Action representations and the semantics of verbs

This thesis investigates how the syntactical behavior as well as the semantics of verbs can be grounded in the cognitive architecture responsible for action representations. Psychological research on action representation in the human brain is discussed. Based on this, a composite conceptual space for action representation is formalized to model as closely as possible human action representation, including both motor patterns and intentions. A modular conceptual space logic is introduced to denote action concepts in a natural way. Using this logic, the manner-result dichotomy in verb meaning, the aspectual structure in event descriptions and the special status of modal verbs are shown to be explicable in terms of the model described. Throughout the thesis, the computability of the model is taken into account for future implementation, e.g. in robotics. Various valuable suggestions for further research are given.