Synesthesia: Crossings of the meaning between language and perception

The term synaesthesia refers both to sensory metaphors like sweet voice and to a neuropsychological condition entailing extraordinary associations of the senses in perception. Although much caution is needed in positing a connection between the two types of synaesthesia, it is however legitimate to inquire whether there is some form of relation between linguistic synaesthesia and perception in general. More precisely, is it possible to find a perceptual grounding for some properties and preferences observed for linguistic synaesthesia? In this paper I will sketch a typology of synaesthetic metaphors. This will allow to show that the possibility to take into consideration a connection with perception is restricted to one type of linguistic synaesthesia, i.e. synaesthesiae that express coherent synaesthetic concepts.