Mental simulation and language comprehension: The case of copredication

Abstract

Empirical evidence suggests that perceptual-motor simulations are often constitutively involved in language comprehension. Call this “the simulation view of language comprehension.” This paper applies the simulation view to illuminate the much-discussed phenomenon of copredication, where a noun permits multiple predications which seem to select different senses of the noun simultaneously. On the proposed account, the (in)felicitousness of a copredicational sentence is closely associated with the perceptual simulations that the language user deploys in comprehending the sentence.