A coding system for spatial relational reference

A coding system for spatial relational reference* CHRIS SINHA and LIS A. THORSENG

Abstraft A coding System is presented for the semantic description of natural language expressions referring to spatial relations. The coding system has been developed with the principal (but not exclusive) aim of conducting crossHnguistic analyses of spatial language acquisition and development. Theoretical and methodological problems attendant upon the analysis of spatial relational meaning are addressed. The coding system is described and its use is illustrated. A reformulation is proposed of the traditional distinction between sense and reference in terms ofa notion of "meaning äs mapping". The specific research questions which the coding system is designed to address are outlined. 1. Introduction Our purpose in this article is to introduce a coding System for the semantic description of natural language expressions referring to spatial relations. The coding system has been developed in the context of a comparative, cross-linguistic study of the acquisition of spatial expressions in Danish, English and Japanese (Sinha et al. 1994); a study which we are currently extending to embrace other non-Indo-European languages. The intention behind the coding system is that it should be able to characterize the semantic content of spatial relational expressions at a level of detail sufficient to capture the principal semantic distinctions expressed in widely differing natural languages, permitting both cross-linguistic comparison and detailed semantic descriptions of usages of spatial relational referring expressions in single languages. Although the coding system äs published here is (we consider) reasonably comprehensive in relation to these aims, it is still under development. To date, we have used it to code child and adult utterances in transcribed naturally occurring discourse in Danish, English and Japanese. We have Cognitive Linguistics 6-2/3 (1995), 261-309

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262 C Sinha and L. A. Thorseng less systematically tested its applicability to Bulgarian, Dutch and Norwegian. Although the principal purpose of the coding System is to analyze naturally occurring Speech, it can also be used äs an analytic Instrument for the characterization of the semantics of "invented" expressions, and we have chosen to exemplify its usage in this article with reference to such. The coding System in itself should not be regarded äs a theory of spatial relational semantics, even though its development has involved the consideration of many theoretical and methodological problems. It is a theoretically motivated analytic tool, which we hope can contribute to both the description and the explanation of spatial language and cognition from cross-linguistic, psycholinguistic and developmental points of view. Our aims in this article are threefold: to render explicit the theoretical considerations underlying, and arising from, the development of the coding System; to describe it and illustrate its application; and to indicate the research questions that it may be used to investigate. Our own principal research goal is to investigate the relative influences of language-specific lexical and morphological structure, and non-language-specific (possibly universal) sequences of the acquisition of semantic content, upon patterns of spatial language acquisition, äs an empirical entry-point to fundamental questions about the developmental relationships between language and pre- and nonlinguistic cognitive and perceptual processes (Choi and Bowerman 1991; Sinha et al. 1994). The possible applications of the coding System are not, however, restricted to the field of language acquisition. We return to this issue in our concluding discussion. In developing the coding System, we have drawn upon various sources in the spatial cognitive semantic literature, amongst others Herskovits (1986), Talmy (1983) and Vandeloise (1991). We have, naturally, drawn upon our intuitions äs language users, and we have also been guided by developmental psychological evidence which suggests that the human attentional, perceptual and cognitive Systems are in significant respects selective in their spatial informational uptake and Integration (see, amongst many others, Freeman et al. 1980; Gibson and Spelke 1983; Piaget and Inhelder 1956; Mandler 1992; Nelson 1974). The most important validation method for the coding System has been our testing of its applicability to child and adult language. Having set out the aims which led us to develop the coding System, we shall first discuss the general theoretical issues involved in such an enterprise. 2. Theoretical preliminaries The first point to be made is that our aim—which is essentially to construct a non language-specific, "etic" meta-language for spatial rela-


Spatial relational reference

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tional semantics—precludes the employment oft he traditional contrastive method of lexical semantics (Lyons 1977; Cruse 1986). Such an approach, by defmition, yields only language-specific semantic descriptions. Furthermore, not only are contrastively-derived semantic features language-specific, they are also insufficiently detailed to account for the semantics of the lexemes and morphemes typically realizing spatial relational meaning, äs has been amply documented by cognitive semantic research into the semantics of spatial prepositions (e.g. Brugman 1981; Lakoff 1987). Contrastive feature analysis is unable to capture either the structured, overlapping polysemy of many such lexemes in individual languages, or the significant differences in the meaning structures of cognate lexemes in different languages (Taylor 1988). This does not mean that cognitive semantics is compelled to reject a featural approach äs such (see, for example, Cuyckens 1991, and this issue). Rather, it implies the rejection of the "classical" structuralist assumption that the same features which capture the paradigmatic value of an item—i.e., contrastive features—are sufficient for the füll specification of its ränge of application. In fact, äs will become clear, the notational form of our coding system is featural, but not contrastive. The second point is that spatial relational meanings are expressed very differently in different languages, and the problem of non-equivalence of particular cognate lexemes is only a special and restricted case of such non-equivalence. It is not only the case that, for example, English, Danish and Dutch spatial prepositional meanings do not map isomorphically. The more general and fundamental fact is that spatial relational meaning is expressed, both between and within different languages, by selections from a wide variety of form classes: spatial relational meaning, from a cross-linguistic perspective, is differentially distributed (Sinha and Kuteva 1994; Sinha et al, 1994) across morphological and lexical structure. We shall at this point neither review the now extensive literature on comparative spatial semantics, nor explore the major theoretical issues which are involved, but restrict our point to the following one: The unit of analysis employed in any system of the sort we aim for not only cannot be restricted to language-specific lexical items; it also and more fundamentally cannot be restricted to any given lexical or morphological class. Our problem is, in some respects, the converse of that faced by an investigator of the spatial semantics of an "exotic" language, whose first task is to understand the particularities of the expression of spatial meaning. Until this has been achieved, that investigator will not know what is meant by spatial referring expressions. Our goal is not to analyze the language-specific system of expression, but—assuming the meanings of particular expressions to be known—to find a way of characterizing


264 C. Sinha and L. A. Thorseng them which is not dependent upon the language-specific means of expression. Of course, the two goals are not exclusive—they should indeed be seen äs complementary—but they require different methods and units of analysis. Specifically, the analysis of the level of expression needs to be language-specific: our coding System does not attempt any characterization of syntax, morphology, or lexicon, and we doubt if an attempt to produce a "non-language-specific" descriptive System for spatial relational expression would be either useful or feasible.1 Rather, we are concerned first to characterize the semantic content independently of how it is expressed, and second to investigate the relationship between semantic content and linguistic expression. More informally, the coding System should characterize "what is said" in terms of "what is being talked about" rather than "how it is said". This makes it clear that our method is, in traditional terms, to Start with a generally valid System for describing spatial relational reference in language, rather than an inventory of language-internal senses. This distinguishes our approach fundamentally from attempts to inductively or logically derive universal "semantic primitives" or "basic meanings" (e.g. Wierzbizca 1989). This is not, however, a straightforward distinction, since we accept the main, "non-objectivist" tenet of cognitive semantics, that "reference" is not a non-mediated relationship between "word" and "worid", but is mediated by perceptual and conceptual (e.g. imageschematic) structures. In our view, this does not obviate the distinction between sense and reference, but it does require it to be substantially recast. We shall return to this question in the discussion section, and here we shall simply indicate our solution in general terms. 3. Method and unit of analysis

We suggest that the appropriate Interpretation of the problem of reference in cognitive semantics is that reference is achieved in and through (by the mediation of) conceptual schematization (henceforth simply conceptualization), and that linguistic expression both realizes and shapes conceptualization at the moment of utterance. Since we wish precisely to discover, rather than presuppose, the way this conceptualization occurs and is expressed in different languages, we adopt an "extensionalist" point of view in which "what is being talked about" is in the usual case identical with "what is said" in all referentially semantically relevant respects.2 The expression ("how it is said") is viewed äs the semiotic vehicle permitting the Interpretation and conceptualization of semantic content, and the content is nothing other than this conceptualized Referential Situation (rs). Thus, when we speak of a description of a spatial relational rs, we



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do not mean an "objectivist" description purporting to be independent of human conceptualization. Rather, we mean a description of the rs in terms hypothesized to be relevant for its linguistic (and perhaps nonlinguistic) conceptualization, and not a physicalist description of an extralinguistic "state of affairs".3 From this fundamental theoretical principle stems an equally fundamental methodological problem, which can be summed up in terms of two complementary questions: (a) What constitutes identity of linguistic conceptualization, independently of difference in expression? (b) What constitutes difference of linguistic conceptualization, independently of identity of expression? The first part of the methodological problem can be clarified by way of example expressions (la, b), (2a, b) and (3a, b), all of which we assume here to be appropriately used to refer to, respectively, three pairs of physically token-identical spatial relationships: 1l) a. b. (2) a. b. (3) a. b.

The lamp above the table The table beneath the lamp The conductor in the train The conductor on the train The boat in the lake The boat on the lake

In terms of traditional semantic theory, the (a) and (b) expressions have different senses but identical reference. That is, the Variation of expression automatically signals Variation in meaning, since the neither the terms above and beneath, nor the terms in and on, constitute synonymous pairs; while the physical token-identity of the scenes they describe equates to identity of reference. In contrast, in our approach, which is based upon cognitive semantic theory, the differences in the (a) and (b) expressions may or may not indicate that they differentially conceptualize the Referential Situation. It is, remember, this conceptualization of the Referential Situation which, for our purposes, constitutes the semantic content of the expression which the coding System attempts to capture. In the case of (la, b), the roles of Landmark and Trajector* are reversed in the two expressions, indicating a difference between the two expressions in the relative conceptual prominence accorded to the two relata of the relation. We would argue that this particular aspect of prominence, involving the Figure/Ground structure of the conceptualized relation, is fundamental to the semantic content conveyed by the expressions. Hence, we conclude that (la) and (Ib) express different conceptualizations of the Referential Situation, or, in short, and for our purposes, different


266 C Sinha and L. A. Thorseng linguistically conceptualized rs's. They would therefore receive different codings in the coding System. The cases of (2a, b) and (3a, b) are more problematic. We wish to characterize the conceptualized spatial relational rs's äs completely äs possible, since we do not wish to stipulate in advance which particular conceptualizations will be associated with a given expression type—in this case, in and on. On the other band, we only want to characterize the rs's in terms relevant for the spatial relational semantic content of the expression. We do not, for example, want to include in our characterization of the rs's cxpressed by (2a, b) the possible fact that the train is on the raus, since that does not form part of the semantic content of eithcr expression (it is neither linguistically expressed nor unambiguously recoverable from context; and it is not part of the spatial relation conceptualized by the expression). Nor, for the same reason, do we wish to include in our semantic analysis of (3a, b) the possible Intuition that the t wo different expressions signal a difference in the psychological vantage poini of the Speaker with respect to the scene represented (near to or far from the lake). In short, such matters lie outside the conceptualization of the spatial relationship with which we are here concerned. If there are differences between the meanings of the paired expressions (2a, b) and (3a, b) when applied to the same physical scenes, these differences have to be seen in terms of the "profiling" of the relative psychological salience of the different aspects of the spatial relationship between the Landmark and the Trajector (i.e., containment/inclusion and support). Although such differential salience may be signalled by the choice of preposition, difference in expression does not in itself constitute a difference in conceptualization: for example, the expressions "hanging from the rope" and "hanging on the rope" both involve the conceptualization of the relationship between the Trajector and the Landmark in terms of a physical relationship of support. In the case of (2a, b), the two expressions both refer to a relationship between the Trajector and the Landmark which involves the support of the Trajector by virtue of its Containment by the Landmark. The "profiling" of the two aspects of the relationship may vary between the expressions, but the actual constituent aspects of the relationship remain constant. Hence, we conclude that the difference in expression does not in this case reflect a difference in conceptualization, and that the linguistically conceptualized Referential Situations expressed by (2a) and (2b) are identical. By the same token, (3a) and (3b) both conceptualize the rs in terms of the support-byflotation of the Trajector by virtue of its partial inclusion in the bouyant medium in/on which it floats. The two different expressions differentially "profile" the support-by-flotation aspect of the relationship and the par-



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tial inclusion aspect of the relationship; but the relationship äs a whole (its combination of constituent aspects) reraains constant, and hence we conclude, again, that the difference in expression does not reflect a difference in conceptualization. It is important to emphasize that this analysis does not imply that there is no difference in "meaning" (in a wider sense than conceptualization) between (2a) and (2b), or between (3a) and (3b). In particular, we would accept that the different expressions, precisely because the prepositions in and on are not synonymous, have different senses or meaning Potentials. This is obvious, in that, although we have stipulated above that (2b) and (3b) should be read äs conveying the same conceptualizations äs, respectively, (2a) and (3a), the (b) expressions in themselves are ambiguous: (2b)—but not (2a)—permits a reading in which the conductor is supported by the upper surface of the train; and (3b)—but not (3a)—permits a reading in which the boat is submerged in the lakewater. Furthermore, this difference in sense confers a difference in the contextual significations of the utterances of the (a) and (b) expressions, even when they convey the same conceptualizations.5 This difference in signification has partly to do with the "profiling" of the aspects of the conceptualized spatial relation, and partly to do with the way in which differential profiling may reflect differences in, for example, the speaker's vantage point, The sense, or overall meaning potential, of an item (such äs in or on) is intimately related, on the one band to the ränge of conceptualizations which it can express; and on the other hand to its place in a System of such meaning potentials. We shall return to this issue in our discussion. The important point to bear in mind at this stage is that conceptualization, or linguistically conceptualized rs, is to be equated with neither sense nor reference in the traditional meaning of these terms, but constitutes a specific and properly semantic level of analysis. On this basis, we can now address the second part of our fundamental methodological problem, namely: what constitutes difference in linguistic conceptualization, independently of identity of expression? This question is essentially one of the type (and level of granularity) of description necessary to capture, in a non-language-specific fashion, (i.e., independently of the facts of expression in given languages), the constituent aspects of the linguistically conceptualized rs. This question isnecessarily theoretical äs well äs methodological. To a large extent, the theoretical assumptions of the coding System will become evident to the reader from its description in the following section. However, we can exemplify some salient issues by considering expressions (4a) and (4b) below: (4)

a. b.

The man walked over the bridge The bridge Stretches over the road


268 C. Sinha and L· A. Thorseng According to the analyses of Brugman (1981) and Lakoff (1987)6 the two expressions instantiate different but related image-schemas. Specifically, using the notation of Lakoff (1987), (4a) would be an instance of Schema LX.C (where X = extended landmark, C = contact), and (4b) would be an instance of Schema 2. l DTR, where lDTR = onedimensional trajector. Schema 2. l DTR involves a static spatial relation where the Trajector is a one-dimensional solid describing the same line äs the extended path described by the moving Trajector in expressions such äs "the bird flew over the yard" (schema l.X.NC). Therefore, Schema 2.1DTR is regarded by Lakoff (1987:425) äs a "minimal variant" of schema l.X.NC, which itself is only minimally different (in terms of the "feature" contact) from schema l.X.C. A "transformational link" relates the extended path (X.P) of the moving Trajector of schema l.X.NC to the dimensionality of the static trajector of schema 2. l DTR. Hence, in the Lakovian analysis, (4a) and (4b) differ in terms of (a) a fundamental distinction between schema types l (dynamic) and 2 (stative); (b) the "feature" of contact between Trajector and Landmark; (c) an image-schematic transformational link between X.P and l DTR. The analysis thus combines three types of semantic distinction. First, a general, and presumably universally perceptible, conceptualizable, and linguistically encodable distinction between static and dynamic spatial relations. Second, a distinction based upon a "feature", contact, which is fully interpretable only in the context of the particular imageschematisms associated with "over", but which resembles in some way "contact" features in non-"over" expressions (e.g., this "contact" is different from, but related to, the "contact" in an expression such äs "the apples on the tree"). Third, an image-schematic transformational link which is language-specific, i.e., can only be elucidated on the basis of the analysis of the different senses/uses of English "over" and related lexemes such äs "above" and "across". Although this particular transformational link is language-specific, and even item-specific, it is based upon a more widely applicable principle which recurs in different languages, namely that a static spatial relation may be conceptualized in terms of a virtual path of motion.7 It is our belief that at least some of the controversy which has occurred about the right way to analyze "over" can be traced to the combination in the Lakovian analysis of these different types of semantic distinction, with some critics (Vandeloise 1990) advocating a more systematic use of features, and others (Dewell 1994) advocating a more thorough-going use of image-schema transformations. Image-schema transformations, however, are analytic constructions/outcomes whose details are always language-specific, even if the principles underlying them may be widely



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or even universally valid. That we have chosen a featural notation does not reflect any general, theoretical bias against image-schematic cognitive semantics, but rather our acceptance of a methodological constraint imposed by our goal of formulating an "etic" descriptive notation. In fact, the structure of the coding System reflects and incorporates many insights of image-schema theory, such äs the concept of virtual motion, It also reflects, äs will become clear, some "fimctional" assumptions about conceptualization which depart from a purely perceptual Interpretation of image-schema theory, As a preliminary Illustration of the way we have gone about this, we offer the following analysis of the conceptualizations involved in expressions (4a) and (4b). (A) (4a) involves the path of motion of a Trajector in relation to a Landmark, while (4b) involves a static relation between a Trajector and a Landmark. It seems clear enough that the difference between a static and a dynamic spatial relationship constitutes a difference in linguistically conceptualized rs, which should (and does) receive expression in the coding System. (B) The static spatial relationship expressed by (4b) involves the conceptualization of the Trajector in terms of a virtual path of motion. In this case, the Trajector is conceptualized äs a Path-Trajector (Dewell 1994). The coding System recognizes the general case of virtual motion äs including Path-Trajectors, end-point focussing, and Paths constituted by the directed perception of a virtual observer, but does not further distinguish between these. To make these latter distinctions would require, in our view, a fine level of granularity (the level of "profiling", "vantage point", "focussing", "subjectification", etc.) which is not only unnecessary for our purposes, but would introduce too much undecidability into the practical use of the coding System. (C) The actual/virtual Paths of Motion of the Trajectors in the two expressions are differentially configured in relation to the Paths constituted by the Landmarks. Both a river and a bridge have, or afford, paths: you can go upstream and downstream, you can cross the bridge. In (4a), the path of actual motion of the Trajector follows the path of the Landmark, while in (4b) the path of virtual motion constituted or afforded by the Trajector intersects and crosses the path of the Landmark. In both cases, we maintain, an adequate specification of the conceptualizations conveyed by the respective expressions involves the recognition that the Landmark is in both cases a special type of Landmark, namely, a Path-Landmark; and one difference between the two conceptualizations is that the Paths of actual or virtual motion of (or afforded by) their Trajectors are differently configured in relation to the Paths of the Path-


270 C Sinha and L· A. Thorseng Landmarks.8 The coding System (see below, Section 4.5, Motion and path) is so constructed äs to capture these distinctions. (D) The relationships between Trajector and Landmark conceptualized by the two expressions vary in terms of the functional spatial relation of Support against Gravity. The bridge Supports the man walking over it in a way in which the river does not Support the bridge stretching over it (of course, we can suppose that the banks of the river support the ends of the bridge, and perhaps the main body of the bridge is supported by Suspension cables, but that, äs we have argued above, is not part of the linguistically conceptualized rs). And the support against gravity provided by the bridge to the man walking over it is made possible by the physical Contact existing between the man and the bridge, a relationship which does not exist between the bridge and the river. The different codings received by the two expressions will reflect these differences, which we consider to reflect different basic constituent aspects of the conceptualizations associated with the two expressions. At this point, it is useful to anticipate two possible objections to the general style of the analysis. First, it might be argued (Dewell 1994), support and contact are not part of the meaning of "over". But such an objection would miss the point and purpose of the analytic method of the coding System. Our intention is not to specify the individual meaning (s) of particular lexemes or morphemes, but to specify the linguistically conceptualized spatial relationship conveyed by a particular expression referring to that spatial relationship. It is the spatial relational meaning (in the special sense of linguistic conceptualization) of the expression äs a whole (interpreted in its linguistic and extra-linguistic context—see below), and not the "meanings" of its constituent parts, which constitutes the unit of analysis. Therefore, irrespective of our possible Intuition that Contact and Support are not strongly "profiled" by the use of the preposition over, they do constitute constituent aspects of the spatial relationship conceptualized by (4a), while they do not constitute constituent aspects of the spatial relationship conceptualized by (4b). This is exactly the same methodological principle (applied in an inverse direction) that led us to the conclusion that (2a, b) and (3a, b), respectively, should be considered äs expressing the same linguistic conceptualization. In concrete terms, the aim of the coding System is to specify what we have thus far called "constituent aspects" of the linguistically conceptualized spatial relation äs features and feature-values. A second, related, objection, would be that the analysis we offer above does not offer a sufficiently elaborate analytic apparatus to fully describe all uses of "over". Of course it does not! In the first place, we have sought above only to illustrate a small sub-set of the totality of distinc-



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tions made by the coding System (and, indeed, of the coding distinctions involved in these two particular expressions: see Table l below for a füll coding of the two expressions). In the second place, exhaustive descriptions of the füll ränge of spatial uses of particular language-specific items will require fine-grained distinctions at levels (e.g. between PathLandmark and endpoint focussing, between prepositional and adverbial uses) which lie beyond the scope of a coding System whose purpose is to provide non-language-specific semantic descriptions. Although the particular Solutions we have adopted in attempting to fulfil this purpose are, of course, debatable, we hope we have made the theoretical and methodological premises of the enterprise sufficiently clear by now to allow the coding system to be judged in terms of the goals which it attempts to meet, and not those which it does not attempt to meet. We are now in a position to specify our unit of analysis äs being: the linguistically conceptualized spatial relational rs consisting of a single static or dynamic relationship between a Trajector (TR) and a Landmark (LM). The two main methodological points which flow from our general approach can be summarized äs follows. First, the notion of a "linguistically conceptualized rs" should be interpreted in terms of the speaker's clearly recognizable intention to linguistically refer to an identifiable spatial relational rs, rather than the presence or absence of particular units of expression.9 Utterances may be elliptical, or (especially in child language) incomplete. There are many and various other issues regarding Interpretation which are covered by this basic principle, but which we shall not explore here. The general principle which guides our interpretive strategy can be summed up in terms of what we can call the "aboutness test": what spatial relationship is this expression about? Second, and following from this first principle, the rs is fully described in a way which is consistent with the speaker's expression and contextual Information. That is to say, if a feature (feature value) is part of the linguistically conceptualized rs it is coded äs such, independently of what our intuitions teil us about the way in which a given lexical item "profiles" the various aspects of the rs. Two subsidiary methodological points may also be mentioned here. First, a given utterance may of course refer to more than one TR-LM relationship, in which case these are treated äs separate units of analysis and receive separate codings. Second, the rs must be characterizable in terms of a TR-LM spatial relationship: this is simply our stipulation of the scope of spatial relational meaning and of the coding system.10 Finally, before describing the coding system, we should point out that this article describes and discusses it äs it currently Stands and äs we


272 C Sinha and L· A. Thorseng currently employ it: it is not a complete manual for its use. We intend to publish such a manual at a future date when the coding System has been further revised. 4. The coding System The descriptive notation that we employ is featural, in which each feature can be thought of äs an (in principle) independently varying basic constituent aspect of spatial relational meaning in the sense that we have discussed above. That is to say, features are the basic unit of description of the unit of analysis. Every unit of analysis receives a coding in respect of each feature, whether that feature is applicable to the given case or not (see below). Each feature is defined in terms of a finite number of possible values that it can receive. Values within each feature are nonexclusive, so that a given TR-LM relationship may be coded in terms of one or more values for each feature. Thus, the coding of a given utterance consists in the coding of the rs in terms of the value(s) taken by each of the features making up the coding System. Features are, in point of fact, non-independently varying aspects of meaning, and for notational purposes we group together features which code related aspects of meaning into dimensions. A dimension may cover one or more features. The numbered dimensions (italics) and features which make up the coding System are listed below. Where no separate features are listed the dimension covers only one feature, with an identical name to the dimension. 1. Size 2. Relative Distance 3. Contact and Constituency A. Objects, Parts and Contact B. Contact in the horizontal plane C. Contact in the vertical plane 4. Orientation, Part and Region A. Orientation-specified Location B. Part-specified Location C. Intrinsic Animate Frame of Reference D. Intrinsic Inanimate Frame of Reference E. Deictic Frame of Reference F. Extrinsic Frame of Reference 5. Motion and Path A. Relative Motion B. Path of Relative Motion C. Physical Dependence with respect to motion 6. Inaccessibility to Visual Perception



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7. Gravity and Support 8. Containment and Indusion 9. Negative Reference and History Below we give a brief description of each feature, list the values which it can receive, and discuss the main points of its Interpretation for coding purposes. We exemplify various issues in the use of the coding System with reference to some common spatial usages of English prepositions and prepositional phrases. The reader should bear in mind that this is for purposes of exposition, and should not be taken to imply that the coding System is specific either to English or to prepositional usage. The unit of analysis, recall, is not the meaning of a specific item of expression, but the linguistically conceptualized Referential Situation. We refer at various points to other languages and to general issues of cross-linguistic Variation äs these bear upon the use of the coding System. Special note should be made of the following two values which may be taken by all features. The value "Not applicable" signifies that the rs cannot be described in terms of this feature—the feature is irrelevant for the description of the rs; it is not in any way part of what the expression is about, The value "Information relevant, but not available" signifies that the feature is clearly relevant for the description of the linguistically conceptualized rs, but that the data (for example, a transcribed utterance plus contextual Information) do not permit its further specification. This value is important for the use of the coding System in the description of naturally occurring speech, especially child speech. Example (5) (taken without any further contextual Information) exemplifies the differences between "Not applicable" and "Information relevant, but not available": (5) The shoe on the brick This would receive the value "Not applicable" for the feature Containment and Inclusion, and the value "Information relevant, but not available" for the features Size and Inaccessibility to Visual Perception. In practice, the value "Information relevant but not available" has quite frequently to be coded in relation to transcribed child language data. 1. Size This feature is self-explanatory, but not completely straightforward. It can receive the following values: l: Not applicable (this value not generally used for this feature) 2: TRLM


274 C. Sinha and L· A. Thorseng 4: TR = LM 5: Information relevant, but not a variable It is not clear to what extent spatial relational expressions are "about" the relative sizes of TR and LM, and it might be argued that this feature properly belongs in the pragmatics of spatial reference. However, we would argue that size is semantically relevant in at least some cases. It is most obviously relevant for the rs's associated with such locative particles äs in and out, and our general strategy, given its ambiguous Status between semantics and pragmatics, is simply to code for it whenever we can. In practice, this is not difficult to do. As can be expected, in most cases the TR is smaller than the LM. We suppose that languages do not differentiate spatial relational meanings according to finer grained distinctions, such äs "much bigger than" vs. "a little bigger than".

2. Relative Distance This feature describes the distance between LM and TR. It can receive the following values: 1: Not applicable: relative distance not part of what the expression is about 2: TR/path of TR is far from LM/path of LM 3: TR/path of TR is near to LM/path of LM but not coincident with it 4: TR/path of TR is near to or coincident with LM/path of LM 5: Information relevant, but not available There are three main points to note with respect to this feature. First, we treat paths and objects identically: thus for example the expressions "the tree is by the house" and "the girl ran by the house" would both receive a coding of Value 3. Second, we assume (contrary to Landau and Jackendoff 1993) that languages do not distinguish between enclosure, contact and close proximity in the feature Relative Distance. This does not mean that this distinction is absent from the coding System: it is explicitly coded in the features under Contact and Constituency and Containment and Indusion. Our contention, then, would be that these are different basic constituent aspects of spatial meaning, and the coding System treats them accordingly. This leads to the third point: some expressions (e.g., directionals like "to" and "from") we consider not to be about Relative Distance at all, while others (including those about rs's involving Contact or Containment and Inclusion) are considered necessarily also to be about Relative Distance. We follow this implicational structure in coding. A final, obvious but important point is that Relative Distance is indeed relative, both in terms of the actual physical distances involved (I may



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say I live far from the local railway Station, but near to London, even though the physical distance between my house and the Station is less than its distance from London); and in terms of the perceptuo-motor basis (vision, audition etc.) and adopted vantage point (that of an ant or that of a Concorde pilot) determining the psychological judgement of relative distance. These latter issues fall outside the scope of the coding System. 3. Contact and Constituency The features under this heading describe physical contact relationships between LM and TR, where these are clearly separate objects or entities, and part-whole relationships between a LM object/entity and its constituents. A. Objects, Parts and Contact This feature defines the relationship between TR and LM äs being one of contact, explicit lack of contact, part-to-whole, or none of these. It can receive the following values: 1: Not applicable: contact not part of what the expression is about 2: Negative contact: TR is not or is no longer in contact with LM 3: Contact between TR and LM 4: TR is part of LM in 3 dimensions 5: TR is part of LM in 2 dimensions 6: TR is part of LM in l dimension 7: TR is a gap or hole in LM 8: Information relevant, but not available Value l is the default case for expressions in which neither Contact between LM and TR, nor the absence of Contact between LM and TR, are part of the linguistically conceptualized rs. It can be exemplified by directionals such äs "towards" expressions, and schematic inclusion relations such äs "in London". Value 2 is only used for cases where TR is conceptualized äs being definitely not in contact with TR (such äs noncontact "over" expressions, "in front of", etc.), or cases in which a previously existing Contact relationship is no longer in existence at the time of reference of the utterance (e.g., "the rocket is off the launch pad"). Value 3 is coded for all cases in which Contact between LM and TR is clearly part of the linguistically conceptualized rs, including directional "to" expressions in which a Path of Movement of a TR is terminated by Contact with LM. Value 4 can be exemplified by constituent or distributed in expressions (e.g., "the bricks in the wall", "the trees in the forest", "the milk in the coffee"), äs well äs by expressions such äs "the mast on the boat". Value 5


276 C Sinha and L. A. Thorseng can be exemplified by expressions such äs "the boat in the picture", and Value 6 by expressions referring to a point or segment of a line or path. Value 7 is a specific feature value encoded for "negative parts": holes or gaps in LM. The following features further specify the nature of the contact, where this is part of what the expression is about, in the horizontal and vertical planes. In each case, an imaginary plane, either horizontal or vertical, is constructed between LM and TR, and contact is specified in this plane. B. Contact in the horizontal plane l: Not applicable 2: Whole or part of one surface of TR contacts part of one surface of LM, without overlap 3: Part of one surface of TR contacts whole of one surface of LM 4: One surface of TR contacts one surface of LM co-extensionally 5: Part of one surface of TR contacts part of one surface of LM, these surfaces overlap 6: There is a gap between TR and LM 7: Information relevant, but not available C. Contact in the vertical plane 1: Not applicable 2: Whole or part of one surface of TR contacts part of one surface of LM, without overlap 3: Part of one surface of TR contacts whole of one surface of LM 4: One surface of TR contacts one surface of LM co-extensionally 5: Part of one surface of TR contacts part of one surface of LM, these surfaces overlap 6: There is a gap between TR and LM 7: Information relevant, but not available We have had difficulty in deciding the appropriate level of granularity for specifying the values of these features. The problem is whether to define the relevant surfaces of TR and LM relationally, äs those surfaces which are in contact, or whether to define them in terms of their topological continuity with respect to the individual objects. Our (pragmatically workable even if theoretically inconsistent) solution is to bias our coding towards a relational definition, while allowing for the importance of some topological properties of TR. Thus, rs's referred to by "the cup on the table" and "the ball on the table" would both receive a coding of B2, while "the tablecloth is on the table" might (depending on the degree of coverage of the table by the cloth) receive a coding of B2, B3 or B4. Note that, commensurate with our decision not to view Contact and Inclusion äs different values of the Relative Distance feature, but äs



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independent features, a coding for Containment and Indusion (see below) will frequently also involve a coding of positive feature values under Contact and Constituency. Note also that, consistently with the specification of "no contact" äs a different value than "not applicable" under the feature Objects, Parts and Contact, the existence of a gap between TR and LM in either the horizontal or vertical plane is also coded äs a positive value of Features B and C (e.g., "the pencil held above the book": B6; "the pencil lying next to the book", C6). The gap is conceived of äs an active spatial zone defined by spatial projection from the LM or a part of the LM to the TR or a part of the TR, in which the narrowing of the gap would bring about contact in, respectively, the horizontal or the vertical plane. 4. Orientation, Part and Region Under this dimension we include features and values which relate to the specification of the location of TR in terms of the orientational and topological parts of LM, or spatial regions referred to such parts. This is an extremely complex sub-domain of spatial relational semantics, given the Variation within and between natural languages of the reference Systems ("frames of reference") available to Speakers to convey spatial relational Information in relation to the position and orientation of seif, LM, TR and features/directions of landscape and geography (Levinson 1991). It might be argued, äs we do with respect to the psychological basis of judgements of Relative Distance above, that the specifying of the "frame of reference" within which orientated location is specified falls outside the scope of a semantic coding System. We do not take any strong position on whether, from a purely theoretical point of view, frame of reference properly belongs to semantics or pragmatics. However, both the subjective perspective of the Speaker and the orientational features of the LM seem to be more directly involved in spatial relational expressions of orientational location, and in linguistic semantic Variation, than is the case for Relative Distance. It would, for example, be natural to Interpret an expression such äs in front of the house äs being specified in relation to the intrinsic orientational features of the house; and equally natural (in English, but not in all languages)11 to Interpret "in front of the tree" in relation to the perspective of the Speaker and/or hearer. Because of the importance of frame of reference in the expression of orientational spatial relational meanings, we have chosen to incorporate this aspect of meaning in the coding System. Another problem is posed by the determination of the actual LM involved in many orientational locational expressions. In the expressions


278 C Sinha and L. A. Thorseng "Who's that in front of the house?" or "What is this I see before me?", the LM is most naturally interpreted äs being the whole object (the house, the Speaker), while in the expression "Put it in the back of the car" the LM seems to be an orientationally specified part of the car. Morphology sometimes provides clues in resolving the question "What is the LM?": "in front of" can be regarded äs a single "concatenated" lexeme, whereas "in the front of" cannot. However, even closely related languages do not obey'the same semantic constraints on morphology. For example, the Dutch compound prepositions voorin and achterin may be glossed äs equivalent to English "in the front of" and "in the back of", and are quite different in meaning from voor (in front of/before) and achter (in back of/behind). It may therefore be maintained that Dutch "profiles" the rs expressed by achterin de auto differently than the English translation equivalent in the back of the car. Informally speaking, the Dutch expression locates TR in a part of the car by subspecifying the region which is orientationally defined by the back of the car, äs that part of back which is also interior. The English expression locates TR in a part of the car defined by subspecifying the region interior to the car, äs that part of interior which is at the orientationally defined back. This difference in profiling can also be justified by appeal to the different patterns of productivity in Dutch and English: achterop, achteraan, achterin vs. on the back of, at the back of, in the back of, Importantly, however, and irrespective of the cognitive Status of such postulated profilings, for both Dutch achterin and English in the back of, the LM to which the TR is locationally related in the expression is a part of the car, and not the car äs a whole. As we have stated in section 3, the aim of the coding System is, äs far äs possible, to fully characterize the linguistically conceptualized rs independently of the profilings associated with particular expressions. On the other band, we have also acknowledged that this should not and cannot yield an "objectivist" description independent of human conceptualization. In the case we have just discussed, we consider it justified to maintain that the linguistically conceptualized rs should be analyzed in both the Dutch and the English expressions äs involving the conceptualization of the rs in terms of the location of a TR with respect to an LM which is a part or region of a specified object. This is in contrast to such expressions äs "behind the car", in which the LM is the whole object in respect of whose orientationally defined parts and regions the TR is located. We refer (see below) to these different kinds of relational reference äs, respectively, Part-specified Location and Orientation-specified Location. The distinction may appear subtle, and the discussion laboured, but it is an important one, since by



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making it we can distinguish, where necessary, the spatial relational meanings expressed by the following examples: (5) a. b. (6) a. b. c. d.

Behind/in back of the house At the back of the house Onthehill On top of the hill At the top of the hill On the top of the hill

Note, in relation to the coding distinctions below, that (5a) and (5b) would receive different positive codings under Orientation, Part and Region, (6a) would receive a "not applicable" coding for all features in this dimension, and (6b) would receive a different positive coding than (6c) and (6d), while (6c) and (6d) would receive the same codings. Below we list the features and values under the dimension Orientation, Part and Region; beginning with the two features which describe the manner in which LM and its parts/regions specify the location of TR. A. Orientation-specified Location TR is located with respect to an oriented or topological part of LM and/or in a region of space defined by such a part of the LM; or is orientationally located with respect to the LM according to an extrinsic frame of reference. This feature is employed only for cases where the LM is the whole object. l: Not applicable 2: Front 3: Back 4: Side 5: Inside 6: Outside 7: Top/Overside/Up at 8: Bottom/Underside/Down at 9: Left 10: Right 11: Between 12: The whole object in an extrinsic frame of reference 13: Other 14: Information relevant, but not available Note the special cases covered by values 11, "Between", 12, "The whole object in an extrinsic frame of reference" and 13, "Other". In the case of value 11, the LM is not a single object but a pair of objects which jointly define the region in which TR is located. In the case of value 12,


280 C. Sinha and L. A. Thorseng äs in all other cases, the LM is the whole object, but the orientational system or frame of reference within which it serves äs a Landmark is not based upon the parts of the object (either intrinsically, or deictically specified), but is extrinsic to it. See below for further details. Value 13 ("Other") is included äs a "holding" category for possible conceptualizations which cannot be captured by other values. B. Part-specified Location TR is located in relation to a LM which is specified äs an oriented or topological part of an object, or a region of space defined by the LM's Position in the object of which it is a part. This feature is employed only for cases where the LM is a part or region of an object. 1: Not applicable 2: Front 3: Back 4: Side 5: Inside 6: Outside 7: Top/Overside 8: Bottom/Underside 9: Left 10: Right 11: Other 12: Information relevant, but not available To clarify, once more, the distinction between Orientation-specified Location and Part-specified Location, we offer the following examples. English prepositions such äs "in front of", "in back of", "behind", "above", "below", "underneath", "inside", "outside", "beside", "beneath", "on top of" would all be positively coded under Orientationspecified Location. Expressions such äs "at the top of", "in the back of", "on the outside of", and "metaphoric" cognates such äs "at the foot of the hill", would all be positively coded under Part-specified Location. What, though, of other languages? Many languages (e.g., Japanese) make extensive use of partonymic nouns glossing to English terms such äs "top", "inside", etc. in expressing spatial location. Expressions employing such nouns would clearly fall under Part-specified Location. In some languages (e.g., Mixtec: Brugman, 1983; Zapotec: MacLaury, 1989), the terms employed to "metaphorically" express Part-specified Location are body-part terms: that is, human (Zapotec) and/or animal (Mixtec) body and orientational Schemas are regularly "mapped" to inanimate LM's in the expression of spatial relational meaning.12 In principle this is not a



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problem for the coding System: the appropriate coding procedure for such languages would be to Interpret (in the canonical case) a lexeme meaning, for example, "head" äs referring to the part/region designated in the coding System äs "top". In practice, however, this could mean in some cases a significant loss of Information about the specificity of the spatial relational rs being referred to by the Speaker. Where such specificity is not captured by other features in other semantic dimensions of the coding System, it might be necessary to increase the number of values taken by Features A and (especially) B: the value "Other" can be regarded äs a "holding" category for this purpose. A more serious problem may be posed by our restriction of the specification of orientation to the LM object and its parts and regions: there is no coding for the orientation or shape of the TR. In some languages (e.g. Tzeltal: Levinson, 1991) expression of spatial relational meaning is regularly achieved by means of a class of "positional" terms specifying the shape and disposition of TR. This is not, however, a problem restricted to Tzeltal or similar languages. For example, a small number of English verbs (e.g., straddle) and prepositions (e.g., astride) can also be considered äs "dispositional" in their semantics. Although features under Contact and Constituency and Gravity and Support, in particular, allow for the coding of such dispositional Information to a limited extent, we have not attempted to independently encode orientational and dispositional Information regarding the TR, and we acknowledge this to be a "granularity gap" in the coding System. However, to address it adequately would necessitate extending the coding System to cover the dispositional spatial arrangement of single objects, a semantic domain which is far more extensive than spatial relational meaning in the strict sense; and which lies outside our current aims. The remaining features in the dimension Orientation, Part and Region specify the "frame of reference" employed by the Speaker in expressing Orientation-specified and Part-specified locational meanings. By "frame of reference" we mean the orientational/directional framework which permits the Interpretation of Orientation- or Part-specified items of expression in the conceptualization of the location of TR with respect to LM. We recognize three frames of reference.13 The intrinsic frame of reference is one which is based upon the intrinsic structure (endostructure: Sinha 1988) of the Landmark independently of the perspective of the Speaker or other discourse participants, and its actual and/or canonical orientation with respect to gravity. The intrinsic frame of reference is thus Landmark-centred, or more properly Landmark-feature centred. It can be exemplified by expressions such äs "on top of", but also expressions such äs "in front of" when employed in the sense of "in


282 C. Sinha and L. A. Thorseng the region specified by the front of". We sub-specify the intrinsic frame of reference äs either animate or inanimate, according to the way the Landmark parts are linguistically conceptualized.14 The deictic frame of reference is based upon the perspective of the Speaker and/or other discourse participants. It is, to use the terminology of the French "enonciation" linguists, "co-enunciator centred" (Lecercle 1994). It can be exemplified by expressions such äs "in front of" when employed equivalently to "on this/my/your/his/our side of". The extrinsic frame of reference is based upon geographic, topographic or meteorological features and conditions of the landscape. Terms such äs "north", "eastwards", "upriver", "seawards", "windwards" would be covered by this feature. Any of the three frames of reference may be combined with Orientation-specified Location. A TR may be in front of the car (in the region specified by the front of the car) (Orientation-specified, Intrinsic), in front of the tree (this/my side of the tree) (Orientation-specified, Deictic), or to the east of the river (Orientation-specified, Extrinsic). In contrast, only the intrinsic frame of reference may be combined with Part-specified Location. That is to say, we stipulate that Partspecified Location is always conceptualized in terms of the intrinsic (endo-) structural (orientational and topological) relations between the object-part LM, and the other parts of the object of which LM is a part (e.g., on top of the hill, inside the house, at the mouth of the cave). This stipulation simplifies the decisional structure of the coding System, and can be justified by the consideration that an LM which is an object-part or region of space defined by an object-part, is ipso facto being conceptualized in a schematic frame which is constituted by the object äs a whole. Thus, the permissible combinations of LM-specification and frame of reference are äs follows: Orientation-specified, Intrinsic Orientation-specified, Deictic Orientation-specified, Extrinsic Part-specified, Intrinsic. It can be objected against our stipulation that expressions which apparently violate it are readily imaginable in English, let alone other languages, e.g. "East of the foot of the mountain", "To the left of the front of the shop". Our response to this objection is to acknowledge that the creative resources of natural languages and their Speakers are such äs to permit the construction of elaborate linguistic conceptualizations of spatial relations which are not to be captured at the level of granularity of the coding System. This is a general problem to which in this specific instance we suggest the following pragmatic solution: frame of reference



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takes priority over LM-specification, so that any expression whose conceptualization is dominated by a deictically or extrinsically conceptualized spatial relationship is automatically considered to be an instance of Orientation-specified Location. Below we list the features and values for frame of reference. C. Intrinsic Animate Frame of Reference The frame of reference is intrinsically animate if the LM is human or animal, or linguistically conceptualized in terms of human or animal body parts/sense organs/canonical orientation, and its or its parts' orientation determine the application of Orientation-specified or Part-specified Locational items. The Intrinsic Animate Frame of Reference is based upon: 1: Not applicable 2: Human canonical orientation/direction of movement/direction of attention 3: Non-human canonical orientation/direction of movement/direction of attention 4: Information relevant, but not available. The principal distinction here is between the human and the nonhuman frames of reference. We do not attempt to cover the level of granularity of usage analyzed by Vandeloise (1991) in terms of distinctions between canonical and actual, current directions of movement, sense organs etc. of animate LMs. D. Intrinsic Inanimate Frame of Reference The frame of reference is intrinsically inanimate if the LM is an inanimate object with intrinsically or canonically oriented features, and its or its parts' orientation determine the application of Orientation-specified or Part-specified Locational items. The Intrinsic Inanimate frame or reference is based upon: l: Not applicable 2: Features of natural form or canonical orientation with respect to gravity 3: Canonical direction of motion 4: Interactional design features 5: Gravity in violation of canonical orientation 6: Canonical orientation in violation of gravity 7: Information relevant, but not available. The intrinsic inanimate frame of reference may be applied both to natural kind LMs and artefactual LMs. Value 2 is the default value for natural kind LMs and for artefactual LMs possessing an inherent (canonical) orientation with respect to gravity, when they are canonically ori-


284 C. Sinha and L. A. Thorseng ented. Value 3 applies to cases in which an artefactual LM (such äs a car) possesses a canonical direction of motion, and the intrinsic frame of reference is organized around this direction of motion, irrespective of whether the LM is linguistically conceptualized äs being in movement or at rest. Value 4 applies to cases where the frame of reference is based around the design features of an artefactual LM which specify its interactional affordances (e.g., a house or a Computer). Value 5 applies only to those cases in which the orientational parts and regions of an artefactual LM are defined by the "extrinsic" framework based upon the direction of the force of gravity, in violation of (and over-riding) the frame of reference provided by its canonical orientation. For example, the expression "under the car", where the car is inverted or upside-down, would receive this coding. Value 6 applies to the converse case, where the "intrinsic" framework of canonical orientation violates and over-rides the "extrinsic" framework of gravity, e.g. the expression "on the bottom of the car", when the car is inverted, meaning the surface which is at the gravitationally defined upper side. It is debatable whether value 5 properly belongs under the category "intrinsic frame of reference", but we would argue that the directionality imposed by the force of gravity is a special case of an extrinsic frame of reference, which in normal and socially Standard circumstances (canonically) defines the intrinsic frame of reference. Where this is not the case, it is a somewhat arbitrary decision whether to consider the resulting frame of reference äs "intrinsic" or "extrinsic". However, were we to include the orientational framework imposed by gravity under the feature Extrinsic Frame of Reference, this would bring in its train almost insuperable difficulties in deciding whether a given expression in which canonical and actual orientation are coincident (e.g., "under the table") involves the use of an intrinsic or extrinsic frame of reference. We have chosen therefore to include exceptions to the canonical correlation between gravity-defined and design-defined frames of reference äs part of the feature Intrinsic Inanimate Frame of Reference. E. Deictic Frame of Reference The frame of reference is deictic if the application of Orientation-specified Locational items is based upon the location and point of view of: 1: Not applicable 2: The Speaker 3: The addressee 4: A third party 5: A generalized observer 6: Information relevant, but not available.



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In some circumstances it will be difficult to decide whether an Intrinsic Animate or a Deictic frame of reference is being applied, since the two frameworks will lead to the same expressional choice (e.g., "in front of you"). The appropriate coding strategy will depend largely upon the dominant conventions of the language being coded, and contextual Information. In English, for example, we would suggest that the "intrinsic" frame is the general default case, but this may not hold for other languages. F. Extrinsic Frame of Reference The frame of reference is extrinsic if the Orientation-specified Location of the TR with respect to the LM is based upon geographic, topographic or meteorological features and conditions of the landscape. Terms such äs "north", "eastwards", "upriver", "seawards", "windwards" would be covered by this feature. We have not specified feature values here, since they will be likely to be extremely language· and culture-specific. Where such conceptualizations are regularly employed in a language, the coding System may be "filled out" with specific values: 1: Not applicable 2: Extrinsic frame of reference (specify values äs necessary). 5. Motion and Path The dimension of Motion and Path comprises three features, specifying Relative Motion (whether the rs involves a dynamic or a static spatial relation between TR and LM, and the motion or stasis of LM with respect to the world); Path of Motion, where the relation between TR and LM is dynamic or involves virtual motion; and the Physical Dependency relationship between the movement and position in space of TR and the movement and position in space of LM. Note that although, for reasons of notational consistency, we include a "Not applicable" value for each of these features, all spatial relational rs's are in fact either static or dynamic. A. Relative Motion l: Not applicable (this value not generally coded for this feature) 2: TR is static with respect to the location of LM 3: TR is moving with respect to the location of LM 4: LM is static with respect to the world 5: LM is moving with respect to the world 6: Information relevant, but not available. Note that "the world" in 4 and 5 means the explicit or implicit spatial


286 C Sinha and L. A. Thorseng frame or setting in the discourse context within which the spatial relational expression occurs. B. Path of Relative Motion Languages vary very widely in terms of the richness of resources they employ for the specification of Path of Motion. The North American language Cora, for example (Casad 1993), employs among other grammatical categories a complex System of verbal prefixes and suffixes conceptualizing Path of Motion in a highly detailed fashion, in ways which are not available to English Speakers. Representing the semantics of any of the aspects of spatial relational meaning covered by the coding system involves, of course, a trade-off between the inevitable Information loss when the coding system is compared with a language-specific cognitive semantic analysis, and the ability to represent expressions in different languages in a common format. This problem is accentuated in the domain of Path expressions not only by the actual known Variation between languages in their expressional resources but by the theoretical consideration that the geometry of Path is, in principle, almost infinitely variable, all the more so when motion deixis (e.g., "come", "go" and "Retuni Path" expressions) is taken into account. We have chosen not to include deictic components of Path expressions in the Coding System, since—unlike in the case of Orientation, Part and Region—these are relatively "external" to the specification of a spatial relation between a TR and a LM when the latter is conceptualized äs an object, region or path rather than äs an indexical place. We have therefore restricted the basic feature values which describe Path of Motion to (a) those which are defined by the direction of movement of TR, with respect to point-schematized LM-location, to the vertical plane or to some other extrinsic frame of reference; (b) those which are defined by whether LM is schematized äs following a Path (in which case the Path of Motion of TR can either intersect or follow the Path of the LM), or äs delimiting a two- or three-dimensional region. Other feature values deal with spatially directed psychological activity and ' Virtual" motion. The following values may be coded for the feature Path of Motion: 1: Not applicable 2: TR is moving on a path towards LM 3: TR is moving on a path away from LM 4: TR is moving on a path which is included in or is configured by a region delimited by LM 5: TR is moving on a path which intersects the path of a moving LM or Path-LM



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6: TR is moving on a path which follows the path of a moving LM or Path-LM 7: TR is moving on a path in an upwards direction 8: TR is moving on a path in a downwards direction 9: TR is moving on a path whose directionality is defined in terms of an extrinsic frame of reference 10: A static TR is related to the location, disposition or path of LM by a Path of Virtual Motion or Perception 11: Information relevant, but not available. By definition, the Path of Motion encoded by all positive values is that of the trajectory or line of path of TR with respect to LM. A moving LM or a Path-LM also possesses a trajectory or line of path in one dimension, and it is this line of path which is relevant for the characterization of the Path of Motion of a TR in relation to the LM: either the Path of TR intersects with (and perhaps crosses) the Path of LM, or the Path of TR follows the Path of LM (either identically or in parallel). Examples might be "walk along the river" (6), "walk across the road" (5), "walk by the stream" (6), "walk behind the coffin" (6). If LM is not conceptualized äs following a Path, then it may be conceptualized either äs a point-schematized location or äs defining a spatial region in two or three dimensions. In the first case, the Path of Motion of TR may be either towards or away from LM (Values 2 and 3). In the second case (Value 4) the Path of Motion of TR is specified simply äs being governed by spatial coincidence and topological relation (e.g., inclusion or bounding) with that region. This value covers a wide ränge of relationships (e.g., "walk across the yard", "walk in the woods", "walk over the field", "hang over the table", "walk around the yard", "walk through the passage") which are not further distinguished from each other with respect to the feature Path of Motion (although they may receive different positive codings under, for example, Containment and Inclusion: see below). Values 7, 8 and 9 comprise the only exceptions in the coding scheine to the stipulation that the spatial relationship must be characterizable in terms of a linguistically conceptualized spatial relationship between a Trajector and Landmark. Directionality of movement can be conceptualized in terms of the inherent up-down direction imposed by gravity, without the necessity of relating the Path of Motion to a Landmark (although a Landmark may, of course, be specified: e.g., "go down": value 8; "go down the hill": values 4 and 8; "go down from the hilltop": values 3 and 8). Values 7 and 8 are therefore coded in such cases irrespective of whether the spatial relation involves reference to a Landmark, but only in cases where


288 C. Sinha and L. A. Thorseng upward or downward directionality of the Path of Motion of TR is linguistically expressed. The directionality of "up" and "down" expressions is, in a sense, a special (and widely encoded) case of the use of an extrinsic fratne of reference (see above) for specifying direction in space.15 Value 9 covers all other uses of "extrinsic" frameworks based upon geography, topography etc. to define a Path of Motion of a Trajector. A coding of Value 9 will only be made if the rs is conceptualized in terms of actual or virtual motion of a Trajector (i.e., it will not be coded for true Stative locative expressions); and it will always be accompanied by an appropriate coding under the feature Extrinsic Frame of Reference in the dimension Orientation, Part and Region. Conceptualizations of spatial relations in terms of a path of virtual perception based upon a vantage point located at TR, or in terms of a path of virtual motion of a TR, regularly occur in many languages. Examples are "the house looks down the valley", "the road runs down to the sea", and expression (4b) above. Value 10 is used in all such cases, where a static relation between TR and LM is conceptualized and expressed in terms of a Path of Virtual Motion or Perception. This category covers two principal sets of cases. In the first set of cases, TR is conceptualized äs a Path-TR, similarly to the definition of a Path-LM, and its spatial relation to LM is specified in terms of virtual motion along this path. LM may itself be characterized äs a Path-LM ("the road crosses the river": values 5 and 10), äs a location ("the road to Mandalay": values 2 and 10), or äs a region configuring the Path-TR ("the road winds through the mountains": values 4 and 10). In the second set of cases, TR is conceptualized in terms of the path relating the directed perception of a virtual observer at the vantage point of TR to LM ("the house looks down into the bay": values 2, 8 and 10). C. Physical Dependence This feature relates to the causal relationships in the physical world16 by virtue of which the spatial position and/or disposition of the LM causally constrains the spatial position and/or disposition of the TR, or viceversa. For example, the position, configuration and orientation of a Container causally constrains the position and distribution of its contents. Although it might be argued that spatial relational expressions in natural languages are properly to be distinguished from causal expressions, human conceptualization of space and of spatial relations is inextricably bound up with the conceptualization of physical causality, äs witness both cognitive linguistic analysis of the role of force dynamics in spatial language (Talmy 1988), and the studies of cognitive development in infants and young children referred to in the Introduction. For this



289

reason, and although (äs is also the case for Size) it is debatable t o what extent spatial relational expressions are really "about" Physical Dependence, we have chosen to incorporate this feature in the Coding System. Physical Dependence can take the following values: l: Not applicable 2: The movement/position of LM causes or constrains the movement/ Position of TR 3: The movement/position of TR causes or constrains the movement/ Position of LM 4: Information relevant, but not available. For expressions such äs "the ball is the box", "the cup is on the table", Value 2 will be coded. Value 3 will be coded for expressions such äs "her hand is on the wheel". 6. Inaccessibility to Visual Perception Vandeloise (1991) argues, with reference to the French prepositions devant and derriere and to the description by Casad and Langacker (1985: incorrectly cited by Vandeloise 1991: 15 äs 1982) of the Cora verbal prefix u ('inside/out of sight'), that the semantics of these terms is (partially) governed by the invisibility of the TR to the discourse participants.17 Such inaccessibility to perception may be caused either (a) by the visual orientation (line of sight) of the observer (speaker/hearer/third party), or (b) by the relationship between the position and visual orientation of the observer, the (dis)position of LM and the (dis) position of TR, in which LM may obscure part or the whole of TR. The feature Inaccessibility to Visual Perception can take the following values: 1: Not applicable 2: The visibility to the observer of TR is affected by the observer's orientation 3: The visibility to the observer of TR is affected by the (dis) position ofLM 4: The visibility to the observer of LM is affected by the (dis)position ofTR 5: Information relevant, but not available. The type of case (e.g., "the screwdriver is behind you"), where the visual orientation of the observer prevents visual access to the TR, is covered by Value 2. It may be accompanied by a positive coding under Feature C Intrinsic Animate Frame of Reference of the Dimension Orientation, Part and Region (see above). Values 3 and 4 cover the type of case where the invisibility of either TR or LM is caused by the relative (dis)positions of observer, LM and TR (e.g., "the screwdriver behind/


290 C. Sinha and L. A. Thorseng

underaeath the box of screws", "the nails inside the box", "the screen in front of the bed"). Note that this feature may be used for both static and dynamic spatial relational rs's, such that the invisibility of TR/LM is either constant in the linguistically conceptualized rs, or changes in the time-course of the linguistically conceptualized rs. Thus, for example, "the train is in the tunnel", "the train came out of the tunnel" and "the train went into the tunnel" would all receive a coding of Value 3. 7. Gravity and Support

The conceptualizations of the bearer-burden relationship, based upon gravity and support, and the container-content relationship (see below), are fundamental to the spatial relational semantics of many languages, and reference to these relationships by means of "basic" terms (such äs the English prepositions on and in) occurs at an early stage of language acquisition in different languages (Sinha et al. 1994). We treat the concepts of "support" and "Containment" äs being organized around canonical core correlations inter-relating functional, perceptual and orientational properties of the spatially related objects (Sinha 1994). Our treatment is therefore in many respects in line with the arguments of Vandeloise (1991) in favour of a functional characterization of the bearer-burden and container-content relationships based upon human conceptualizations of na'ive physics. We would, however, qualify Vandeloise's approach in the following ways: (i) a functional canonical core theory does not conflict with the general approach of image-schematic cognitive semantics, understood äs involving motor äs well äs perceptual imagery, although it does contradict theories which propose purely perceptually defined prototypes of Containment and support. The relationship between canonical spatial relations and prototypic cases is a complex and important question, which lies outside the scope of this article. (ii) the functional canonical core approach to support and Containment concepts is supported by developmental psychological and psycholinguistic theory and evidence (Nelson 1974; Freeman et al. 1980; Sinha 1982, 1988, 1994) which we shall not summarize here. We provide extended definitions of the feature values for canonical cases of both Gravity and Support and Containment and Inclusion, in terms of their associated functional image schematisms. The feature Gravity and Support can take the following values: 1: Not applicable 2: Canonical Support



291

Basic definitiorr. LM (the bearer) is conceptualized äs a canonical support, TR (the bürden) is supported by LM. Associated functional image schematism: LM is a two- or threedimensional solid, TR is a solid or a distributed collection of particles. LM has a flat horizontal upper surface and TR is not part of LM. The upper surface of LM Supports TR against gravity either directly; or indirectly by virtue of supporting another surface which is conceptually co-planar with the horizontal surface of LM, in which the plane of the horizontal surface of LM and the real or imagined plane constituted by the intermediate object are schematically melded together. 3: LM (the bearer) supports TR (the bürden) directly against gravity from beneath, but LM is not conceptualized äs a canonical support 4: LM (the bearer) supports TR (the bürden) against gravity by virtue of balance 5: LM (the bearer) supports TR (the bürden) against gravity by virtue of adhesion 6: LM (the bearer) supports TR (the bürden) against gravity by virtue of Suspension 7: LM (the bearer) supports TR (the bürden) against gravity by virtue of flotation 8: LM (the bearer) supports TR (the bürden) against gravity due to Containment or inclusion of TR by LM 9: LM (the bearer) supports TR (the bürden) against gravity in a nonvertical direction 10: TR (the bearer) supports LM (the bürden) against gravity from beneath 11: Information relevant, but not available. The definition of canonical support specifies that, in order to be a canonical support, the bearer must have an upper surface conceptualizable äs flat and of sufficient extension to support the bürden. The definition also acknowledges that the physical relationship between the bearer and the bürden may be an indirect one, i.e. another object may actually exert the counter-gravitational force which prevents the bürden from falling, but only if the object is itself a bürden canonically supported by the bearer which can be conceptualized äs integral to the bearer. Thus, a book on top of a book on a table is canonically supported both by the book underneath it and by the table underaeath that. In distinguishing between canonical (Value 2) and non-canonical (Value 3) support from beneath, the sole relevant factor is the nature of the linguistic conceptualization of the LM: i.e., whether or not the LM is conceptualized äs a canonical support äs defined above. Thus, for example, "the cup on the table" is an instance of canonical support,


292 C. Sinha and L· A. Thorseng while "the house on the hill" is not. The interpretive issues involved in this distinction are complex, and we do not have the space to address them here. The other values of this feature can only occur alone. Value 4 is only used when balance is explicitly expressed in the utterance. Values 5, 6 and 7 are exemplified by, respectively, "the picture on the wall", "the pear on/hanging from the branch", "the boat on the lake". Value 8 is only coded if a value from the feature Containment and Indusion (see below) is also coded, in cases in which the (dis)position of TR is constrained against alteration by the force of gravity äs a result of a relationship of Containment or inclusion between LM and TR. Value 9 is exemplified by "the ladder against the wall". Value 10 is exemplified by "the roof under/beneath the chimney". Note that in some cases, a coding for one of the features Orientationspecified Location or Part-specified Location from the dimension Orientation, Part and Region may accompany a coding from the feature Gravity and Support. The following example expressions, when used to refer to the same rs, would all receive an identical coding of Value 2 (canonical support) under the feature Gravity and Support: (7)

a. b. c.

The book on the pile The book on top of the pile The book at the top of the pile

However, (7a) would receive no coding under Orientation, Part and Region, while (7b) and (7c) would receive codings for Value 7 ("top") under, respectively, Orientation-specified Location and Part-specified Location. Note also that (7d, e, f, g) would all receive a coding of Value 7 ("top") under Part-specified Location (7d, e, f), resp. Orientationspecified Location (7g), but only (7f, g) would receive a coding (Value 3, non-canonical support from beneath) under Gravity and Support: (7) d. e. f. g.

The house is at the top of the hill He walked to the top of the hill The house is on the top of the hill The house is on top of the hill

N.B. It is important to note that for both the features Gravity and Support and Containment and Inclusion, expressions which refer to support or containment/inclusion relations "negatively", that is, the kind of reference typically expressed in English by "off" and "out (of)", receive identical codings to their "positive" counterparts: that is, they are treated, with respect to support and containment/inclusion, äs referring to the



293

spatial relational rs which their utterance either denies or backdates. See, for more details, section 4.9 on Negative Reference and History. 8. Containment and Inclusion The feature Containment and Indusion, like the feature Gravity and Support, is assumed to be organized around a canonical core instance, namely canonical Containment. The feature Containment and Inclusion can take the following values: l: Not applicable 2: Canonical Containment Basic definition: LM (the Container) is conceptualized äs a canonical Container, TR (the content) is contained by LM. Associated functional image schematism: LM is a three-dimensional solid possessing a cavity which may be perceptually or physically accessible but need not be; if the cavity is accessible it is accessible at the upper surface or end of the solid. TR is a solid, a distributed collection of particles, or a fluid, LM is a Container and TR its content, where the Container constrains the movement, location and distribution of the content in both the vertical direction of gravity and the horizontal plane. 3: Total inclusion: 3D LM includes TR 4: Partial inclusion: 3D LM partially includes TR 5: Surface inclusion: 3D LM includes but does not enclose TR 6: Area inclusion (2D): 2D LM includes TR 7: Bounding: TR/Path of TR bounds 2D or 3D LM 8: Partial Bounding: TR/Path of TR partially bounds 2D or 3D LM 9: Information relevant, but not available. The definition of canonical Containment covers both open Containers (like cups) and closed or closeable Containers (like boxes with lids). It specifies that, in order for an open canonical Container, such äs a cup, to instantiate a canonical Containment relationship, the Container must be canonically oriented with its cavity more-or-less upwards. This constraint does not apply to closed Containers: a draught beer barrel with its tap on the lower part of the side of the barrel is a canonical Container and the beer is its content. It further specifies that, if the Container is moveable, the movement of the Container will cause a co-translational movement of the content: the content goes where the Container goes, and the Container is also a specific (non-canonical) kind of support, äs is acknowledged in Value 8 of the feature Gravity and Support. Canonical Containment so defined is a spatial-functional relationship to be distinguished from the topological relationship (s) of inclusion.18 If you imagine a mug of tea with a teaspoon in it, the teaspoon sticking up


294 C Sinha and L. A. Thorseng over the rim of the cup, both the tea and the teaspoon are contained by the mug, but only the tea is totally included in the three-dimensional volume of space bounded by the surfaces of the mug. The teaspoon is only partially included in this volume. Nevertheless, the mug and the teaspoon stand in a relationship of canonical Containment just äs do the mug and the tea. Some canonical Containers (such äs quivers for holding arrows) are designed to instantiate canonical Containment relationships of partial inclusion, and others (such äs toothmugs), while not necessarily so designed, may be intentionally used to instantiate partial inclusion. Therefore, a coding of Value 2 (canonical Containment) will always require a concurrent coding of either Value 3 (total inclusion in three dimensions) or Value 4 (partial inclusion in three dimensions). Values 3 and 4 may also be coded independently of their use to qualify Value 2 (canonical Containment). Such independent codings cover cases where LM is not a canonical Container, but is conceptualized äs a bounded, three-dimensional object or space (a non-canonically oriented open Container, a solid without a cavity, a volume of liquid, a building, a tunnel). TR may be either totally or partially included in the space bounded by LM, or may change its location to or from either total or partial inclusion. Total inclusion should be coded when the volume bounded by the surfaces of LM include and enclose the volume of TR (e.g., "the chair in the hall"); partial inclusion should be coded when the volume bounded by the surfaces of LM partially includes the volume of TR and the volume of TR extends beyond the volume bounded by the surfaces of LM (e.g., "the chair at/under the table"). Value 5 (Surface inclusion) covers cases in which the volume bounded by the surfaces of a three-dimensional LM includes, but does not enclose, the volume of TR, and LM and TR share at least one common surface; that is, the surface of TR is flush with the surface of LM. It covers cases such äs "the brick in the wall'' or "the hole in the ground". Value 6 (Area inclusion) covers cases where LM is conceptualized äs a two-dimensional geographic or topographic area, such äs expressed by "in Paris", "into the garden", "out of Africa", "outside the penalty box", "off the street". Value 7 (Bounding) covers cases where TR, or the actual or virtual Path of Motion of TR, is conceptualized äs a boundary surrounding a two-dimensional object or area or a three-dimensional object or volume. The actual dimensionality of the boundary is not relevant to these codings: it may be a one-dimensional line, a two-dimensional surface, or a threedimensional ring or taurus. Value 6 can best be illustrated by usages of English "around", such äs "the walls around the city", "the frame around the picture", "the wrapping around the gift". It also covers spatial rela-



295

tional rs's of the type "the ring on her finger". Value 8 (Partial Bounding) is identical to Value 7 (Bounding), except that TR/Path of TR constitutes a partial rather than füll boundary of LM, äs in "around the corner". It should be noted that any coding for "Inside" or "Outside" values under Orientation, Part and Region will imply a coding for inclusion under Containment and Inclusion. However, the converse does not hold: only cases of inclusion which are linguistically conceptualized with reference to the inside or outside of the LM, or to a LM which is the inside or outside of an object, will receive "Inside" or "Outside" codings. Thus, for example, although the expressions "in the box", "inside the box" and "at the inside of the box", referring to the same rs, will all receive codings of Value 3 under Containment and Inclusion, they will all receive different codings under Orientation, Part and Region. Note, further, the inverse relationship between the codings of "Inside" and "Outside" under Orientation, Part and Region, and "Bounding" under Containment and Inclusion. The former involves cases where TR is located in relation to a part or region defined by the boundaries of LM. The latter involves cases where TR is a boundary whose interior region includes LM. Note also that cases coded for Bounding in which the rs involves actual or virtual motion of TR, will also receive a coding of Value 4 ("TR is moving on a path which crosses, is included in or is configured by a region delimited by LM") under the feature Path of Motion. 9. Negative Reference and History

This feature covers cases in which the linguistic expression of a spatial relational rs involves its conceptualization by reference to another spatial relationship which does not obtain, or which obtained in the past but no longer obtains. The typical (and äs far äs we know, in English and similar languages, the only—see Landau and Jackendoff, 1993) examples of such expressions are those involving "out (of)", "outside" and "off". The pairs "on/off" and "in/out" differ from other converse pairs ("in front of/behind", "above/below" etc.) which involve the reversal of the prominence roles of Trajector and Landmark, and which are otherwise (considerations of lexical markedness aside) semantically symmetrical. The semantic content of "off" and "out", by contrast, can only be properly defined with reference to the meanings of their "positive" counterparts. The feature Negative Reference and History applies only to these cases. It does not apply to negations in general (such äs "the milk is not in the fridge"), nor to past time reference in general (such äs "the cup was on the table"); such utterances receive identical codings to their affirmative


296 C Sinha and L. A. Thorseng and present tense equivalents. The feature Negative Reference and History can take the following values: l: Not applicable 2: Negative Reference/History 3: Information relevant, but not available. The basic definition of Value 2, Negative Reference/History, is: TR is characterized in terms of a Gravity and Support or Containment and Inclusion relationship to LM which does not exist at the time of reference. Time of reference is defined äs the time at which the spatial relational rs referred to in the coded linguistic expression obtains; it is to be distinguished from the time of utterance. For example, the time of reference of "Take your shoes off!" is the (future) time at which the shoes are off the addressee, and the time of utterance is simply the time at which the expression is uttered. A more extended definition of Negative Reference/History is: TR was previously, or is habitually, or might be expected to be, in a Gravity and Support or Containment and Inclusion relationship with LM, but is not in this relationship at the time of reference, and the absence of this relationship is linguistically expressed other than by its negation. The presuppositional and temporal pragmatics of utterances involving "off" and "out" is complex and subtle. For example, the utterance (8a) carries the implication that John was in gaol at a previous time, whereas the utterance (8c) does not. The utterance of (8b, d) carries no implication regarding John's having been in gaol, but does carry the implicature that John might be expected to be in gaol at a future time. (8) a. b. c. d.

John John John John

is out of gaol is still out of gaol is not in gaol is still not in gaol

The complexities of these matters he outside the scope of the coding system, but because both time and negation are involved in the meaning of items such äs "off" and "out", we label the feature Negative Reference and History. We conclude this section by providing in Table l example codings for the expressions (4a, b) above, which we reproduce below: (4) a. b.

The man walked over the bridge The bridge Stretches over the road

5. Discussion

Having presented the coding System, we turn first to some theoretical considerations regarding the approach to semantic theory which it reflects



297

Tablc l. Example codingsfor expressioru (4a) and (4b) Feature

(4a) codiog

(4b) coding

Size

2

2

Relative Distance

4

3

Contact and Constituency A B C

3 2 I

2 6 1

7 1 1 2 1 1

7 1 1 2 1 1

Orientation, Part and Region A B C D E F Motion and Path A B C

3,4

2,4

6 2

5, 10 1

Inaccessibility to Visual Perception

1

1

Gravity and Support

2

1

Containment and Inclusion

1

1

Negative Reference and History

1

1

and provokes, and second to the potential uses of the coding System äs a research tool. We begin by taking up the issue of the relationship between sense and reference which we started to address in Section 2. We stated there that the goal of this coding System was neither an inventory of language-internal "senses", nor a physicalist description of an extralinguistic "state of affairs", but a descriptive System for the characterization of Referential Situations in terms relevant for their linguistic (and perhaps non-linguistic) conceptualization. Stated thus negatively, it might seem that in this cognitive semantic-inspired view of meaning, the traditional distinction between sense and reference no longer has any place. We do not, however, wish to advance such a view. Rather, we propose a recasting of the traditional distinction, based upon a conception of meaning äs mapping. The mapping in question is between (a) the features which constitute the linguistic conceptualization of the Referential Situation (more specifically, the "positive" feature values, discounting instances of "non-applicability"), and which we regard äs the description


298 C. Sinha and L. A. Thorseng of the semantic content of the expression; and (b) the linguistic expression which expresses this conceptualization. Any distinct, actually occurring feature/value combination (i.e.linguistically conceptualized rs) may be viewed äs a semantic type for a language in which it occurs, independently of how it is actually expressed in that language. For example, the codings in Table l represent different semantic types in English. Both of these semantic types may involve uses of "over" expressions, äs in (4a, b). However, they need not necessarily do so: in fact, expressions (9a, b) and (lOa, b) below would (appropriately construed) receive, respectively, identical codings to (4a, b):19 (9) a. b. (10) a. b.

The man walked across the bridge The bridge Stretches across the road The man crossed the bridge on foot The bridge spans the road

English "over" may also be involved in the expression of a finite set of other semantic types: for example, the semantic type expressed by (11) diifers from that expressed by (4b) with respect only t o one of the values (4,10 vs. 5,10) taken by the feature Motion and Path B, Path of Relative Motion: (11) The bridge Stretches over the lake English "across" may be involved in the expression of a different set of other semantic types than is the case for "over"; and the ränge of semantic types expressible in terms of the verbs "cross" and "span", we may suppose, will more nearly coincide with the ränge of semantic types expressible in terms of "across" than with the ränge of semantic types expressible in terms of "over". Hence, any given expression item will frequently (in this domain, usually) map not to one single semantic type, but to a finite set of different semantic types (and vice versa—the implications of which we address below). In many cases, therefore, the mappings of different expression items in a single language will overlap with each other at their end-points, namely the ränge of semantic types which they may express. We can call the set of semantic types to which uses of a particular expression item may map the "referential scope" of the expression item, and cases of overlap between the referential scopes of different expression items "referential overlap". It should be noted at this point that there is no presupposition that an actually occurring semantic type in any given language will necessarily also be a semantic type in any or every other language. For example, a language which exclusively employs expressions based upon an "extrinsic" frame of reference for referring to oriented location, and path of



299

motion, will simply not instantiate semantic types based upon intrinsic or deictic frames of reference. Thus, the use of the coding scheme is, in effect, a discovery procedure for the ränge of semantic types expressed in a language or by a user of a language in a given Situation or at a particular stage of language acquisition. We return below to the question of the kinds of hypotheses that this discovery procedure allows us to test. We can now view the "sense" (or totality of senses) of a given expression item bearing spatial relational meaning (e.g., an English locative particle, or verb) äs being a structured ensemble of the mappings between that expression item äs a paradigmatically and syntagmatically defined constituent, and its referential scope. This conception of meaning äs mapping enables our approach to encompass both the structuralist insight that the semantic value of an item is relational and contrastive, and the cognitive semantic insight that the meanings of spatial relational morphemes are based in conceptualization and schematization, regarding these äs complementary and dynamically interactive aspects of meaning (see also Sinha 1993). It also enables us to make a distinction-in-principle between polysemy and synonymy, which are sense phenomena, and semantic vagueness and referential overlap, which are phenomena of semantic content, äs we have defined this above.20 In general, we can say that the greater the dependency of the Interpretation of an item upon linguistic and non-linguistic context, the greater is the tendency to "bleaching" of its meaning in the direction of generality, lack of constraint, or unspecificity: that is, towards vagueness. Examples of vague (unspecified or unconstrained) meanings in the domain of spatial relations are English at; and (at the limit case) the Tzeltal preposition ta, which marks the existence of a spatial relationship between a Landmark and a Trajector, whose further specification is achieved by selection from a large but finite class of "dispositional" items (Levinson 1991). Morphemes like at thus map onto a wide and relatively unconstrained ränge of conceptualizations: that is, they have a wide referential scope, with only a relatively (or in the case of Tzeltal ta, vanishingly) small "common core" of features of the RS: "vague" expression items are thus weakly conceptualizing items. In contrast, a "polysemous" item (such äs English over) maps onto a multiply constrained, disjunctive set of conceptualizations, with a larger "common core" of identical or closely related (by, for example, familyresemblance or image-schematic transformation) features of the rs: polysemous items thus provide (in the ideal case) for alteraate strong conceptualizations, whose interpretive resolution is dependent (äs is also the case for vague items) upon linguistic and non-linguistic context. Thus, the more unconstrained the referential scope of a given expres-


300 C Sinket and L· A. Thorseng sion item, the more semantically vague we may consider it to be, where constraint can be defined äs one or more "attractor" in the mapping space constituted by the vectors from expression to semantic types which constitute the sense(s) of the item. Where the referential scope of a given expression item is governed by a single strong attractor, that expression item can be considered to have a more-or-less univocal meaning; where it is governed by multiple strong attractors, it can be considered to be more-or-less polysemous. Hence, vagueness is not equivalent to polysemy, and semantic vagueness (defined äs lack of constraint), not polysemy, is the more fundamental theoretical notion. Polysemy, on this account, and consistently we believe with the arguments of Geeraerts (1993) and Tuggy (1993), is viewed äs multiply constrained and contextually resolved lack of semantic vagueness; and the distinction between semantic vagueness and polysemy is one of degree, not of kind. It is worth pointing out here that we deliberately choose to speak of semantic rather than referential vagueness, since the vagueness we are speaking of is vagueness of semantic content (in other words, of the ränge of linguistically conceptualized rs's to which the expression item can apply). There is another kind of more "traditionally referential" vagueness, which has to do with the relationship between a given linguistic conceptualization (in our terms, semantic type), and the ränge of physical circumstances in the non-linguistic world to which it may apply. Although have emphasized throughout that our concern here, äs cognitive semanticists, is with the linguistically conceptualized rs, this does not make us linguistic solipsists who believe that the world only exists by virtue of language, or linguistic determinists who believe that the only perceptual access we have to the world is through language. We can, however, illustrate the point at issue by exemplification, without going too deeply into the relation between our semantic theory and questions of ultimate ontology. A given semantic type—say that associated with an expression such äs (4b)—will conceptualize a ränge of possible real-world "states-of-affairs". Suppose in one such state-ofaffairs the bridge referred to in (4b) is made of rope, and sags down so that it almost touches the surface of the road. In these circumstances, we might be reluctant to say that it "Stretches over the road". At what point does the "span" of the bridge "over" the road turn into the "sag" of the bridge "across" the road? This is a question of "referential vagueness" pure sang, having to do with the fit between conceptualization (s) and the circumstances which they conceptualize. It is not the same äs semantic vagueness, which is about reference äs semantic content, that is, unconstrainedness of mapping from an expression element to a ränge of semantic types. It is this second kind of referential relationship which is our



301

focus in this paper, and which we are talking about when we use the terms referential scope and referential overlap. Thus, semantic vagueness is vagueness of referential scope, not vagueness of boundaries goveraing the applicability of a conceptualization to an extra-linguistic state-ofaffairs. For that kind of vagueness, we could perhaps reserve the term "referential vagueness", or we might better, to avoid confusion, coin a usage such äs "indeterminacy of grounding", under which might fall many issues of prototypicality, fuzzy boundaries, and the relationship between cognition and perception. Anyhow, the point is that, however important and fascinating, that is not what we are talking about here. Cases where more than one different expression item may be involved in the expression of a given semantic type—äs in expressions (4a), (9a) and (lOa) above—we designated äs instances of referential overlap. In traditional accounts of sense and reference, the expressions "walk across X" and "cross X on foot" would be considered to be synonymous, but neither expression would be considered to be synonymous with "walk over X". We can preserve this Intuition by supposing that the referential scope of "walk across X" is identical with the referential scope of "cross X on foot", and non-identical with the referential scope of "walk over X". Synonymy then becomes a special case of referential overlap which is dependent both upon identity of referential scope and upon equivalence of large-scale structural distribution. It is only in cases where the vectors constituting the referential scope of two or more structurally substitutible expression items are equivalent over a wide ränge of syntactic frames that we may make the judgement that the expression items are synonymous. Hence, again, we consider referential overlap to be a more fundamental theoretical notion than synonymy, which is viewed äs identity of referential scope over a large ränge of (language-specific) linguistic contexts. Note, now, that since we have defined sense in terms of mapping vectors from expression to semantic content, and synonymy in terms of equivalence of mapping vectors, we have committed ourselves to upholding the view that the sense of "walk across X" is equivalent to the sense of "cross X on foot"; and that, by the same argument, the sense of "stretch across X" is equivalent to the sense of "span X"; and hence that referential overlap (which implies possible identity of reference on particular occasions) may occur either with or without equivalence of sense of the referring expressions. This is very close to the traditional Fregean view of the relationship between sense and reference, even though we have arrived at it without making any of the "objectivist" assumptions of model-theoretic semantics, and without invoking a Fregean conception of "senses" äs Platonic "ideas". If our argument is correct, then, many


302 C. Sinha and L. A. Thorseng of the valuable insights of the semantic tradition inaugurated by Frege may be preserved in cognitive semantics, with no need to retain its untenable metaphysics. In fact, the approach which we advocate offers a radical simplification of the notion of linguistic sense, now defined äs: the mapping relation between structured expression and structured conceptualized content. There is nevertheless a significant difference between this view of meaning-as-mapping, and the traditional view of sense äs a "property" of expression items: namely, that mapping (or vector) equivalence is not reducible to mapping identity, since (by definition) the mapping from (for example) the expression "cross X on foot" to its conceptualized content is not identical to that from the expression "walk across X" to the same conceptualized content. This is a large theoretical issue which we only have space to touch upon briefly, The essential point is that equivalence of mapping is not in all cases realized by structural vectorisomorphism, and that (more generally) the various constituent aspects of conceptualized content can be differentially distributed over different structural positions. Synonymy of grammatically non-congruent expressions is just a special case of a more general phenomenon which we can designate in terms of the notion of distributed semantics, a notion with, we claim, widespread applicability in the domain of spatial relational meaning (see, e.g., Ameka, this issue). In order to do understand the notion of distributed semantics, and its difference from local semantics, we need to reverse the implicit direction of mapping between expression and conceptualization. Hitherto, we have "anchored" on expression, viewing "sense" äs a directed relationship from expression to conceptualization. Now, we shall "anchor" on conceptualization, viewing systemically distributed meaning äs a directed relation from conceptualization to expression. By a local semantics, we mean a linguistic conceptualization (semantic type) whose expression is achieved by means of a single selection from a single form class. Thus, inasmuch äs a given semantic type is exclusively mapped to a single morpheme in a given linguistic expression, and a disjunctive class of semantic types is mapped to selections from a single paradigmatic set of morphemes, that set of mappings exemplifies a local semantics. Conversely, inasmuch äs a given semantic type is mapped to selections from different form classes (either systemically or in a given syntagmatic string), and a disjunctive class of semantic types is regularly mapped to such selections from different form classes, that set of mappings exemplifies a distributed semantics. The theoretical conception of a distributed spatial semantics can then be represented äs a System of many-to-many mappings between spatial



303

relational conceptualizations and mo hemes; in contrast with the System of many-to-one mappings characteristic of a local spatial semantics. If, äs we suspect, spatial relational meaning is usually characterizable in terms of distributed semantics, it is likely that this will necessitate a substantial re-evaluation of the traditional concept of semantic compositionality. Since this, again, is a large issue which falls outside the scope of this paper, we shall leave the matter there.21 We conclude by outlining some possible investigative purposes to which the coding System may be put. As we have said, our own research goals are primarily focussed on language acquisition and development, in which our general research question may be summed up äs follows: Is the pattern and process of language acquisition and development in the domain of spatial relations governed mainly by semantic content or mainly by language-specific structures of expression and realization? This general question can be broken down into a series of more specific questions, some but not all of which are specifically developmental, for example: —

—

—

— —

Is there an identifiable set of feature-value combinations (e.g., conceptualizations of canonical spatial relations), or non-trivial constraints on such combinations (i.e., constraints on semantic types which are not just predictable from physical impossibility), which are identifiable in the semantic types found in all languages? (The question of language universals) Irrespective of whether there are language universals or not, are there universal patterns of order of acquisition of feature values and specific combinations of feature values? (The question of developmental universals) Do language universals (if they exist) have a privileged Status in acquisition and development, in terms of, e.g., acquisition order, frequency of production, etc.? (The question of the acquisitional role of cognitive content, e.g. the canonicality hypothesis) Do language and/or developmental universals correlate with "basiclevel" terms (of whatever grammatical class) across languages? (The question of cognitive-linguistic economy), and: To the extent that it is possible empirically to distinguish the role of cognitive-linguistic economy in acquisition and development from that of cognitive content, by for example distinguishing between prototypical/canonical uses from non-prototypical/canonical uses of basic-level terms, how do patterns of acquisition and development reflect the interaction between them? For example, does acquisition follow a radial pattern?


304 C. Sinha and L· A. Thorseng — What effects do particular modes of lexicalization of semantic content (in terms of, e.g., body-part metaphor) have on patterns of acquisition, between languages and, where alternative modes of expression are available for the same or similar semantic contents, within languages? (The question of the role of lexical designation and cross-domain mapping, e.g. the embodiment hypothesis) — What effects do different ways of mapping the same or similar semantic contents to equivalent morpho-syntactic classes in different languages (e.g., prepositions, case-inflections) have upon patterns of acquisition? (The question of the role of lexical/morphemic structuring) — What effects do different ways of mapping the same or similar semantic contents to different morpho-syntactic classes, both between and within languages, have upon patterns of acquisition? (The question of the role of grammatical structuring, including the influence of "overtly" vs "covertly" distributed semantic Systems) Our hope is that by investigating these and other developmental questions in relation to a cross-linguistic database, we can contribute both to the empirical and theoretical study of child language acquisition, and to the interdisciplinary understanding of spatial language and cognition, The other principal research area in which the coding System might, we suggest, fruitfully be put to use is that of the comparative and typological investigation of spatial semantics and its relation to patterns of linguistic expression. We do not wish to prejudge the comprehensiveness of the coding System in this respect. Our aim in this paper has not been to argue for the immutability of its current form: it is not cast in tablets of stone. We have aimed, instead, to explicate äs far äs possible why we have developed it and what goals it is intended to meet, what considerations we have taken into account in developing it, and how, in the process, we have been led to reflect upon fundamental issues in the cognitive scientific study of cognition, language, and meaning. We hope, in sharing these reflections, both to awaken an interest in our particular enterprise and to convince the reader that there remain many unexplored regions of space and language. University of Aarhus, Denmark

Notes *

The authors wish to thank Hubert Cuyckens, Manko Hayashi, Peter Kr0jgaard, Tania Kuteva, Jose Sanders, David Wilkins and Jordan Zlatev for their comments on various versions of the coding System and/or their insights and arguments on matters of



1.

, | 2. 3. i 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12.

305

semantic theory. Dirk Geeraerts provided much helpful and incisive advice in his review of an earlier version of the paper. He must bear some responsibility for the resulting extension of its length; but none for the remaining inadequacies, gaps, and loose ends. The two authors are jointly and equally responsible for the development of the coding system reported in this article. The first author is responsible for this text. The development of the coding system was supported by the Danish Humanities Research Council Framework Project in Cognitive Science. The coding system described herein © Chris Sinha and Lis A. Thorseng. Authors' address: Institute of Psychology, Aarhus University, Asylvej 4, DK-8240 Risskov, Denmark. E-Mail (Chris Sinha): [email protected] Svorou (1994: Appendix B) offers a comprehensive coding system for spatial forms ("grams"), but this is cast at a systemic rather than discourse-referential level of analysis. The same applies both to Svorou's list of etic meaning components and to Pinxten's spatial "Universal Frame of Reference" (UFOR). The latter is a praxiologically-formulated etic coding system comprehending cultural conceptualizations of space in its non-linguistic äs well äs linguistic construction (Pinxten et al. 1983), intended äs a universal heuristic for the formulation of emic descriptions. The Systems of Svorou and Pinxten are therefore both different in aim, and wider in scope, than our coding system. We shall not, therefore, be diverted here by problems such äs failed or opaque reference. This does not mean that we deny the existence of a world outside language and human conceptualization. It means that our approach to semantic analysis is to describe the world äs it is construed in/through/by means of language and human conceptualization, not to provide objective descriptions of ultimate physical reality. We return briefly to this issue in the discussion section. We follow the terminology of Langacker (1987, 1991). 1t is of course tempting to characterize this äs a difference between semantics and pragmatics, but we shall not enter into this particular area of dispute in this article. We have chosen this example precisely because of the classic, and therefore widely known, Status of the Brugman/Lakoff analysis of over in the cognitive semantic literature. Although the analysis we offer departs from theirs in some significant respects, we propose it not in order to quarrel over "over" in itself, but äs an Illustration both of the general theoretical principles which inform the coding system, and of the methodological principles which flow from the theoretical principles. Talmy (1990) discusses "fictive" motion in spatial relational semantics: the concept of virtual motion that we employ is essentially the same, and we acknowledge our indebtedness to his analysis. See Geeraerts (1992) for a different but related analysis of the senses of Dutch "over". The linguistically conceptualized rs may be real (actually existing) or imaginary (e.g. one which the Speaker intends the hearer to bring about). There is one small class of exceptions to this general principle which is described in Section 4.5, Motion and path. Allan (1995) cites Heine (1989) to the effect that the Chumas dialect of the Eastern Nilotic language Maa conceptualizes trees äs having intrinsic fronts and backs. It is also the case that a deictic usage of "in front of" with respect to an object conceptualized äs non-fronted creates two possibilities for the designation of the region "in front": either (äs in English) the region between Speaker and object, or (äs in Hausa: Hill 1975, 1982) the region on the far side of the object from the Speaker. We do not mean to attribute any necessary extant cognitive significance to such "map-


306 C. Sinha and L. A. Thorseng

13.

14. 15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20. 21.

ping" for individual Speakers; we are referring to specific devices in the languages concerned. David Wilkins (p.c.) informs us that Stephen Levinson and bis colleagues currently distinguish four "fraraes of reference", namely: relative, deictic, absolute and intrinsic. We have argued that it is necessary to distinguish between the "frame of reference" and the "LM of reference", in which the latter may be either an object or a part of an object. We suggest that where LM of reference is an object, frame of reference may be intrinsic, deictic or extrinsic. Where LM of reference is a part of an object, frame of reference will always be intrinsic. These four possibilities correspond (we suggest) to the Levinson group's categories äs listed here. We prefer the term "extrinsic" to "absolute" because an extrinsic directionality (e.g., a prevailing wind) may not be "absolute", and anyway even frames such äs the cardinal points are relative to the motions of heavenly bodies, however conceived. The term "relative" is confusing in the same way: for example, what we call the intrinsic top and bottom of an object are relative to the actual and/or canonical orientation of the object with respect to the directionality imposed by the the "extrinsic" force of gravity. In "body-part metaphor" languages inanimate objects may be linguistically conceptualized in terms of an intrinsic animate frame of reference. Note that we conceive here of the directionality of "up" and "down" äs governed by an "extrinsic" framework independent of LM, whereas in the features under Orientation, Part and Region we conceive of "top" and "bottom" äs being "intrinsic" to the LM whether defined canonically or gravitationally: this is not inconsistent since we are dealing in this feature with directionality rather than object-orientation. See also Note 13. When we speak here of a causal relationship in the physical world, we refer to the everyday or "naive" physics of mechanical causality, in keeping with our general principle that the semantic characterization of the rs should be in terms relevant to human conceptualization. In fact, Vandeloise argues that judgements based upon non-visual perceptual modalities may also be relevant to the semantics of such terms. However, we have chosen to restrict our employment of perceptual accessibility to vision alone, judging the kind of examples given by Vandeloise of the role of other sensory modalities äs likely to be extremely rare. There is an intriguing issue of ontology here. Our examples of canonical Containment all involve humanly produced artefacts: does this mean that Containment is a nonnatural kind concept? We tended to think so, but Barry Smith offered the example of a baby kangaroo in its mother's pouch. Our notion of a "semantic type" may thus be contrasted with Herskovits' (1986) notion of a "use type". The principal difference is that a Herskovits use type is tied to a particular expression item (such äs a preposition), whereas a semantic type in our approach is not. We are particularly indebted to Dirk Geeraerts for his comments in relation to the subsequent discussion. See also Geeraerts et al. (1994). It will be obvious that the notion of distributed semantics "family-resembles" connectionist (particularly Parallel Distributed Processing) concepts and terminology. This is not an accident, since connectionist developmental modelling is both part of our general theoretical approach (Phmkett and Sinha 1992), and one of the specific research methods we had in mind in devising the coding System (Thorseng, in preparation).



307

References Allan, Keith 1995

The anthropocentricity of the EngHsh word(s) back. Cognitive Linguistics 6(1), 11-31. Ameka, Felix K. 1995 The linguistic construction of space in Ewe. Cognitive Linguistics, this issue. Brugman, Claudia 1981 The story of "over". MA thesis, University of California, Berkeley.

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California and Other Indian Languages 4, 239-290. Casad, Eugene H. 1993 "Locations", "paths" and the Cora verb. In Geiger, Richard A. and Brygida Rudzka-Ostyn (eds.), Conceptualizations and Mental Processing in Language, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 593-645. Casad, Eugene H. and Ronald W. Langacker 1985 "Inside" and "outside" in Cora grammar. International Journal of American Linguistics 5\,241-2%l. Choi, Soonya and Melissa Bowerman 1991 Learning to express motion events in English and Korean: The influence of language-specific lexicalization patteras. Cognition 41, 83-121. Cruse, D. Alan 1986 Lexical Semantics. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Cuyckens, Hubert 1991 The semantics of spatial prepositions in Dutch: A cognitive-linguistic exercise. PhD thesis, University of Antwerp. Dewell, Robert B. 1994 Over again: Image-schema transformations in semantic analysis. Cognitive Linguistics 5(4), 351-380. Freeman, Norman H., Sharon Lloyd and Chris Sinha 1980 Infant search tasks reveal early concepts of Containment and canonical usage of objects. Cognition 8, 243-262. Geeraerts, Dirk 1992 The semantic structure of Dutch over. Leuvense Bijdragen 81, 205-229. 1993 Vagueness's puzzles, polysemy's vagaries. Cognitive Linguistics 4(3), 223-272. Geeraerts, Dirk, Stefan Grondelaers and Peter Bakema 1994 The Structure of Lexical Variation: Meaning, Naming and Context. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Gibson, Eleanor J. and Elisabeth S. Spelke 1983 The development of perception. In Flavell, John H. and Ellen M. Markman (eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology. Vol. 3: Cognitive Development. New York: Wüey. Heine, Bernd 1989 Adpositions in African languages. Linguistique Africaine 2,77-127. Herskovits, Annette 1986 Language and Spatial Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hill, Clifford 1975 Variation in the use of "front" and "back" by bilingual Speakers.


308 C. Sirdia and L. A. Thorseng Proceedings of the Ist Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, University of California, Berkeley. Up/down, front/back, left/right: A contrastive study of Hausa and English. In Weissenbora, Jürgen and Wolfgang Klein (eds.), Here and There: CrossLinguistic Studies on Deixis and Demonstration. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 13-42.

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Mind. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Landau, Barbara and Ray Jackendoff 1993 "What" and "where" in spatial language and spatial cognition. Behavioral andBrain Sciences 16, 217-265. Langacker, Ronald W. 1987

Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. Vol. 1: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Concept, Image and Symbol: The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Berlin:

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Mouton de Gruyter. Levinson, Stephen R. 1991 Relativity in spatial conception and description. Cognitive Anthropology Research Group at the Max-Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Working Paper l, Nijmegen. Lecercle, Jean-Jacques 1994 Do we need a subject in linguistics? Language and Discourse 2, 3-22. Lyons, John 1977 Semantics. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MacLaury, Robert E. 1989 Zapotec body-part locatives: Prototypes and metaphoric extensions. International Journal of American Linguistics 55, 119-154. Mandler, Jean

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The foundations of conceptual thought in infancy. Cognitive Development 7, 273-286. Nelson, Katherine 1974 Concept, word and sentence: Interrelations in acquisition and development. Psychological Review 81,267-285. Plunkett, Kim and Chris Sinha 1992 Connectionism and developmental theory. British Journal of Developmental Psychology 10, 209-254. Piaget, Jean and Bärbel Inhelder 1956 The Child's Conception ofSpace. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Pinxten, Rik, Ingrid van Dooren and Frank Harvey 1983 Anthropology of Space: Explorations into the Natural Phüosophy and Semantics ofthe Navajo. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Sinha, Chris 1982 Representational development and the structure of action. In Butterworth, George and Paul Light (eds.), Social Cognition: Studies in the Development of Understanding. Hassocks: Harvester, 137-162. 1988 Language and Representation: A Socio-Naturalistic Approach to Human Development. Brighton: Harvester-Wheatsheaf. 1993 On representing and referring. In Geiger, Richard A. and Brygida Rudzka-



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linguistic considerations. Commentary on target article by M. Jeannerod: The representing brain: Ncural correlates of motor intention and imagery. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17, 223-224. Sinha, Chris and Tania Kuteva 1994 Distributed spatial seraantics. Paper presented to the LAUD International Symposium on Languagc and Space, Duisburg, March 1994. Sinha, Chris, Lis A. Thorseng, Manko Hayashi and Kim Plunkett 1994 Comparative spatial semantics and language acquisition: Evidence from Danish, English and Japanese. Journal of Semantics 11: 253-287. Svorou, Sotcria 1994 The Grammar of Space. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Talmy, Leonard 1983 How language structures space. In Pick, Herbert L., Jr. and Linda P. Acredolo (eds.), Spatial Orientation: Theory. Research and Application. New York: Plenum Press, 225-282. 1988 Force dynamics in language and cognition. Cognitive Science 12, 49-100. 1990 Fictive motion and change in language and cognition. Plenary lecture to International Pragmatics Conference, Barcelona. Taylor, John R. 1988 Contrasting prepositional categories: English and Italian. In Brygida Rudka-Ostyn (ed.), Topics in Cognitive Linguistics. Amsterdam, Benjamins. Thorseng, Lis A. in prep. Learning prepositions: In children and connectionist networks. PhD thesis, University of Aarhus. Tuggy, David 1993 Ambiguity, polysemy and vagueness. Cognitive Linguistics 4(3), 273-290. Vandeloise, Claude 1990 Representation, prototypes and centrality. In Tsohadzitis, Savas L. (ed.), Meanings and Prototypes. London: Routledge, 403-437. 1991 Spatial Prepositions: A Case Study from French. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Wierzbicka, Anna 1989 Semantic primitives and lexical universale. Quaderni di Semantica X: 103-121.


A coding system for spatial relational reference

A coding system for spatial relational reference

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