The Occurrence and Distribution of Spatial Reference Relative to Discourse Relations

I present a descriptive analysis of reference to physical space in the Penn Discourse TreeBank. In particular, I analyze the occurrence of spatial prepositional phrases relative to the discourse relations and semantic senses that hold between two adjacent clauses. The purpose of this investigation is twofold: (1) to better understand how often spatial reference occurs in discourse and (2) to investigate possible relationships between spatial reference and discourse semantics. Overall, the distribution of spatial prepositional phrases and relationsense pairs are similar. However, statistical evidence suggests that the inclusion of spatial reference in a given clause is independent of the relation-sense of that clause and adjacent clauses. While these results, as applied to the PDTB, indicate the absence of a default pattern of occurrence and discourse semantic function of spatial information, they can nonetheless be extrapolated to provide crucial insights for fully understanding models of spatial representation and interpretation in discourse generally.