Research in this theme aims to determine the extent to which certain regularities observed between the world's languages can be echoed in our motor behavior. One project focused on trajectory description, with a particular interest in the vertical axis, while another looks at the Source-Goal asymmetry reported in the description of placement and grasping events.

We here question the predominance of visuospatial representations in the expression of concepts in many languages, especially through the use of metaphors. In music for example, speakers from several languages express pitch with the metaphor of low and high tones even though pitch does not convey this spatial notion. In the same vein, the expression and conceptualization of time borrow concrete terms from the spatial and motor domains: "Time passes by", "The deadline is approaching" and "We move away from the past". Our objective is to better understand the role of sensorimotor cognition in the construction of meaning and time perception.

Another project examines at the translinguistic level the significance of vision and hearing in the lexicalization of other sensory modalities. Recent observations point to the large number of sight words compared to words describing other sensory modalities and the frequent semantic associations of these words with conceptual domains such as cognition or attention. Our research is part of this issue to examine languages which, to date, have not been the subject of research linking the predominance of visual perception in cognition to the lexicalization of other sensory perceptions or conceptual domains.