ABSTRACT
Imagine sitting down to breakfast at a friend’s place, and having them approach the table, coffee pot in hand, asking whether you want a cup. When you sleepily respond that you do, your friend tells you to “place your cup below the pot.” In an utterance such as this, the object whose location is specified (e.g., the cup) is referred to as the located object and the object used to describe its location (e.g., the pot) is referred to as the reference object (Hayward and Tarr, 1995; Landau and Jackendoff, 1993; Talmy, 1983). In order to interpret this utterance and decide where to place your cup, you must map the spatial term “below” to a suitable region of space around the pot (Logan and Sadler, 1996; Miller and Johnson-Laird, 1976). Generally, spatial terms such as “below” have been defined based on their geometric properties (Landau and Jackendoff, 1993; Logan and Sadler, 1996; Talmy, 1983), including center of mass (Gapp, 1995; Regier and Carlson, 2001). In the current example, the most appropriate geometric definition for “below” corresponds to a location below a bounding box drawn around the reference object, with the best location being geometrically centered (often referred to as “on-axis”), as shown in Panel A of Figure 10.1. However, research in spatial language has shown that the functional properties of the objects in addition to these geometric properties influence your interpretation of these types of descriptions (Carlson-Radvansky and Tang, 2000; Carlson-Radvansky et al., 1999; Coventry, 1998, 1999; Coventry and Garrod, 2004; Coventry et al., 2001; Miller et al., 2011; Ullmer-Ehrich, 1982; see also Coello and Bidet-Ildei, this volume; Coventry, this volume; Miller and Carlson, this volume). For example, knowing how cups and pots typically interact might lead you to prefer an interpretation of “below” that places the cup in the location shown in Panel B of Figure 10.1. This spatial configuration is consistent with one’s understanding that the goal of the interaction between these two objects is to transfer coffee from the pot to the cup, and this placement accordingly enables the flow of coffee to be directed toward the cup. Note that the functional placement in Panel B is still within the geometric “below” region, but shifted away from the geometrically defined best placement (often referred to as “off-axis”). This suggests that functional effects may act by re-prioritizing preferences for the different subregions of this “below” space. Placements of a cup below a coffee pot. Panel A shows a geometric placement such that the cup is directly below the geometric center of the coffee pot. Panel B shows a functional placement such that the cup is directly below the actively functional part of the coffee pot (the spout) rather than the geometric center. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203095508/f0ab5e4c-da8c-4e16-b78f-02a96a2026e9/content/fig10_1_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
