This striking study of the meaning and use of the major spatial prepositions in French provides valuable insight into how the human mind organizes spatial relationships.Most previous analyses of spati
This striking study of the meaning and use of the major spatial prepositions in French provides valuable insight into how the human mind organizes spatial relationships.Most previous analyses of spati
Using a cognitive linguistics perspective, this book provides a comprehensive, theoretical analysis of the semantics of English prepositions. All English prepositions originally coded spatial relations between two physical entities; while retaining their original meaning, prepositions have also developed a rich set of non-spatial meanings. In this study, Tyler and Evans argue that all these meanings are systematically grounded in the nature of human spatio-physical experience. The original 'spatial scenes' provide the foundation for the extension of meaning from the spatial to the more abstract. This analysis articulates an alternative methodology that distinguishes between a conventional meaning and an interpretation produced for understanding the preposition in context, as well as establishing which of several competing senses should be taken as the primary sense. Together, the methodology and framework are sufficiently articulated to generate testable predictions and allow the analy
This book provides a precise and thorough description of the meaning and use of spatial expressions, using both a linguistics and an artificial intelligence perspective, and also an enlightening discussion of computer models of comprehension and production in the spatial domain. The author proposes a theoretical framework that explains many previously overlooked or misunderstood irregularities. The use of prepositions reveals underlying schematisations and idealisations of the spatial world, which, for the most part, echo representational structures necessary for human action (movement and manipulation). Because spatial cognition seems to provide a key to understanding much of the cognitive system, including language, the book addresses one of the most basic questions confronting cognitive science and artificial intelligence, and brings fresh and original insights to it.
