By
Mohammed Sani Ya'u
Department of English and Literary Studies
Sa'adu Zungur University, Gadau, Bauchi State,
Nigeria
mohammedsyau@sazu.edu.ng
And
Abdulrashid Saminu
Department of General Studies
Federal University of Health Sciences, Azare,
Bauchi State
abdulrashid.saminu@fuhsa.edu.ng
And
Abdullahi Adamu Gidiya
Department of English and Literary Studies
Sa'adu Zungur University, Gadau, Bauchi State,
Nigeria
abdullahigidiya@basug.edu.ng
Abstract
Viberg’s
(1983) hierarchy describes recurrent cross-linguistic
patterns in the lexicalisation of perception, but it does not by itself predict
which sensory verbs develop cognitive meanings. This study examines non-literal
extensions of English see and hear and Hausa gani ‘see’ and ji
‘hear/feel/taste/smell’. The data come from a specialised corpus of four
English and twelve Hausa romance novels. Concordance lines were screened with
the Pragglejaz Metaphor Identification Procedure and classified by semantic
extension. In the reported data, understanding is associated mainly with
English see (127/260 non-literal
tokens, 48.8%) and Hausa ji (33/102,
32.4%). It is not associated with English hear
or Hausa gani. The comparison
therefore supports a qualified account. Typological hierarchy remains useful
for lexical organisation and the range of extensions, whereas the selection of
a sensory source for cognition also requires attention to lexical polysemy,
embodied properties, discourse practice and cultural context. Because the
corpora are genre-specific and contain unequal numbers of texts, the findings
are interpreted as patterns in the sampled fiction. They are not presented as
population-level properties of English and Hausa. The article reframes earlier
results from this research programme as a focused test of the relationship
between typological description and cognitive motivation.
Keywords: perception verbs, typology, cognitive motivation, embodiment, culture, English, Hausa, conceptual metaphor
DOI: www.doi.org/10.57233/tjllc.2026.v05i03.009
author/Mohammed S. Ya'u, Abdulrashid Saminu & Abdullahi A. Gidiya
journal/Tasambo JLLC 5(3) | February 2026 |
