Classifying Old English Verbs of Perception on a Semantic-syntactic Basis

Resumen

The aim of this paper is to discuss the advances and issues of the process of classification of Old English verbson a semantic-syntactic basis. The lexicographical works of reference in the field, A Thesaurus of Old English(Roberts and Kay 1995) and The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (Kay et al. 2009), do notconsider the similarity in grammatical behaviour a condition for class membership and, consequently, classifyverbs on semantic grounds only. In the functional tradition of linguistics, as represented by Role and ReferenceGrammar (Van Valin and LaPolla 1997), syntax is not central to language anymore, but is motivated by semantics,which requires data sources that highlight the convergent aspects and points of connection betweenmeaning and grammar. Bearing this idea in mind, in RRG the semantic representation of the sentence is basedon the lexical representation of the verb. With this background, this paper focuses on verbs of perception(‘become aware of the existence of somebody/something’). The data, which add up to 5,833 verbs, have beenretrieved from the Lexical Database of Old English Nerthus (Martín Arista et al. 2016); a total of 223 verbs havebeen identified as belonging to the lexical domain under scrutiny here, perception. This study presents theresults of the application of the verbal classes distinguished by Faber and Mairal (2009), as well as some consequencesof the analysis such as the identification of the polysemy with verbs of perception. The paper alsoraises some issues of the classification of verbs such as the adaptation of the classes proposed for Present-DayEnglish to Old English. The conclusions insist on the similarities of grammatical behaviour that justify the inclusioninto the class of perception verbs.