ABSTRACT
Perception verbs are verbal expressions of the five sensory modalities of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. These verbs tend to expand their prototypical meanings into the nearby semantic fields of emotion, cognition, and social interaction via metaphorical meaning extensions (Conceptual Metaphor Theory). These mappings are deeply embodied and rooted in our sensorimotor experience. They show how the conceptual system of our mind is structured. Visual and auditory verbs are well documented in typological research, but the so-called proximal modalities of touch, smell, and taste are still rarely considered. This chapter gives an overview of the multi-layered levels of meanings of these verbs in Hieroglyphic Egyptian using textual evidence from various text genres over a long time span. Cross-references to perception metaphors in other ancient and modern languages are given.
