From breaking bread to breaking hearts: embodied simulation and action language comprehension

ABSTRACT

In this study, we conducted a behavioural experiment using literal, idiomatic, conventional and novel metaphorical action sentences. Participants viewed an action video, immediately after a sentence containing a verb that did (matching modality) or did not (mismatching modality) match the observed action. All the sentences were presented both in the matching modality and the mismatching modality. Participants had to indicate whether the sentence made sense or not by pressing a designated response key. We recorded participants' reaction times and accuracy. We found no significant differences between the matching and mismatching modality in the idiomatic condition. Instead, we found a facilitation effect for the literal and the metaphorical conventional condition in the matching modality compared to the mismatching modality and an interference effect for the metaphorical novel condition in the matching modality compared to the mismatching modality. We interpret these findings in light of the Embodied Cognition approach to language.

KEYWORDS:

• Metaphor
• embodied cognition
• priming
• motor system

Acknowledgments

The authors want to thank Edoardo Arcuri, Marco Carapezza, Nunzio Langiulli, Simone Roiati, and Maria Alessandra Umiltà for their useful contribution to the study. The authors want also to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

All authors contributed to the conceptualisation of the experiment and its methodology. SG and VC created the stimuli; SG and FF collected the data; SG, MA and FF analysed the data; all authors contributed to the interpretation of the data; MA and VC supervised and administered the entire project. Regarding the paper, it was thought together by all the authors. In particular, SG wrote the original draft; MA and FF contributed especially to the drafting of section 3; MA, VC and VG supervised the writing of the paper and revised the original draft.

Notes

1 Idiomatic sentences are sentences whose meaning cannot be derived from the literal interpretation of individual words and which convey a cultural meaning that is closely linked to a language and society. The meaning of an idiomatic sentence is not constructed compositionally but is stored as a single semantic unit. In idiomatic action sentences (e.g. "Marco spezza una lancia in favore di Sergio"), the expression "spezzare una lancia" [to break a lance] has lost its motor origin and its connection with the motor properties of the verb "spezzare" used literally, in favor of an abstract meaning that cannot be constructed compositionally (in this case "to defend"). On the contrary, metaphorical sentences are sentences in which one element, the target, is described in relation to another element, the vehicle of the metaphor. In our case, the meaning of "spezzare il cuore del fidanzato" [break the heart], however strongly conventional it may be, is compositionally constructed, and the verb "spezzare" retains a connection with the original literal meaning of the verb and the motor features associated with it.

2 The corpus consists of 12 billion words and it is updated to 2019-2020. The corpus is available on the Sketch Engine platform: itTenTen – Italian corpus from the web | Sketch Engine.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by Imminent Translated’s Research Center 2022 Grant for the project “The Neuroscience of Translation. Novel and Dead Metaphor Processing in Native and Second-Language Speakers” to Martina Ardizzi and Valentina Cuccio and by PRIN Grant 2020YB7J25 and by the Ministry of University and Research (MUR), National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) Project MNESYS (PE00000006) – A Multiscale Integrated Approach to the Study of the Nervous System in Health and Disease (DN 1533 11.10. 2022) to Vittorio Gallese.