Prof. HUANG Chu-Ren, Department of Language Science and Technology

From Sensory Modalities to Embodied Cognition: Sensory Lexicon and Corpus Driven Studies. The 3rd International Symposium on Frontiers in Chinese Linguistics. Beijing Language and Culture University, Journal of Chinese Linguistics, Beijing, China, 12 – 14 July 2025.

Abstract
Senses are the foundation of cognition. Whether in the Greek philosophy of mind concerning qualia or in contemporary theories of embodied cognition, it is believed that human mind and cognition are established on the basis of information obtained through the interaction between the senses and the external world. In the context of large language models (LLMs) and the burgeoning topic of artificial intelligence, embodied AI has become the final challenge for matching AI to human intelligence. Sensory vocabulary is the result of conceptualizing perceptual information, functioning as language models of embodied cognition. Both philosophy and neuroscience have extensively studied sensory vocabulary, whereas linguistics, particularly Chinese linguistics, has only recently devoted more attention to the interaction between senses and language. This report will focus on the current state and prospects of this cutting-edge research, concentrating on three important topics: 1) synesthesia, 2) sensory intensity of vocabulary and modality exclusivity and sensorimotor norms, and 3) degrees of embodiment. These studies reaffirm that sensory vocabulary is the most primitive material for conceptualizing and systematically expressing sensory information, highlighting the interdisciplinary integration and explanatory power of semantic research in Chinese vocabulary.