which the primary object is located the reference object. In order to use projective prepositions, the speaker has to establish a reference frame (that is, an orientation) that determines the direction in which the primary object is located in relation to the reference object. The reference frame can be established in different ways. One way is to use the intrinsic orientation of the reference ...

Attempts to use images as mental models of natural language sentences with spatial prepositions have been hindered by differences in level of detail between propositional and diagrammtic representations. Specifically, when propositional knowledge is modeled with an image, the level of detail of the diagrammatic representation often requires some details to be assumed. Subsequently, it becomes u...

This paper studies the semantic interaction between pairs of closely related prepositions, like in, on, over, and around, in order to determine the priorities that determine the application of these prepositions to ambiguous situations. It is proposed that the division of labour between prepositions in such situations is strongly determined by stereotypical regularities in the way spatial notio...

Learning spatial prepositions is an important problem in spatial cognition. We describe a model for learning how to classify visual scenes according to what spatial preposition they depict. We use SEQL, an existing model of analogical generalization, to construct relational descriptions from stimuli input as hand-drawn sketches. We show that this model can distinguish between in, on, above, bel...

It seems to be common wisdom that prepositions (especially simple prepositions) are highly polysemous. Preposition senses seem to be well explored, as there exists plenty of literature on prepositions and their interpretations. On a closer inspection, however, it turns out that we are far away from a well-structured understanding of preposition senses. There is mutual consent about simple prepo...

Prepositions name spatial relationships (e.g., book on a table). But they are also used to convey abstract, non-spatial relationships (e.g., Adrian is on a roll)-raising the question of how the abstract uses relate to the concrete spatial uses. Despite considerable success in delineating these relationships, no general account exists for the two most frequently extended prepositions: in and on....

The ability to understand spatial prepositions and motion in natural language will enable a variety of new applications involving systems that can respond to verbal directions, map travel guides, display incident reports, etc., providing for enhanced information extraction, question-answering, information retrieval, and more principled text to scene rendering. Until now, however, the semantics ...

The learning of spatial prepositions is assumed to be based on experience in space. In a slow mapping study, we investigated whether 31 German 28-month-old children could robustly learn the German spatial prepositions hinter [behind] and neben [next to] from pictures, and whether a narrative input can compensate for a lack of immediate experience in space. One group of children received picture...