ABSTRACT
Eleanor Rosch and colleagues showed that basic categories organize much of our conceptual structure for ordinary, cultural things people encounter in our world, such as furniture, plants, and the like. The interactions among members at that same level tended to use similar motor actions and they are usually the levels for which children learned the labels early in development. Metaphors simulate the meaning of abstract and complex concepts in terms of familiar and concrete concepts. Body axis also provides the foundation for basic concepts. Spatial systems also belong to this sense of embodiment. Small-scale spatial movements, such as rotations, and large, whole-body spatial reasoning, such as navigation, contribute basic concepts that are readily available from a lifetime of manipulating objects and traversing past objects and other people through space. Gestures are a special type of action that occur during communication, learning, and instruction.
