Abstract
While both linguistic semantics and geographic information science have struggled to accurately and usefully define the meanings of natural language prepositions, there has been less dialogue between these disciplines than one might expect. In this paper we set out to describe the meaning of the English preposition at using well-established formal models of qualitative spatial relations within geographic information science (GIScience), ultimately proposing an account for its meaning which is novel for both discipline areas, and we relate this description to previous definitions of at from within linguistic semantics. The investigation in this paper illustrates that at cannot be handled using the mathematical formalizations of crisp spatial relations in GIScience. However, the model proposed in this paper based on contrast sets, Voronoi Diagrams and Galton & Hood’s (2005) Anchoring theory, contributes to a better understanding of the meaning of at. The model also enables improved automatic interpretations of the preposition by partitioning space into contrast sets and representing at as indicating that a spatial entity is more closely related to a reference object than to any other in the set. We show how the model can be framed within a formal semantics account and how it can in principle be extended to account for spatial uses of other prepositions as well. The paper demonstrates potential areas of fruitful cross-fertilisation between GIScience and linguistic semantics. EARLY ACCESS
Highlights
The linguistic semantics of prepositions has been the subject of much discussion but the definitions which have been proposed are not yet sufficient for practical needs, such as those of geographic information science (GIScience), which conceptualizesVasardani, Stirling and Winter qualitative spatial relations in formal mathematical models for qualitative spatial reasoning
The formal mathematical models developed by GIScience for topological, distance, and direction relationships incorporate semantic definitions which relate only partially to the way that prepositions are used in natural language utterances
We take as our case study the qualitative spatial relationship that is expressed by the preposition at, which is not adequately covered by any of these models, raising the question as to why such a prominent preposition has been ignored so far
Summary
The linguistic semantics of prepositions has been the subject of much discussion but the definitions which have been proposed are not yet sufficient for practical needs, such as those of geographic information science (GIScience), which conceptualizes. The formal mathematical models developed by GIScience for topological, distance, and direction relationships incorporate semantic definitions which relate only partially to the way that prepositions are used in natural language utterances The preposition at the usual specializations of at in GIScience by the set of two topological descriptors (coincidence, adjacency) and a binary distance descriptor (proximity), and the approaches to the description of its meaning current in cognitive and formal semantics. Our primary focus is on at for the reasons given above, along the way we illustrate how the proposed account can apply to and distinguish at from other English prepositions, in particular in, on and near
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