| Summary: | Frozenness is a fundamental aspect of how languages function and remains the best indicator of their vitality. It is such an essential phenomenon in language functioning that one can wonder if free strings do exist. Polylexical units largely outnumber monolexical units belonging to the same parts of speech. The phenomenon of fixedness cannot be restricted to the lexicon since it has practically the monopoly of grammaticalization: it also concerns the domains of syntax, semantics and pragmatics. In this article, we are interested in fixedness within the context of perception verbs both in French and in Japanese. Such verbs are very frequent and important in language because of the perceptual phenomena they express. The linguistic object is here restricted to the study of visual perception verbs (voir, regarder, etc.; miru, mieru, etc.). From an extralinguistic point of view, sight is man’s primary source of information - considered as objective - on perceived reality. The eyes are the main sensory organs providing information on the real, which explains why visual perception is highly interesting from a linguistic viewpoint. The lexical field relating to sight is significantly richer than that of the other senses.
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