Abstract
Natural language descriptions of motion frequently combine verbs of motion and directional prepositions. This article presents an analysis of German expressions from these two classes and their interaction. The focus is on the spatial structures (called path) that link them. Paths and the relations accessing them are formally specified in a geometric framework and with reference to the situation structure. The analysis distinguishes verbs of motion from other kinds of verbs that combine with directional adverbs. In addition, it provides a basis for explaining certain restrictions in combining verbs of motion with directional prepositional phrases and for comparing different approaches to the same kind of expressions.
The research reported in this article has been carried out in the context of the project ‘Axiomatik räumlicher Konzepte’ (Ha 1237/7) that is part of the priority program on ‘Spatial Cognition’ of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Many thanks to Christina Kiehl, Claudia Maienborn, Reinhard Moratz, Thomas Röfer, Barry Smith, Afra Sturm, and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on an earlier version of the article. Unfortunately but due to space restrictions, we were not able to react on all their comments.
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Eschenbach, C., Tschander, L., Habel, C., Kulik, L. (2000). Lexical Specifications of Paths. In: Freksa, C., Habel, C., Brauer, W., Wender, K.F. (eds) Spatial Cognition II. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1849. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45460-8_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45460-8_10
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