CALIBRATING THE MEANINGS OF SPATIAL PREDICATES FROM NATURAL LANGUAGE: LINE-REGION RELATIONS*
David M Mark, Max J. Egenhofer · 1994
Results from human subjects testing are used to calibrate the meaning of the road crosses the park and three other similar sentences in English. Sixty stimulus maps represent two or more examples of each of the 19 line-region spatial relationships defined by the 9-intersection model. The subjects mean agreement that the sentence applies to each map is expressed as a weighted sum of binary variables that define which of the 9intersection categories the relationship between road and park on the map belongs to.Statistically, regression equations based on 9-intersection topology alone account for between 60 percent and 90 percent in the variation in mean subjects responses. Crosses and goes across appear to be more sensitive to variations in metric properties that are goes through and enters. Results confirm that the method used has potential for defining cognitively meaningful spatial predicates and for comparing the meanings of similar terms in different natural languages.