(Dis-)Embodiment, Palpability,and Cognitive State

摘要

This article reconstructs how the English language differentially recruits the senses of the human perceptual system as source domains for perceptual and inferential evidential markers (smell, taste, touch, hearing, vision) that are considered members of the evidential subdivision of the cognitive state system, Talmy's fifth schematic system. The paper focuses on how the lexicalization processes involved may plausibly be considered in terms of Talmy's notion of palpability, which, across the whole range of 'ception', captures the different degrees "with which some entity is experienced in consciousness, from the fully concrete to the fully abstract" (Talmy 2000. 1: 141). Taking account of the palpability parameter opens up the possibility to subdivide evidential markers (of English) into two groups: The first group, represented by adverbs such as olfactorily, gustatorily, audibly, visibly, and by constructions involving perception verbs like smell (like), taste (like), sound (like) correlates with the concrete level of palpability. By contrast, the second group (represented by what are generally considered core evidential adverbs such as obviously, evidently, apparently, clearly, but also the touch-related adverbs tangibly and palpably) are associated with the abstract level of palpability. Concomitantly, the increasing abstraction and schematization processes pertaining to the second group correspond with an increasing degree of disembodiment, a finding seen to support Talmy's cautionary view of an ail-too uncritical acceptance of the notion of embodiment.