Seeing without eyes, hearing without ears: understanding the polysemic nature of the Swahili verbs <i>ona</i> and <i>sikia</i>

This paper demonstrates how polysemy manifests itself in two Swahili perception verbs: ona ‘see’ and sikia ‘hear’. The two verbs have several meanings whose nature needs explanation. The paper also shows that polysemy has systematicity and explains that it has a cognitive basis. It is further confirmed that the basic meanings of the words extend into new ones through metaphor and metonymy. The data was collected from both formal and informal Swahili in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania through elicitation, examining spoken Swahili (from YouTube), and documentary review including monolingual and bilingual dictionary entries. The findings indicate that the two verbs have additional meanings such as describing aspects related to observation, viewpoints, feelings, thinking, understanding, heeding, assessment, awareness, examining, and making decisions. I conclude that the meanings of the verbs ona and sikia, go beyond the senses perceived by eyes and ears. In creating polysemy, there is some interplay between cognition and culture.