Evolving Grounded Spatial Language Strategies

Abstract

Each natural language phrase is evidence for a particular strategy of construing reality. One domain where this has been extensively studied is spatial language, which reveals an enormous amount of variation of conceptualization strategies both within a particular language and cross-culturally. This paper proposes a computational formalism for representing conceptualization strategies and shows how the formalism can be used to study and explain the evolution and emergence of spatial conceptualization strategies and their impact on shared grounded communication systems.