Sandy ideas and coloured days: Some computational implications of embodiment

This paper is an exploration of the relationship between language and vision from the perspective of language evolution on the one hand, and metaphor on the other. Recent research has suggested that the origins of human language capacity can be traced to the evolution of a region in the brain that permits the interaction of information from sensory and motor cortices. In light of this, it is hypothesised that the computational mechanisms of language are derived from those of the sensory-motor domain, and that the pervasiveness of metaphor is one manifestation of language's computational antecedants. A variety of cognitive and computational implications are drawn from these hypotheses.