• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.45-55
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• 1999

This paper argues that the basic modes of spatial cognition can be best identified in terms of argument/participant location, and shows that natural language uses‘simple’types of semantic denotations to encode spatial cognition, and further notes that spatial expressions should be interpreted not as locating an event/state as a whole but as locating arguments/participants of the event. The ways of locating events/states are identified in terms of argument orientation(AO), Which indicates semantic patterns of linkiarticipant location. and shows that natural langrage uses ng locatives to specific arguments. Four patterns of argument orientation described here reveal substantial modes of spatial cognition. and the AO patterns are mostly determined by the semantic classes of English verbs combining with locative expressions, i.e., by the event type of the predicate. As for the denotational constraint of locatives, the paper concludes that semantic denotations of locative PPs are restricted to the intersecting functions mapping relations to relations.