Lexical typology of sensory perception

It has been proposed that there may be underlying regularities in how languages encode perceptual experiences in words, pointing to the possibility that our cognitive architecture plays a role in constraining the variability in this domain of language. This project aims to test this idea by investigating how basic perceptual experiences (e.g. seeing, hearing, smelling) are encoded by verbs across languages, how they evolve over time, and how they are learned. The project is a collaboration with Asifa Majid (Oxford), and received funding from European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement 836921 [LEXPEX])

One line of research has focused on variability and regularity across languages in how sensory meanings map onto perception verbs. One study (Norcliffe & Majid, 2024), drawing on a global sample of perception verb lexicons, provided the first quantitative test of the influential claim that a hierarchy of senses universally constrains the semantic organisation of perception verb lexicons across languages. This work demonstrated that although perception verb lexicons show a strong, apparently universal visual bias, they do not exhibit patterning consistent with the proposed universal hierarchy of senses. Beyond the hierarchy, the study uncovered new kinds of regularities in the polysemy patterns of perception verbs across languages, with the evidence pointing to the conclusion that domain-general constraints (conceptual similarity and communicative pressures) jointly interact to give rise to the cross-linguistic patterns.

In a related study (Norcliffe & Majid, 2024), we extended the focus to patterns of word formation in perception verb lexicons. Perception verbs sometimes extend their meaning to a different sensory meaning through processes of word formation. For example, the verb ‘hear’ might combine with a noun ‘odour’, to derive a verb meaning ‘to smell’. Our study found that across languages, semantic extensions of this type tend to proceed hierarchically from higher to lower sense modalities. We suggest that human biology and neurophysiology do not need to be directly invoked to explain this hierarchical patterning, however. Previous research has demonstrated that the directionality of semantic extensions in word formation is predicted by word frequency: words that are the sources of extensions tend to be more frequent than the derivations. Lexical frequency therefore is likely the direct cause of our directionality finding, as it has been shown that verbs of vision and audition tend to be more frequent in speech than those of the lower senses. This does not rule out the possibility that the crosslinguistic frequency patterns themselves are shaped by the relative dominance of the senses in human perception, though research suggests that these lexical frequency patterns are more likely the outcome of convergent factors.

Another line of research has focused on the acquisition of perception verbs. In a collaboratino with Lila San Roque (Australian National University) we examined the acquisition trajectories of perception verbs among English speaking children, using data from parent questionnaires and corpora of children’s spontaneous speech (San Roque et al., 2024). This revealed that visual perception verbs (‘see’ and ‘look’) are acquired earliest, mirroring the dominance of vision in lexical systems. Intriguingly, touch rather than audition verbs came second, in both age of acquisition and production frequency. This finding was replicated in age of acquisition data from a further 11 languages. The robust touch-before-hearing result possibly reflects the early relevance of the tactile modality for infants for whom much of the experienced world is explored through the hands. It may also be driven by the speech of caregivers towards young infants about behaviour regulation, especially prohibitions against touching, raising fascinating questions for future study about how individual sensory experience interacts with linguistic input to scaffold language learning.

Many of the results of project have been summarised in a new review article on the lexical typology of sensory perception (Majid & Norcliffe, 2026)

The Perception Verb Database is accessible here: https://zenodo.org/records/17963242

References

2026

Annu. Rev. Linguist.
The Lexical Typology of Sensory Perception

Asifa Majid and Elisabeth Norcliffe

Annual Review of Linguistics, 2026

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Sensory language has fascinated researchers, as it is here that meaning most clearly straddles biology and culture. Since the seminal work on colour vocabularies, typologists have attempted to describe and explain worldwide linguistic patterns in this area. One proposal that has captured the attention of many is the idea that there is a hierarchy of the senses that can account for as diverse phenomena as lexicalisation patterns, frequency of use, diachronic stability, order of acquisition, and more. We argue, to the contrary, that a universal sensory hierarchy is no longer tenable. Emerging cross-linguistic data do not support a single hierarchy of the senses that is applicable across distinct linguistic and psycholinguistic properties. This does not mean we must abandon sensory language typology altogether. Alternative methods for identifying cross-linguistic regularities—such as semantic maps—show considerable promise. Moreover, while the preoccupation with a sensory hierarchy has led to an overly-narrow research focus, moving beyond it opens up new avenues of research in this area. Future research has potential to uncover new patterns of sensory language structure and use across diverse languages, account for their distribution over cultures, and deepen our understanding of how language interfaces with cognition.
@article{majid_norcliffe_2026, title = {The Lexical Typology of Sensory Perception}, journal = {Annual Review of Linguistics}, author = {Majid, Asifa and Norcliffe, Elisabeth}, year = {2026} }

2024

Language
Verbs of perception: A quantitative typological study

Elisabeth Norcliffe and Asifa Majid

Language, 2024

Abs DOI Bib

Previous studies have proposed that the lexicalization of perception verbs is constrained by a biologically grounded hierarchy of the senses. Other research traditions emphasize conceptual and communicative factors instead. Drawing on a balanced sample of perception verb lexicons in 100 languages, we found that vision tends to be lexicalized with a dedicated verb, but that nonvisual modalities do not conform to the predictions of the sense-modality hierarchy. We also found strong asymmetries in which sensory meanings colexify. Rather than a universal hierarchy of the senses, we suggest that two domain-general constraints—conceptual similarity and communicative need—interact to shape lexicalization patterns.
@article{norcliffe_verbs_2024, title = {Verbs of perception: {A} quantitative typological study}, volume = {100}, issn = {1535-0665}, shorttitle = {Verbs of {Perception}}, url = {https://muse.jhu.edu/article/922000}, doi = {10.1353/lan.2024.a922000}, language = {en}, number = {1}, urldate = {2024-05-16}, journal = {Language}, author = {Norcliffe, Elisabeth and Majid, Asifa}, year = {2024}, pages = {81--123} }
Linguist. Typol.
Word formation patterns in the perception domain: A typological study of cross-modal semantic associations

Elisabeth Norcliffe and Asifa Majid

Linguistic Typology, 2024

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The lexicalization of perception verbs has been of widespread interest as a route into understanding the relationship between language and cognition. A recent study finds global biases in colexification patterns, suggesting recurrent conceptual associations between sensory meanings across languages. In this paper, drawing on a balanced sample of 100 languages, we examine cross-modal semantic associations in word formation. Confirming earlier proposals, we find derived verbs are lower on a proposed Sense Modality Hierarchy (sight \textgreater hearing \textgreater touch \textgreater taste, smell) than the source perception verbs on which they are based. We propose these findings can be explained by verb frequency asymmetries and the general tendency for sources of derivations to be more frequent than their targets. Moreover, it appears certain pairings (e.g., hear–smell) are recurrently associated via word formation, but others are typologically rare. Intriguingly, the typological patterning partially diverges from the patterning reported for colexification in the same domain. We suggest that while colexification is driven by conceptual resemblance between sensory meanings, cross-modal word formations tend to arise from grammaticalization processes of lexical specification, where additional material (e.g., a sensory noun) is collocated to a polysemous verb in order to disambiguate it in context. Together, these processes can account for the typological similarities and divergences between the two phenomena. More generally, this study highlights the need to consider conceptual, communicative and diachronic factors together in the mapping between words and meanings.
@article{norcliffe_word_2024, title = {Word formation patterns in the perception domain: {A} typological study of cross-modal semantic associations}, issn = {1430-0532, 1613-415X}, shorttitle = {Word formation patterns in the perception domain}, url = {https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/lingty-2023-0038/html}, doi = {10.1515/lingty-2023-0038}, language = {en}, urldate = {2024-09-11}, journal = {Linguistic Typology}, author = {Norcliffe, Elisabeth and Majid, Asifa}, year = {2024} }
Cogn. Sci.
Vision verbs emerge first in English aquisition but touch, not audition, follows second

Lila San Roque, Elisabeth Norcliffe, and Asifa Majid

Cognitive Science, 2024

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Words that describe sensory perception give insight into how language mediates human experience, and the acquisition of these words is one way to examine how we learn to categorize and communicate sensation. We examine the differential predictions of the typological prevalence hypothesis and embodiment hypothesis regarding the acquisition of perception verbs. Studies 1 and 2 examine the acquisition trajectories of perception verbs across 12 languages using parent questionnaire responses, while Study 3 examines their relative frequencies in English corpus data. We find the vision verbs see and look are acquired first, consistent with the typological prevalence hypothesis. However, for children at 12–23 months, touch—not audition—verbs take precedence in terms of their age of acquisition, frequency in child‐produced speech, and frequency in child‐directed speech, consistent with the embodiment hypothesis. Later at 24–35 months old, frequency rates are observably different and audition begins to align with what has previously been reported in adult English data. It seems the initial orientation to verbalizing touch over audition in child–caregiver interaction is especially related to the control of physically and socially appropriate behaviors. Taken together, the results indicate children’s acquisition of perception verbs arises from the complex interplay of embodiment, language‐specific input, and child‐directed socialization routines.
@article{san_roque_vision_2024, title = {Vision verbs emerge first in English aquisition but touch, not audition, follows second}, volume = {48}, issn = {0364-0213, 1551-6709}, url = {https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cogs.13469}, doi = {10.1111/cogs.13469}, language = {en}, number = {6}, urldate = {2024-09-11}, journal = {Cognitive Science}, author = {San Roque, Lila and Norcliffe, Elisabeth and Majid, Asifa}, year = {2024}, pages = {e13469} }