Biolinguistics (E-Journal)
Not a member yet
250 research outputs found
Sort by
Three Ways to Bridge the Gap between Perception and Action, and Language
No full textA rallying cry in some sectors of cognitive science, the embodiment of language is understood here in the full content of meaning of phenomenological tradition to help assess the remaining distance from neuroscience to a science of language, provided that tracking down in the brain neural events correlative of verbal behavior would not be sufficient. From an eidetic standpoint, one must build the transition between perceptive, pragmatic and semantic morphologies. From the point of view of subjective experience, one must understand how it is possible that we move from our sensory and kinaesthetic experiences to verbal expressions of a sense that could be shared by others. That is why, in order to prevent neglect of any dimension of embodiment of language, we would rather plead for a threefold approach than concede that the current naturalistic mode is the only possible
Bidirectional Influences of Emotion and Action in Evaluation of Emotionally-Connoted Words
No full textThe goal of this review is to present the embodied character of emotionally-connoted language through the study of the mutual influences of affective language and motor action. After a brief definition of the embodied approach of cognition, the activity of language understanding is presented as an off-line embodied process implying sensory-motor resonance. Then the bidirectional character of influences between language and action will be addressed in both behavioral and neuropsychological studies, illustrated by the specific case of emotionally-connoted language. These reciprocal effects are grounded on the motor correspondence between action and the motor dimension of language, emerging from a diversity of source such as adaptive motivation, past experiences, body specificities, or motor fluency
The Link between Action and Language: Recent Findings and Future Perspectives
No full textThis paper aims to present a critical review of studies focused on embodied cognition and, more specifically, on the relationship between language and action. A critical analysis of studies using methods such as TMS and fMRI will be presented, and results reported by the different studies will be discussed, both theoretically and methodologically. Then, in response to some inconsistency detected by the analysis of literature, Virtual Reality will be presented as a possible answer or enrichment for the study of this topic. Possible future research tracks and application are discussed
Cortical Motor Organization, Mirror Neurons, and Embodied Language: An Evolutionary Perspective
No full textThe recent conceptual achievement that the cortical motor system plays a crucial role not only in motor control but also in higher cognitive functions has given a new perspective also on the involvement of motor cortex in language perception and production. In particular, there is evidence that the matching mechanism based on mirror neurons can be involved in both pho-nological recognition and retrieval of meaning, especially for action word categories, thus suggesting a contribution of an action–perception mechanism to the automatic comprehension of semantics. Furthermore, a compari-son of the anatomo-functional properties of the frontal motor cortex among different primates and their communicative modalities indicates that the combination of the voluntary control of the gestural communication systems and of the vocal apparatus has been the critical factor in the transition from a gestural-based communication into a predominantly speech-based system. Finally, considering that the monkey and human premotor-parietal motor system, plus the prefrontal cortex, are involved in the sequential motor organization of actions and in the hierarchical combination of motor elements, we propose that elements of such motor organization have been exploited in other domains, including some aspects of the syntactic structure of language
The Language of Colour: Neurology and the Ineffable
No full textIt is often claimed, following Joseph Levine, that there is an ‘explanatory gap’ between ordinary physical facts and the way we perceive things, so that it is impossible to explain, among other things, why colours actually look the way they do. C.L. Hardin, by contrast, argues that there are sufficient asymmetries between colours to traverse this gap. This paper argues that the terms we use to characterize colours, such as ‘warm’ and ‘cool’, are not well understood, and that we need to understand the neurological basis for such associations if we are even to understand what is fully meant by saying, for example, that red is a warm colour. This paper also speculates on how Hardin’s strategy can be generalized
