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. 2024 Oct 25;14(11):1056.
doi: 10.3390/brainsci14111056.

Embodied Semantics: Early Simultaneous Motor Grounding in First and Second Languages

Juliane Britz  1   2 , Emmanuel Collaud  1 , Lea B Jost  2 , Sayaka Sato  1 , Angélique Bugnon  1 , Michael Mouthon  2 , Jean-Marie Annoni  2
Affiliations

Embodied Semantics: Early Simultaneous Motor Grounding in First and Second Languages

Juliane Britz et al. Brain Sci. .

Abstract

Background/objectives: Although the embodiment of action-related language is well-established in the mother tongue (L1), less is known about the embodiment of a second language (L2) acquired later in life through formal instruction. We used the high temporal resolution of ERPs and topographic ERP analyses to compare embodiment in L1 and L2 and to investigate whether L1 and L2 are embodied with different strengths at different stages of linguistic processing.

Methods: Subjects were presented with action-related and non-action-related verbs in a silent reading task. Subjects were late French-German and German-French bilinguals, respectively, and we could therefore collapse across languages to avoid common confounding between language (French and German) and order of acquisition (L1, L2).

Results: We could show distinct effects of embodiment and language. Embodiment affected only the sensory and lexical stages of processing with increased strength and power of the N1 component for motor vs. non-motor verbs, and language affected the lexical and semantic stages of processing with stronger P2/N400 components for L2 than for L1. Non-motor verbs elicited a stronger P1 component in L2.

Conclusions: Our results suggest that processing words in L2 requires more effortful processing. Importantly, L1 and L2 are not embodied differently, and embodiment affects early and similar stages of processing in L1 and L2, possibly integrating other process of action-language interaction.

Keywords: ERP; bilingualism; brain; embodied semantics; language.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Experimental procedure. All stimuli were presented in white on a black background for 800 ms; the interstimulus interval varied randomly. Subjects read the words silently (see the text for a detailed description). Related pairs are presented on the left side of the figure, unrelated pairs on the right side.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Results of the spatio-temporal segmentation procedure for the analyzed words. (A). Illustration of the computed segmentation for each experimental condition (amplitude of plots is the Global Field Power [GFP]). (B). Topographies of the microstates isolated. (C). Graphical illustration when the motor-relatedness factor is significant for the global explained variance (GEV) and GFP (details in Table 2). White dots = motor-related verbs (M), black dots = non-motor-related verbs (nM), * = 0.05 > p > 0.01, ** = p < 0.01. L1 = mother tongue, L2 = second language learned at a later stage. Map 2, which correspond to the largest part of the P100 time windows, extends between 100 and 150 ms after stimulus presentations. Map 4, which corresponds to N1, extends between around 150 and 300 ms after stimulus presentations.
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