Natural Language Meets Spatial Calculi

We address the problem of relating natural language descriptions of spatial situations with spatial logical calculi, focusing on projective terms (orientations). We provide a formalism based on the theory of E-connections that connects natural language and spatial calculi. Semantics of linguistic expressions are specified in a linguistically motivated ontology, the Generalized Upper Model. Spatial information is specified as qualitative spatial relationships, namely orientations from the double-cross calculus. This linguistic-spatial connection cannot be adequately formulated without certain contextual, domain-specific aspects. We therefore extend the framework of E-connections twofold: (1) external descriptions narrow down the class of intended models, and (2) context-dependencies inherent in natural language descriptions feed back into the representation finite descriptions of necessary context information.