Visual perception verbs in Old Anatolian Turkish

Abstract

This study aims at describing the verbs of the visual sensory domain in Old Anatolian Turkish (oat), including basic and compound verb forms. We shall specifically focus on intra-field and trans-field meaning extensions of visual perception verbs such as baḳ-, naẓar et-, gör-, and görin-/gözük-. Our findings are based on a corpus consisting of 11 texts both in prose and poetry from the 13th to 15th centuries. There are mainly two types of verbs that conceptualise mental and emotive states through visual perception: one pertains to idiomatic expressions with göz ‘eye’, such as göz-(ün) aç- (eye-poss.acc open), göz-den düş- (eye-abl fall), and göz dut- (eye hold). The second form includes basic verbs including baḳ- (to look at), gör- (to see), naẓar et- (to look at) and gör-in-/göz-ük- (to appear). We shall show that visual perception constitutes a rich source for expressing emotive states, and the use of vision verbs for the expression of emotions is as productive as it is for mental states. Similar to Sweetser’s body is mind metaphor, we suggest that vision is emotion. The domain of visual perception in oat texts displays a strong connection to intellection; however, there is no evidence in our data indicating that the verbs gör- and baḳ- have meaning extension to ‘to know’. The phenomenon-based verbs görin- and gözük- have mainly two meaning extensions: one is related to physical existence, as in ‘occur’ and ‘appear’ in English. When these verbs co-occur with nouns and adjectives, they reflect the speakers’ judgements and beliefs by means of a metaphor.