Stock, Kristin, & Cialone, Claudia (2011). Universality, language-variability and individuality: Defining linguistic building blocks for spatial relations. In Max Egenhofer, Nicholas Giudice, Reinhard Moratz, & Michael Worboys (Eds.), Spatial information theory. 10th international conference (COSIT 2011) (pp. 391-412). Berlin: Springer.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23196-4_21
Abstract:
Most approaches to the description of spatial relations for use in spatial querying attempt to describe a set of spatial relations that are universally understood by users. While this method has proved successful for expert users of geographic information, it is less useful for non-experts. Furthermore, while some work has implied the universal nature of spatial relations, a large amount of linguistic evidence shows that many spatial relations vary fundamentally across languages. The NSM approach is a methodology that has helped identify the few specific spatial relations that are universal across languages. We show how these spatial relations can be used to describe a range of more complex spatial relations, including some from non-Indo-European languages that cannot readily be described with the usual spatial operators. Thus we propose that NSM is a tool that may be useful for the development of the next generation of spatial querying tools, supporting multilingual environments with widely differing ways of talking about space.
Rating:
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
