Topologic and Geometric Structure of Spatial Relations in Latvian: an Experimental Analysis of RCC

• Published in: Baltic Journal of Modern Computing Vol. 8; no. 1; pp. 92 - 125
• Main Authors: Šķilters, Jurģis, Zariņa, Līga, Žilinskaitė-Šinkūnienė, Eglė, Bērziņa, Nora, Apse, Linda
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Riga University of Latvia 2020
• Subjects: Calculus; Language; Natural language; Occlusion; Topology; Words (language)
• ISSN: 2255-8950; 2255-8942; 2255-8950
• DOI: 10.22364/bjmc.2020.8.1.05

In this study we experimentally test topological and geometric relations as encoded in Latvian. The task of the subject is to describe different combinations of two geometric objects presented in a randomized order. For the in-group experiment two circles - dark and light - were used according to the topological principles of Region Connection Calculus further extended with simple relational variables representing proximity, orientation, object size, and partial occlusion. The results show that both topological and geometric features determine the number of words used in the description of the respective relations and accuracy of the description. Further, we explored the most common words used for the description of general spatial relations and tested the differences associated with the experimental variables. It was concluded that topological and geometric relations matter in the linguistic representation of space but to a differing degree. Our results also indicate that spatial relations at the linguistic level are represented categorically and rarely encode fine-grained information.