There is now a large body of evidence that support the role of sensory and motor systems in semantic representation and processing. However, I've never heard about such evidence for bilingual's second language. Do you know of any paradigm that test L2 embodiment?
I'm not a specialist in embodiment theories but i have found this paper in Frontiers in cognition (with free PDF version) : processing abstract and concrete sentences in L1 vs L2.
http://www.frontiersin.org/Cognition/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00227/abstract
Hi Jean Marc,
Thank you for this very interesting reference. It will be very helpful for my research since I also am manipulating abstract and concrete sentences. It is interesting to see that the same pattern of results are found in a cross-cultural study with two syntactically different languages. Also, the authors emphasize on the crucial role of both perception–action and linguistic experience for abstract words. However, in this study and in all studies on language embodiment, participants are "monolinguals". To my knowledge, the grounding of L2 in sensory-motor systems and action has never been explored. Now, as we both know, languages powerfully shape the mind, so i'm curious to find out what can multilingual cognition provide to embodiment theories and vise versa. Best.
Hi Maeva,
To my mind, Multilingual cognition studies can bring original experimental designs for embodiment theories.
When studying the early stages of bilingual development (bilingual child) we can see how children react to songs in L1 and in L2 (during reception and production -when they try to sing the song they were beginning to listen- for example). So, We can study seperatly the language information effect and the musical effect. Unfortunately, no references yet on this subject.
Hi, there's not much literature about embodiment in L2 but of course there's a lot of variables to take into account (age of acquisition, levels of proficiency, language exposure) so there would be a lot of work to do in that area playing with different combination of those variables (do late learners highly proficient L2 speakers "embody" language as native speakers/early learners? what's the role of exposure? when does L2 "become" just like L1 in terms of -automatic- processing?).
The only literature I know about embodiment in L2 is about emotion: you could be interested in this chapter by Catherin Harris http://www.bu.edu/psych/charris/papers/HarrisEmotionBiling.pdf about emotional responses to word stimuli presented in L1 and L2, or in this recent paper http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/pijp/2012/00000047/00000006/art00002 reviewing the "disembodied cognition" hypothesis in L2.
Hi Marta,
I appreciate your interest and your contribution to that problematic. It's true that, just as many other bilinguals problematics, there's a lot of variables to take into account.
Althought it's more emotional specific, the references you share will certainly be very helpful for my research, so thanks a lot.
HI Mäeva,
I Remember I attended a conference in 2010 in Granada (I send you the proceedings attached) and there was a speaker that made an experiment trying to replicate the ACE in bilingual participants' second language. They did not found significant results. They even could not replicate the original ACE effect, therefore, I suppose they cannot publish their data. But the procedure seemed to be consistent.
If you want to dive on the proceedings, I am sure that you will find this. And maybe you can contact the author.
Best,
Juanjo
Thanks you a lot Juanjo for these helpful response!
I'll contact the author to know what procedure they used.
Best
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