The article deals with the analysis of the meaning of the perception verbs. Their consistency is determined by the contraposition of the semantics of state and action ( see/look, hear/listen) in their content. The opposition of these meanings reflects the duality of the language perceptions of human psychology: the contraposition of an ‘inner’ person to an ‘outward’ one. Inner unobservable perceptive processes (states) are opposed to observable pictorial processes (actions).