In what sense do you sense that sense: A Cognitive Linguistic analysis of ‘sense’ polysemy

This paper proposes a cognitive linguistic approach and corpus analysis to verify both the synchronic and the diachronic conceptualisation of ‘sense’ in natural language and investigates the polysemic nature of the lexeme. It addresses the complex interplay of variables that dynamically interact with the context as the meanings emerge in more or less predictable ways. According to the collocations and constructions that occur with a given lemma and the target and source domains involved in the metaphoric extension of the word’s polysemy, the emerging conceptualization process becomes evident. I propose that the primary conceptual metaphor KNOWING IS SENSING extends from the original meaning of sense – ‘going’ or ‘way’– that represents the schematic conceptualization of the event where the information travels from our sense organs along a path to our brain. The path image schema thus serves as cognitive reference also for the conceptual metaphor: MEANING IS SENSING, which is part of a metaphor complex that includes PERCEPTION IS RECEPTION and UNDERSTANDING IS PERCEIVING.