This study investigated the differences in the expression of numerical motion metaphors in English and Spanish. We evaluated 1472 English-to-Spanish translations in which a manner of motion verb (e.g., skyrocket, plummet) was used to metaphorically express numerical change (e.g., unemployment is skyrocketing). For each of the translations, we annotated (1) the type of metaphor used in Spanish, (2) whether the manner of motion and path information was present in Spanish, and (3) whether the path and manner information in Spanish were conflated in a single word or indicated via adjuncts. There were three main findings. First, Spanish translations shifted from the motion domain to a quantity domain in almost half of the translations (e.g., skyrocket translated as aumentar, Eng. increase). Second, Spanish translations omitted manner of motion in half of the cases (e.g., prices surging translated as alza de los precios, Eng. rise in prices). Third, the path of motion was always present in the Spanish translations. This translation analysis provides evidence that the typological differences reported for the encoding of literal motion are also observed in the expression of numerical, metaphorical motion and that the choice of metaphorical mappings depends on language typology.

Prosody and gesture are two known cues for expressing information structure by emphasising new or important elements in spoken discourse while attenuating given information. Applying this potentially multimodal form-meaning mapping to a foreign language may be difficult for learners. This study investigates how native speakers and language learners use prosodic prominence and head gestures to differentiate levels of givenness.

Twenty-five Catalan learners of French and 19 native French speakers were video-recorded during a short spontaneous narrative task. Participants’ oral productions were annotated for information status, perceived prominence, pitch accents, and head gesture types. Results show that given information in French is multimodally less marked than new-er information and is accordingly perceived as less prominent. Our findings indicate that Catalan learners of French mark given information more frequently than native speakers and may transfer their use of low pitch accents to their second language (L2). The data also show that the use of head gestures depends on the presence of prosodic marking, calling into question the assumption that prosody and gesture have balanced functional roles. Finally, the type of head gesture does not appear to play a significant role in marking information status.

Embodied cognition theory proposes that spatial cognition preferences facilitate the simulation of action language. Importantly, spatial cognition relies on either egocentric (body-dependent) or allocentric (body-independent) representations. Research demonstrates that spatial representation proclivity influences the simulation of non-transfer action sentences. However, the impact of individual spatial cognition preferences on transfer action sentence simulation remains unexplored. We administered an egocentric and allocentric memory task and an action sentence recognition task to 37 participants. We used an egocentric–allocentric recall strategy proclivity index to classify participants and employed this metric as a moderator between the transfer perspective (first-person perspective, 1PP vs. third-person perspective, 3PP) and the transfer type (concrete vs. abstract). We found that spatial preferences do not moderate 1PP transfer action sentence recognition. Importantly, we found that egocentric proclivity improves 3PP transfer action sentence recognition and that allocentric proclivity hampers 3PP transfer action sentence recognition. No moderation was found for the transfer type. The study suggests that recognition memory for sentences describing others’ actions is related to body-dependent spatial representations, suggesting a possible link between spatial memory proclivity and action language simulation.

The popularity of colour perception as a vehicle to investigate language–perception interactions has led to a large body of experimental work. Recently, studies have focused on investigating the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms of effects of language on colour perception. Because of substantial variation in experimental designs and the study conditions in these designs, evaluating and comparing the evidence reported in these studies remains complex. This is problematic, because language–perception interactions manifest themselves differently across cognitive contexts and task designs. To shed light on the precise conditions under which such effects are obtained, we conducted a scoping review on 72 experimental papers, and we assessed the experimental approaches taken. Based on this review, we recommend committing to an interdisciplinary approach, relying on knowledge of the neuroscience of perception. We provide specific examples of how future research can carefully investigate the relationship between cognitive load, attention, working memory and verbal label access.

Grammatical aspect is a linguistic correlate of the temporal distribution of an event. However, aspect is not identical across languages. Crosslinguistic differences in mapping between aspect and basic temporal features such as event stage can reveal underlying language-specific criteria that guide event conceptualization. We investigated the relationship between grammatical aspect and event stage in conceptualizations of in-progress and completed events by native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers of aspectual languages Russian and English. In L1, event stage predicted aspect in Russian but not in English. In L2s, event stage did not predict aspect. We discuss these findings in terms of crosslinguistic differences in the relevance of event stage for conceptualization in L1 as well as the role of L1 transfer in L2 aspect use.