The Development and (De-)Subjectification of theEnglish Copulative Perception Verbs with Special
Reference to Modern American English
Fuminori Nakamura (Keio University)

There are a group of perception verbs in English, called as Copulative Perception Verbs (CPVs)
following Taniguchi (1997), which are similar to copular verbs such as be and seem. Typical examples
are quoted from Viberg (1983, 124):(1)a.

Peter looked happy.

b.

Peter sounded happy.

As illustrated above, the subject referent of the CPVs is prototypically not the perceiver who takes aperceptual action but the object of perception which the speaker perceives.
They verbs first appeared 500 years ago according to Taniguchi (1997), it should be reasonable
to assume their formal and functional extensions. However, there has been little linguistic researchon this topic. This paper, therefore, investigates the development, using the Corpus of Historical
American English (Davies 2010–, COHA) and the Corpus of American Soap Operas (Davies 2012–,SOAP). The results indicate that the CPVs have developed in two different directions: Subjectification
and De-subjectification.
First, this paper confirms that the subject referent prototypically plays two semantic roles at once:(i) the percept and (ii) the topic of inference. Let us consider the following examples from Rogers(1971, 214):(2)a.

Reuben looked stoned to me.

b.

I saw Reuben.

The sentence of (2a) implies the perceptual achievement in (2b). The perception provides evidence
for further inference about the subject. Due to inference in their semantics, the similarity of theCPVs to seem has been mentioned sporadically. One significant similarity is that they now take as its
complement finite clauses headed by as if (though) and like as in the example from Gisborne (2010,269):(3) Jane {seems/sounds} {like/as if/as though} she won.
This is distinct from other possible patterns in that it not just functions as a predicate of the subjectreferent but also is complete in terms of proposition because it contains both a subject and a predicate.
It has weakened the status of the subject referent in the main clause.
(4) Everything looked as if the Republican party would prove itself the Democratic Party after
all. (COHA)
1This example indicates that the subject referent of the main clause is no longer the topic of inference.
Everything is not what the sentence is about, but just evidence for the proposition expressed by thefollowing the as if clause. Reversely, the subject referent in (5) can serve as a topic of inference but
not as evidence.
(5) (I’ve heard/seen the forecast and) tomorrow’s weather sounds/looks fine. (Gisborne 2010）
It is probably enough to mention that tomorrow’s weather cannot be perceived by any means.
Lastly, the subjects in the following examples serve as neither of the two roles and similar to theexpletive it. It is often omitted formally as in (6b) and often unrecoverable pragmatically.
(6)a. It looked as if he had lived a pretty narrow life.（COHA）
b. “Wow, doesn’t look like you’ve gotten much done. ” (COHA)

Although whether it in the case of the CPVs is a genuine expletive is open to debate, since it can beinterpreted as some abstract and generalized situation similar to everything in (4), it seems safe to saythat the speaker intends to say about the content of the as if clause. Here, look as if(although)/likefunction like modal expressions to avoid assertion, similar to adverbs such as maybe. In short, thisprocess can be regarded as a result of Subjectification, from more objective perception to more subjective inference or evaluation.
Interestingly, however, there has been another direction in which the CPVs have developed, Desubjectification. The CPVs here do not express any inference by the speaker.
(7)

a. Well, nothing, except I don’t want to look like I’m trying too hard. (SOAP)
b. I don’t want to sound like I’m blaming her or anything,.... (SOAP)

They denote not only the appearances of the speaker but also hypothetical inference possibly made by
the hearer and general people, excluding the speaker’s. Moreover, this use has an influence on seem
which is not usually used to show any evidence for inference.
(8) I’m sorry – I don’t mean to seem like I’m kicking you out, but I’m kicking you out. (SOAP)
Taking into account their limited context, say, 1st person subject + negative + intention, they are notestablished yet, being in the process of development.

References
Davies, M., 2010–. The Corpus of Historical American English: 400 million words, 1810-2009.
Available online at http://corpus.byu.edu/coha/.
Davies, M., 2012–. The Corpus of American Soap Operas: 100 million words, 2001-2012. Available
online at http://corpus2.byu.edu/soap/.
Gisborne, N., 2010. The Event Structure of Perception Verbs. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Rogers, A., 1971. Three kinds of physical perception verbs. CLS 7, 206–222.
Taniguchi, K., 1997. On the semantics and development of copulative perception verbs in English :A cognitive perspective. English Linguistics 14, 270–299.
Viberg, A., 1983. The verbs of perception: a typological study. Linguistics 21 (1), 123–162.

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