):
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Eve Sweetser
Irmengard Rauch
Thomas Shannon
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Abstract:
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Perception verbs-those verbs denoting sight, sound, touch, taste, and
smell-in English and German are capable of signifying an evidential meaning
in addition to the general sense of perception, i.e. they encode the
speaker's evidence for the proposition. The type of evidence can be either
direct (as in first-hand perception) or indirect (as in hearsay or
inference). There is virtually no literature examining the evidential use
of perception verbs in English and German, and hence we know very little
about how perception shaping our epistemology is linguistically expressed
in Germanic. My corpus-based study of perception verbs in English and
German from the Early Modern Period to the Present reveals that not only is
the high degree of polysemy expressed by some perception verbs evinced in
the evidential domain as well, but also that certain evidential meanings
are bound to certain complementation patterns/construction types of the
perception verbs.
In Chapter 1, I provide an overview of evidentiality and perception verbs,
discussing issues such as the nature of evidentiality and evidential
meaning, evidentiality's relationship to modality, evidential markers in
English and German, general perception verb typology, and the nature of an
evidential perception verb (i.e. a perception verb that deictically
indicates evidential meaning in addition to the denotation of sensory
perception). I also discuss the various complementation patterns or other
types of constructions where evidential meaning can be found (established
by the corpus study): 1. Perception Verb + Finite Complementizer Clause
(PV + FCC); 2. Perception Verb + Direct Object + Non-Finite Verb (PV + DO
+ NFV); 3. Perception Verb + Prepositional Phrase (PV + PP); 4.
Perception Verb + Adjective (PV + ADJ); 5. Perception Verb + Conjunction +
Clause (PV + CONJ + C); 6. Perception Verb + (Infinitive Copula) +
Adjective/Noun/Adjective + Noun (PV + {IC + ADJ; (IC) + N; (IC) + ADJ +
N}); English only; 7. Parenthetical Constructions (PARENTH); 8.
Perception Verb External to the Clause (EXT). I note how certain evidential
meanings are bound to specific complementation patterns/construction types
(e.g. direct perception is always found in the PV + DO + NFV construction
but never with parentheticals). I also discuss other issues germane to the
topic of evidentiality and perception verbs: polysemy, subjectivity and
subjectivization, bleaching and grammaticalization, and text type/genre.
In Chapter 2, I focus on the verbs of visual perception. SEE and LOOK from
English and German SEHEN and AUSSEHEN provide the data. I provide
quantative results of what types of complementation patterns each verb
occurs in (where evidential meaning can be found) and discuss the
particulars of each verb.
Auditory perception is the focus of Chapter 3, with HEAR and SOUND serving
as the English data, while HÖREN, (SICH) ANHÖREN, and KLINGEN provide
evidence from German. Quantitative results are presented in tandem with
discussions of specific coomplementation patterns.
In Chapter 4, I examine English FEEL and German FÜHLEN in light of tactile
perception.
Given the small amount of data available for olfactory and gustatory
perception, both of these sensory modalities are covered in Chapter 5.
SMELL and TASTE from English and RIECHEN and SCHMECKEN from German serve as
the basis for discussion.
Throughout the dissertation, I discuss issues such as the presence of modal
verbs or cognitive verbs (e.g. think) in conjunction with perception verbs,
the role of negation, and aspectual distinctions where relevant. I also
focus on the salient similarities and disparities between the English and
German data.
In the conclusion I briefly summarize my findings, as well as suggest
directions for future research.
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