Abstract
Embodied approaches to language propose that higher order mental processes, such as meaning construction, rely on the sensorimotor neural devices of our brain (Barsalou in Behav Brain Sci 22:577–660, 1999; Tettamanti et al. in J Cog Neurosci 17:273–281, 2005; Pulvermüller in Symbols and embodiment: debates on meaning and cognition. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 85–116, 2008). According to the Embodied Semantics paradigm, linguistic concepts are represented in the brain within partially overlapping neural substrates recruited to enact and experience the action a word refers to (Kemmerer in Lang Cogn 7(3):450–475, 2015). Mirror neurons are a class of cells capable of discharging congruently both when a person executes an action and when s/he perceives the same action performed by another individual. Recent research has demonstrated the involvement of mirror neurons in motor language processing: perceiving a word such as “to grasp” activates the same brain motor areas triggered as if we were enacting the same action (Buccino et al. in Cogn Brain Res 24:355–363, 2005; Kemmerer & Castillo in Brain and Language 112:54-76, 2010). The debate is open on whether similar somatotopic mirror neuron activations happen also in experiments involving abstract motor language comprehension, with scholars debating this point and trying to ascertain if congruent motor areas are triggered both when the motor component of a sentence is concrete (e.g. “to kick the ball”), and when it is abstract (e.g. “to kick the bucket”, Aziz-Zadeh and Damasio in J Physiol 102:35–39, 2008; Cacciari et al. in Brain Lang 119:149–157, 2011). In this chapter I offer a critical overview of mirror neurons involvement in concrete and abstract motion meaning construction and discuss some of the issues raised against the hypothesis that language comprehension makes use of the mirror neuron system. I also stress the importance that further research be conducted which takes into due account linguistic relativity and second language competence.
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Notes
- 1.
For the sake of simplicity, we use the terms “utterance” and “utter” for both the oral and written use of language.
- 2.
Violi speaks in her article about “Cognitive Semiotics” and not about “Embodied Semantics”. Cognitive Semiotics is an interdisciplinary science that makes use of methods and findings of both Humanities and Cognitive Science. Of course the core topic is the study of meaning construction and, for our purposes, we can consider it very close to Embodied Semantics.
- 3.
“Living body” is the English translation for the French “corps propre”.
- 4.
The literature about MNs counts more than 800 published papers (Kilner and Lemon 2013) and an attempt to review it here would be impossible. We limit ourselves to summarize the issues related to the topic this chapter deals with. We address the reader to Kilner and Lemon’s paper and to Cook et al.’s paper (2014) for a complete picture of what MNs are and what they are for in the human brain.
- 5.
Even if in Italian a sentence like “il cane corse in casa” (literally translated as “the dog run into the house”) is grammatical. This shows that Italian, to a higher extent than other Romance languages, can reduplicate the Germanic conflation according to the semantics of the verb: if it contains traits of force, speed or intensity, motion and manner can conflate as usually happens in Germanic languages (see Baicchi 2010).
- 6.
In a recent paper, Kemmerer (2017) has maintained that the research devoted to understanding how categories of object concepts are represented in the human brain is severely limited as it has been carried out mainly with European languages. Linguistic relativity influences the neural underpinnings of object concepts classification, as the author demonstrates by reviewing a number of studies that look at the different outcomes of psychological and neurobiological experiments conducted with speakers of languages with (e.g. Chinese and Burmese) and without (e.g. English and Russian) a nominal classification system for objects properties such as shape and size. Kemmerer’s claims, even if not directly addressed to movement semantics, can be taken as an indirect support to the proposal that linguistic relativity should be taken in serious consideration also when dealing with brain representations of movement expressions.
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Della Putta, P. (2018). Embodied Semantics and the Mirror Neurons: Past Research and Some Proposals for the Future. In: Baicchi, A., Digonnet, R., Sandford, J. (eds) Sensory Perceptions in Language, Embodiment and Epistemology. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 42. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91277-6_2
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