Aspects of aural perception in Homeric Greek (original) (raw)

The verb akoúō 'hear' in Homeric Greek can indicate concrete perception as well as acqusition of knowledge by hearsay, and mean 'learn'. In addition, it can denote an uncontrolled state, either perceptual or cognitive, the controlled activity of listening, or an inchoative event. In the paper, we discuss its syntax and semantics and compare it with klúō 'listen to', which indicates activities, and punthánomai 'learn', which mostly has an inchoative meaning. We show that construction variation is connected with animacy of the stimulus, and it is not triggered by semantic differences in the verbal meaning, with the partial exception of punthánomai when indicating uncontrolled situations. Different actionalities expressed by the three verbs are often matched by verbal aspect. In conclusion, we argue that the extension of hearing to learning and acquiring knowledge is explained through pragmatic inference. The same can be said to the much more studied extention of seeing to possessing knowledge. Different meanings of perception verbs when referring to the domain of cognition are based on embodiment, in that they depend on our knowledge of the structure of perception events.

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