Geometry of Meaning ─ Semantics Based on Conceptual Spaces

In The Geometry of Meaning, Peter Gardenfors proposes a theory ofsemantics that bridges cognitive science and linguistics and shows how theories of cognitiveprocesses, in particular concept formation, can be exploited in a general semantic model. He arguesthat our minds organize the information involved in communicative acts in a format that can bemodeled in geometric or topological terms -- in what he terms conceptual spaces,extending the theory he presented in an earlier book by that name. Many semantic theories considerthe meanings of words as relatively stable and independent of the communicative context. Gardenforsfocuses instead on how various forms of communication establish a system of meanings that becomesshared between interlocutors. He argues that these "meetings of mind" depend on theunderlying geometric structures, and that these structures facilitate language learning. Turning tolexical semantics, Gardenfors argues that a unified theory of word meaning can be developed by usingconceptual spaces. He shows that the meaning of different word classes can be given a cognitivegrounding, and offers semantic analyses of nouns, adjectives, verbs, and prepositions. He alsopresents models of how the meanings of words are composed to form new meanings and of the basicsemantic role of sentences. Finally, he considers the future implications of his theory for robotsemantics and the Semantic Web.

Peter Gardenfors is Professor of Cognitive Science at Lund University, Sweden. He is the author of Conceptual Spaces: The Geometry of Thought (MIT Press) and other books.