Universal meaning extensions of perception verbs are grounded in interaction

3.1 Sight
Sight verbs around the globe furnished a rich array of extended meanings. We first outline the crosslinguistic trends, and then detail meanings that were found in only one language, before examining discourse uses. (Additional examples of sight verbs are shown in Supplementary Materials S1–S16.)
Meanings to do with cognition were present in all 13 languages. Example (1), from Avatime, gives an illustration. The sight verb mɔ̀ ‘see’ was used in the context of deduction and discovery, treating visual experience as equivalent to gaining knowledge. In this case, the knowledge concerns the results of a (hypothetical) autopsy. A negative form of tè ‘know’ in the first clause is contrasted with a positive version of mɔ̀ ‘see’ in the final clause (shown in bold), confirming that a knowledge-related meaning of the vision verb is prominent. The translation gives an English approximation of the extended meaning of the perception verb (also in bold).
(1)

ɔ́nɛnɛ	tsyɛ̀	ɔ́-tá-tè	pɔ̀	xé	gì	be-tsịnị̀	wɔ
nobody	too	cn1.sg.neg-int-know	but	if	when	c1.pl.pfv-send	2sg

for	bidɛ́ya	test	aotoɛ	when	bíà-mɔ̀	sị̀	poison
for	thing:prox	test	autopsy	when	c1pl.pot-see	that	poison

‘Nobody too will know, but if they send you for this autopsy thing then they’ll know that it was poison.’ (Ava_089/RD.SvP)
As noted in Section 2.2, the translation does not mean to imply that a perceptual meaning is absent; only that an extended meaning is (also) present. In (1), a literal visual meaning is also potentially active for mɔ̀, along with the cognition-related meaning, as the medical team may be using visual evidence in their assessment. Other cognition-related examples encountered in the data highlighted the relevance of vision to features such as factivity and to mental operations like numerical calculation. Spanish ver ‘see’ is further attested with a mental quotative function, that is, introducing the thoughts of the speaker.
Sight verbs associated with meanings of focused attention, such as ‘checking on’ or ‘looking after’, were also found in all languages. A common context for attentional meaning was in guarding against hazards, as in example (2) from Whitesands, where the addressee is urged to attend carefully to their belongings. Literal perception was, again, often co-present with such meanings in the database.
(2)

Na-t-ə-eru	naw	t-iet	ko	iken	mqnq
2-prog-sg-see/look	knife	3sg.npst-exit	proximal	place	and
tapaka
tobacco

‘You should watch out in case the knife comes out [i.e., falls out of the addressee’s bag] or the tobacco.’ (Whi_97/JH)
In addition to cognitive and attentional meanings, sight verbs in diverse languages were readily recruited into expressions of socializing (8 out of 13 languages). In more than half the languages, sight verbs were extended to mean locating something (for example, in a Siwu conversation about searching for a lost child), while vision-based expressions of trying (typically in multi-verb constructions) were found in 5 languages. Vision verbs in four languages described instances of subjective co-identification (or its absence, as in the English example, I never saw it as a radish Eng_067/KK).
To summarize the crosslinguistic trends, Table 2 shows the extended meanings present for vision verbs in the thirteen investigated languages, according to the meaning groups in Table 1. As noted previously, while recurrent patterns are noteworthy, we cannot conclude anything definitive from absence of attestation. A more in-depth investigation of individual languages is warranted to make such conclusions. Nevertheless, the sheer ubiquity of cognition and attention meanings co-present with sight verbs is remarkable.