Semantic structure vs. conceptual structure: The nature of lexical concepts in a simulation-based account of language understanding

The recent emergence of simulation-based accounts of language understanding (e.g. Barsalou et al. To appear; Zwaan 2004) has provided a promising perspective on the relationship between language and conceptual structure in facilitating linguistically-mediated meaning construction. However, these accounts have tended to largely equate semantic structure—semantic representation associated with language—with conceptual structure. This potentially confuses the respective roles of the linguistic and conceptual systems in meaning construction. The present paper argues for a principled distinction between semantic structure and conceptual structure. The main point of the paper, based on linguistic evidence, is to delineate the nature and key characteristics of semantic structure. I argue that semantic structure is highly schematic in nature, a requirement for being directly encoded in language. Semantic structure contrasts with conceptual structure in that the latter relates to rich aspects of perceptual and subjective experience. The importance of this finding for simulation-based accounts of language is that semantic structure cannot directly give rise to simulations. Rather, the function of semantic structure is to provide a level of schematic structure which provides the necessary ‘scaffolding’ for conceptual representations, thereby facilitating linguistically-mediated simulations.