The Grammar of Perception: A Case Study of Guambiano (Namtrik) and Duna

Although the senses provide a common basis for our experience of the world, cross-linguistic research has revealed substantial diversity across languages in how perceptual experiences are encoded in words. Such variability is also present at the level of grammatical structure, though the project of charting the parameters and limits of cross-linguistic diversity at this level is still in its relative infancy. We contribute to this goal by presenting a comparative study of the grammar of perception in two understudied and endangered languages, Guambiano (a Barbacoan language spoken in southern Colombia), and Duna (a Duna-Bogaia language of the Papua New Guinean highlands). Our study is based on primary fieldwork and draws on spoken language data collected using the Grammar of Perception Questionnaire. We document the lexical and constructional resources available in the two languages for describing events of perception and examine how sensory meanings are packaged and distributed across different elements of these constructions. The results reveal previously undocumented patterns of perception event encoding, underscoring the multifaceted and complex relationship between language and perception.