How Language Is Embodied in Bilinguals and Children with Specific Language Impairment

Abstract

This manuscript explores the role of embodied views of language comprehension and production in bilingualism and specific language impairment. Reconceptualizing popular models of bilingual language processing, the embodied theory is first extended to this area. Issues such as semantic grounding in a second language and potential differences between early and late acquisition of a second language are discussed. Predictions are made about how this theory informs novel ways of thinking about teaching a second language. Secondly, the comorbidity of speech, language, and motor impairments and how embodiment theory informs the discussion of the etiology of these impairments is examined. A hypothesis is presented suggesting that what is often referred to as specific language impairment may not be so specific due to widespread subclinical motor deficits in this population. Predictions are made about how weaknesses and instabilities in speech motor control, even at a subclinical level, may disrupt the neural network that connects acoustic input, articulatory motor plans, and semantics. Finally, I make predictions about how this information informs clinical practice for professionals such as speech language pathologists and occupational and physical therapists. These new hypotheses are placed within the larger framework of the body of work pertaining to semantic grounding, action-based language acquisition, and action-perception links that underlie language learning and conceptual grounding.

Embodied Learning: Why at School the Mind Needs the Body

“…Children hear and repeat sequences of sounds (words), i.e., symbols but these symbols are related to objects they perceive with their senses or to actions they perform. Children cannot be prevented from touching, dropping, smelling the objects and putting them in their mouths (Adams, 2016). Therefore, in the brain’s language, a word must be represented as a sensorimotor network that mirrors all experiences collected to the concept (Pulvermuller, 1999).…”

Do you wish to waive your rights? Affect and decision-making in multilingual speakers

“…A growing body of research suggests, however, that there is more to language processing than computation of meanings -our interpretations are also sensitive to verbal and non-verbal cues and discursive framing and integrate affect and simulation of sensory-motor content: verbs like running, grabbing or throwing activate the same parts of the brain as direct physical actions they refer to and words that refer to emotional experiences activate neural structures involved in feeling the emotions in question [2][3][4][5]. These ground-breaking findings called for a reappraisal of the cognitive architecture of the human mind and became the cornerstone of a new approach that views cognition as situated and grounded, language as embodied, language processing as simulated action, language learning as a statistical process linked to frequency of experiences and word representations as clusters of experience [2,[4][5][6][7][8]. This approach raises an interesting question with regard to multilingualism and emotions: if affective responses to words and phrases are a function of individual experiences, how do we process languages in which had few or no emotional experiences?…”

Bilingualism and Creativity: Towards a Situated Cognition Approach

“…If concepts are indeed grounded in primary sensorimotor actions, but can also be subjected to combinatorial processes at the abstract conceptual level (Lakoff, ; Pulvermüller, ), the possibility emerges to think of situations, objects, actions, and events that a person has never observed or performed, or that are impossible in reality, which could also be expressed in language. When language is processed, both on the visual and the auditory level, the motor, perceptual, and emotional systems are activated to simulate the situations described (Adams, ; Gallese, ). The verbally expressed conceptual instruction, for example, when listening to a fairy tale, “think of a horse with a horn on its nose” would create the image of the non‐existent entity “unicorn” that, according to the embodiment approach, inherits the multimodal properties of real horses and real horns.…”

“…First, in so far as conceptual knowledge biases attention and thereby influences affordance perception (Pulvermüller, ), the initial situation—“what is there to start with?”—can be both different and richer for bilinguals due to their enriched conceptual systems (cf. Adams, ; Bylund & Athanasopoulos, ; Kharkhurin, ), allowing for more exploratory actions and increased fluency and originality. Regarding the generating of ideas, due to bilinguals’ partly different and generally more enriched conceptual systems with wider spreading activation, an advantage can be expected, especially regarding the originality of ideas.…”

“…Regarding the generating of ideas, due to bilinguals’ partly different and generally more enriched conceptual systems with wider spreading activation, an advantage can be expected, especially regarding the originality of ideas. As an example, Adams () described the differences in a conceptual system in the concept of bread. When using the English word bread , this might evoke the image of a loaf of sliced bread bought at the supermarket, whereas the French word pain might evoke the image of a baguette that you buy at the bakery.…”