Embodied Natural Language

August 9th, 2006 Fred McVittie Posted in Abstract, Embodiment, Language, Mathematics, Nunez, Rafael |

Natural language contains many terms for concepts which are inherently abstract; justice, love etc. It also contains terms for entities which are beyond the range of human sense; quarks, black holes etc. It also contains terms for entities which are purely theoretical and/or fictitious; ghosts, epicycles, souls, etc. Despite the discorporate nature of these entities, it is apparent that their appearance in language is not discorporate at all. All these concepts, when looked at in the context of their use in sentences and in their definitions expressed in natural language, is made readily embodiable through the application of concrete metaphor. In fact, it might be said that natural language, in its entirety, is a fully embodied system. This contrasts with, for example, the language of mathematics, which is not obviously embodied, (although is it clearly based ultimately on embodied ideas, after Lakoff and Nunez).