Mental Simulation and Language Comprehension

Michelle Liu (Monash University)

According to the simulation view, language comprehension often constitutively involves perceptual-motor simulations. In this talk, I will survey the empirical evidence for the simulation view. Drawing on recent work on semantic representation, I make suggestions as to how the simulation view can be reconciled with the traditional view on which language comprehension constitutively involves amodal symbol manipulation, elaborating on when perceptual-motor simulations may be deployed for language comprehension. I shall also illustrate how the simulation view can illuminate a particular puzzling behaviour of polysemous words. I end the talk by noting how perceptual-motor simulations can have a significant impact on language users through different forms of language.