ABSTRACT
Spatial language is important. It serves the basic function of enabling people to describe where objects are in the world, thereby directing hearers to objects and locations that they might otherwise be unable to find efficiently. Given this basic function, it is perhaps surprising that languages differ quite widely with respect to how spatial language is structured. For example, it is well known that containment and support relations are associated with different numbers of spatial prepositions (and their equivalents) across languages (see Bowerman, 1996). Spanish has a single term, en, that maps onto the use of in and on in English. Dutch more finely differentiates support relations, with one term (aan) for situations such as ‘a handle on a door’ and another (op) corresponding to situations such as ‘a book on a shelf ’. This presents a problem for second language learners/ bilinguals when learning second languages and switching between them.
