The body and the fading away of abstract concepts and words: a sign language analysis.

ABSTRACT: One of the most important challenges for embodied and grounded theories of cognition concerns the representation of abstract concepts, such as "freedom." Many embodied theories of abstract concepts have been proposed. Some proposals stress the similarities between concrete and abstract concepts showing that they are both grounded in perception and action system while other emphasize their difference favoring a multiple representation view. An influential view proposes that abstract concepts are mapped to concrete ones through metaphors. Furthermore, some theories underline the fact that abstract concepts are grounded in specific contents, as situations, introspective states, emotions. These approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive, since it is possible that they can account for di

SUBMITTER: Borghi AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4114187 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature