On the question of the multimodality of perceptions and its reflection in language

Abstract

The article focuses on the semantics of the Bulgarian lexeme глух, examined on a wider Slavic, Balkan and Indo-European background. The emphasis is on the phenomenon of verbal synaesthesia, which allows the manifestation of the cross-modal character of many image schemes that gave rise to its semantic structure. The analysis is an opportunity to verify the established models of metaphorical projections from lower to higher modalities with respect to the Bulgarian lexeme глух. The relationship between perception and conceptual structure is being studied with particular interest in contemporary linguistics, so the study of the role of non-visual experience in structuring a semantic system in a language complements the general idea of linguistic synaesthesia and its role in all languages.

Keywords

• perception
• verbal synaesthesia
• sensory modality
• metaphor