tailieunhanh - Báo cáo khoa học: "ON THE SPATIAL USES OF PREPOSITIONS"

This paper shows the fallacy of this claim. It addresses the problem. It identifies and describes a number of object characteristics beyond shape (section I) and contextual factors ( s e c t i o n 2) which bear on these processes. Drawing on these d e s c r i p t i o n s , the t h i r d section proposes core meanings for two categories of . The l a s t section outlines the main d i r e c t i o n s of Inquiry suggested by the examples and. | ON THE SPATIAL USES OF PREPOSITIONS Annette Herskovlts Linguistics Department Stanford University At first glance the spatial uses of prepositions seem to constitute a good semantic domain for a computational approach. One expects such uses will refer more or less strictly to a closed explicit and precise chunk of world knowledge. Such an attitude Is expressed in the following statement Given descriptions of the shape of two objects given their location for example by means or coordinates in some system of reference and In sone cases the location of an observer one can select an appropriate preposition. This paper shows the fallacy of this claim. It addresses the problem of Interpreting and generating locative predications expressions made up of two noun-phrases governed by a preposition used spatially . It identifies and describes a number of object characteristics beyond shape section 1 and contextual factors section 2 which bear on these processes. Drawing on these descriptions the third section proposes core meanings for two categories of prepositions and describes some of the transformations these core meanings are subject to In context. The last section outlines the main directions of Inquiry suggested by the examples and observations In the paper. 1. OBJECT CHARACTERISTICS Throughout the paper I use the term object meaning strictly speaking the object together with some lexical label. In effect the choice of preposition depends on the lexical category associated with the object by the noun-phrase used to refer to It. And such a category Is not uniquely defined. There are different levels In the categorization hierarchy e. g. end table table piece of furniture but also different perspectives on the object. Consider the picture below. That patch of grass could be referred to alternately as a front-yard a lawn gran a patch of gran etc. to assume that these phrases refer to the same object one must see the gratt as a metonymic substitute for thit patch of gran .