Computational Interpretation English Spatial Prepositions.
Abstract
It seems clear to anyone who pays attention to the use of prepositions in language that any one preposition, when used to describe the spatial relationship between different objects can produce strikingly different mental models for different objects. The mental model produced by the description 'a bowl on a table' seems to be somewhat different from that produced by 'a poster on a wall' which in turn is somewhat different from 'a shelf on a wall' which again is different from 'a fly on a ceiling'. It is the contention of this paper that the preposition in conjunction with a small set of features of the objects (mostly perceptual features) can account for such variations in spatial relations. The thesis discusses a means of taking English-language descriptions involving prepositions and their semantic subjects and objects and deriving a three-dimensional model of the spatial relationships of the subject and object. The program takes extended descriptions involving many objects each of which is incorporated into the overall model. Once an object has been described, it is possible to interrogate the model about the relation of the object to any other in the model, without recourse to inference rules of the following kind: 'if A is on B and B is in C then A is (probably) in C'.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 1979
- Accession Number
- ADA085750
Entities
People
- Lois Carolyn Boggess
Organizations
- University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign