Quantitative perceptual representation of prepositional semantics

摘要

In this paper we concentrate on spatial prepositions, more specifically we are interested here in projective prepositions (eg. “in front of”, “to the left of”) which have in the past been treated as semantically uninteresting. We demonstrate that projective prepositions are in fact problematic and demand more attention than they have so far been afforded; after summarising the important components of their meaning, we review the deficiencies of past and current approaches to the decoding problem; that is, predicting what a locative expression used in a particular situation conveys. Finally we present our own approach. Motivated by the shortcomings of contemporary work, we integrate elements of Lang's conceptual representation of objects' perceptual and dimensional characteristics, and the potential field model of object proximity that originated in manipulator and mobile robot path-finding.