Lexical patterns of perception verbs in Ancient Greek

Perception verbs may indicate either uncontrolled (experiences, e.g., ‘see’, ‘hear’) or controlled events (activities, e.g., ‘look at’, ‘listen to’). Cross-linguistically there is a tendency to lexify this distinction based on an implicational scale, whereby sight verbs show the highest level of distinctions. The paper explores the lexical and constructional means through which the distinction is indicated in Ancient Greek. It turns out that sight shows both constructional and lexical patterns to keep experiences distinct from activities, while hearing normally does not make this distinction. The use of lexical means increases over time, as Classical Greek employs both lexicalization and different constructions in the field of sight, but Homeric Greek mostly employs different constructions. It is argued that constructionalization is typically used in Ancient Greek in the place of or along with lexicalization to express different meanings.