Word Order, Action, and the Brain: A Reply to Arbib

Abstract

In a recent paper in this journal, I argued that the crosslinguistic prevalence of subject-object-verb and subject-verb-object word orders ref lects the sequential and hierarchical representation of action in Broca's area. Arbib (2015) discusses that paper in the context of broader computational, neuroscientific, and evolutionary issues, and presents a critique of my specific proposal. Here, I respond to his concerns and defend my original account.

What can autism teach us about the role of sensorimotor systems in higher cognition? New clues from studies on language, action semantics, and abstract emotional concept processing

“…Words with action-related meaning incorporate neurons representing motor programs in frontal and motor areas, thus resulting in the somatotopic effector-specific activation discussed in Section 1. In contrast, occipitotemporal cortex is activated by visually-related object words (Martin, 2007), and auditory, olfactory and gustatory regions by sound-, smell-and taste- Typical and optimal semantic processing may require the collaboration of modal systems with cross-modal 'hubs' or 'convergence zones', a putative substrate of which may exist in anterior temporal lobe Humphreys, Hoffman, Visser, Binney, & Lambon Ralph, 2015;Kemmerer, 2015 ) and the neural reuse of this coupling for language and cognition. It should become difficult to build action perception circuits for spoken and written word forms, thus predicting a general linguistic processing deficit.…”

“…Vice versa, action word processing may impact on specific motor mechanisms, with effects visible in behaviour and in electrophysiological brain recordings 2 Fischer & Zwaan, 2008;Glenberg & Kaschak, 2003;Ibanez et al, 2012;Pulvermü ller, Hauk, Nikulin, & Ilmoniemi, 2005;Rueschemeyer, Lindemann, van Elk, & Bekkering, 2009;Schomers & Pulvermü ller, 2016;Schomers, Kirilina, Weigand, Bajbouj, & Pulvermü ller, 2015;Shebani & Pulvermü ller, 2013). Fifth, and finally, movement disorders and clinical impairments to motor systems are associated with specific processing impairments or abnormalities for action-related words which call on action knowledge in the retrieval of their meaning (Bak & Chandran, 2012;Boulenger et al, 2008;Cardona et al, 2014;Cotelli et al, 2006;García & Ibañez, 2014;Grossman et al, 2008;Kemmerer, 2015;Neininger & Pulvermü ller, 2001Pulvermü ller et al, 2010). 3 Whilst the effects of motor damage on action word processing have been thoroughly documented in many populations with acquired brain damage or disease states, we here examine grounded cognition and action semantics through the lens of a very different type of movement disorder.…”

Neural Underpinnings of Morality Judgment and Moral Aesthetic Judgment

“…Cortical areas with motor properties, including inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), ventral premotor cortex (PMv) and inferior parietal lobule (IPL), namely, the MNS, have been observed to respond to motor behaviors when they are performed and observed (G. Buccino et al, 2001;Giovanni Buccino et al, 2004;Kemmerer, 2015;Kemmerer et al, 2012;Li et al, 2020;Molenberghs et al, 2012;Pulvermüller, 2013;Rizzolatti et al, 2014;Urgesi et al, 2014), re ecting motor representation of behavior (Spunt et al, 2010(Spunt et al, , 2011Spunt & Adolphs, 2014;Spunt & Lieberman, 2012a. Li et al, (2020) recently used fNIRS to examine the brain activity in the frontal, motor, parietal and occipital regions, aiming to better understand the brain correlates involved in encoding motor complexity.…”

Revisiting the relation between syntax, action, and left BA44

“…Next, the second section focuses more narrowly on how the proposal applies to the basic word order of subject (S), object (O), and verb (V) in simple transitive clauses. It is well-established that the vast majority of languages are either SOV or SVO, and in previous papers I argued that these strong syntactic tendencies derive from how left BA44 represents the sequential-hierarchical structure of goal-directed actions (Kemmerer, 2012(Kemmerer, , 2015b. Here, I briefly review this account and expand on it by discussing more recent work.…”

“…The crosslinguistic preference for SOV and SVO word orders One way in which progress could potentially be made would be to focus on one of the simplest and most well-studied manifestations of syntax-specifically, the basic word order of transitive clauses (Kemmerer, 2012(Kemmerer, , 2015b. In linguistic typology, basic word order is defined as the sequence of subject (S), object (O), and verb (V) that satisfies the following criteria: it is used most frequently; it has the least amount of functionindicating phonological, morphological, or syntactic marking; and it carries no special pragmatic information apart from declarative mood (Dryer, 2007(Dryer, , 2013.…”