Fictive motion NordForsk seed money pilot

Metaphorical language and thinking is an important area of interest for the study of human cognition and higher cognitive processes related to language. Even though metaphor has been studied in philosophy and in cognitive linguistics, it has been exclusively at the theoretical level. Nowadays we have evidence that in certain deficits (such as e.g., Autism Specturm Disorders), there is a breakdown of the ability to process and interpret metaphor and figurative language. The question is what mechanisms are involved and at what level of cognition this breakdown resides. We need experimental evidence that taps the very nature of this ability. A good oportunity for research on metaphorical thinking processes is the pervasively occurring phenomenon known as Fictive motion (descriptions containing a motion verb, but in fact describing a static scene (e.g. "The road goes along the valley"). In the Nordic countries there is already expertise on spatial language at different research institutions (prof. Mila Vulchanova from NTNU, Mikkel Wallentin from Center for Funktionelt Interaktiv Nevrovidenskab at Århus University, prof. Urpo Nikanne from Åbo Akademi, prof Sven Strömqvist from the University of Lund). At the same time, new language laboratories with up to date equipment, most notably eye-tracking and neuroimaging equipment have been established in several Nordic institutions (among them NTNU, Åbo Akademi, Lund University, Århus University Hospital). The study of metaphorical processes will profit greatly, if this expertise and andvanced research facilities can join efforts in providing an ampler and more unified picture of the research phenomenon. It will be also very advantageous to be able to meet and exchange experience with leading researchers in field, who have conducted seminal work on figurative motion, such as Dr. Dan Richardson from the University of Reading. For this purpose we plan to organize a series of two meetings between representatives from the mentioned institutions in order to discuss future joint research work.

The project recruits and exploits expertise and facilities across the Nordic countries (The Language Acquisition and Processing Lab, NTNU (Norway), Center for Funktionelt Integrativ Neurovidenskab, Århus University Hospital (Denmark), the Humanities Lab at Lund University (Sweden) and the Research Lab at Åbo Akademi (Finland)) and will unite the existing expertise on the phenomena of interest and on various relevant research methods and technologies, and will thus contribute to drawing up a bigger format international project. It relies on already existing co-operation between some of the partners through previous and current joint Nordic and international projects (cf. Lab profiles in 10 below), and attracts renowned experts in the relevant fields from other European countries, in this way creating new research co-operation opportunities.

B. Description of Research Environment

• The language Acquisition and Processing Lab, NTNU, Norway was established in 2006 as a result of the NFR investment in advanced research equipment to strengthen local research units and provide them with appropriate tools necessary in their research. It has also emerged as a result of a recent specialization of the staff in the study of spatial and motion categorization that subserves language production and processing from a cross-linguistic perspective.The team in Trondheim received a NOS-H grant for a 3-year Nordic and international project to study motion encoding in language, which served as an initial impetus for creating a Nordic expert network for studying the topic (from NTNU, Åbo Akademi, Joensuu University, Göteborg university and Lincoln University). Currently the lab runs a range of experiments studying goal perception and prediction across populations (adults and infants), motion perception and categorization (adults), and a large-scale cross-linguistic study (based in an experiment designed in the lab) studying the range of motion expressions used in different Indo-European and African languages and how they cluster according to key conceptual features (co-leaders of the project are Mila Vulchanova nad Ewa Dabrowska, Sheffield University). The lab has been awarded also a 2-year Nordic Infrastructure grant from Nordforsk (with our Lab/ Prof. Mila Vulchanova as project leader) with 12 participating research labs/ teams from 7 Nordic/ Baltic countries and over 45 affiliated active researchers.

• Mikkel Wallentin is currently postdoc at Center for Funktionelt Integrativ Neurovidenskab, Århus University Hospital. He has published international papers on the use of spatial working memory in referential language comprehension (Wallentin, et al. 2006) with and without shifts of perspective (Wallentin, et al. in press) as a result of a collaboration with the 'Space and memory' group at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. He is also involved in a collaborative project to study Fictive Motion sentences, in which representational perspective shifts possibly have an important role (Wallentin, et al. 2005a; Wallentin, et al. 2005b).

• Sven Strömqvist is currently a professor of language acquisition at the University of Lund and head of the Humanities Lab. The lab consisting of a unique constellation of special lab modules: an Eye-tracking lab, a (Virtual) Reality lab, an Electrophysiology lab (ERP-measurement), an Acoustics lab with an echo-free chamber, and a Body-tracking lab. Strong research areas represented by the groups affiliated to the lab include research on language and cognition, research on language learning and language acquisition, research on children and adolescents with language impairment or reading and writing problems, research on reading and writing in real time, research on cognitive and communicative consequences of linguistic diversity. Further, the lab participates in two new umbrella-initiatives at Lund University: "Brain-Mind-Behaviour" and "Ljudmiljöcentrum" (Centre for the study of sound environments), and there are plans to encourage neurophysiological validation of behavioural hypotheses as line of study in the near future. Sven Strömqvist has published over 125 items and is involved in numerous scientific projects about language acquisition, child language, reading and writing skills, and language in disabled populations, among which are “Language, gestures and pictures in the perspective of semiotic development” and “Linguistic effects on cognition”.

• Professor Urpo Nikanne (Åbo Akademi University) has a strong profile in natural language semantics building on conceptual representations. His team at Åbo has been studying spatial and causal expressions and had an important role in the NOS-H sponsored project on motion encoding in language. The department of Finnish (prof. Urpo Nikanne) has long-standing co-operation with the team at the psychology department and combines experimental work with theoretical work on linguistic semantics and conceptual representations. The Research Lab at the Psychology Department is one of the partners in the 2-year Nordic Infrastructure and has a long-standing profile in studying language acquisition and deficits.

• Daniel Richardson (University of Reading, UK) studied philosophy at Magdalen college, Oxford University, and then psychology at Cornell. After receiving his PhD, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at Stanford, an assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz. Currently he is a lecturer at the University of Reading. Dr. Richardson is renowned for his research on Eye movements during language use and cognitive processing, social cognition, perceptual-motor representations in cognition, spatial indexing in adults and infants. In his experiments he uses visual displays combined with figurative speech to examine how people process figurative speech and other forms of implicit spatial language.

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