Introduction: Sensory Motor Concepts – at the Crossroad between Language & Cognition

Abstract

This book presents selected papers from the conference "Sensory Motor Concepts in Language and Cognition" organized by the DFG Collaborative Research Center 991: "The Structure of Representations in Language, Cognition, and Science" and held from December 01-03 at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany. It brings together researchers working in the elds of computer linguistics, linguistics, literary, neuroscience, philosophy and psychology, whose work contributes to the interdisciplinary study of cognitive phenomena, speci cally in the exploration of the role of sensory motor concepts for language and cognition in general. The aim of this book is to uncover hidden potentials and available prospects of inter and trans-disciplinary research in the eld of sensory motor concepts by de ning common interests and objectives, and sketching paths for a fruitful interdisciplinary cross-fertilization, cooperative projects, and research transfer. What is so fascinating about sensory-motor concepts? According to Barsalou, mental representations used in cognitive tasks are grounded in the sensory-motor system. Therefore it is assumed that the human system of concepts cannot be regarded as either abstract or amodal, but as immediately anchored in the perception, experience and simulation of sensory-motor actions (Barsalou, 2008). This assumption is supported by the following facts: a) sensory-motor knowledge is the most speci c and best-di erentiated concrete human experience we possess, and b) sensorymotor concepts are not only conceptually simple and easy to encode given the fact that they are part of our everyday life, but due to their semantic complexity they can