Towards Linguistically-Grounded Spatial Logics – Extended Abstract –

Spatial Logics and Spatial Language. The system of Euclidean geometry is defined by geo-metrical axioms with points and lines as primitive entities [Hilbert, 1899, Tarski, 1959]. It provides the ground for spatial logics, a formal language used for describing geometrical entities and config-urations [Aiello et al., 2007], interpreted over a class of geometric structures. These structures can be any kind of geometrical spaces, such as topological spaces, affine spaces, or metric spaces. While spatial logics can specify spatial (geometry-based) entities, relations, and their axioms in a broad way, a more specific subclass are logics for qualitative spatial reasoning, often called spatial calculi. Their motivation builds on the idea that reasoning over qualitative descriptions resemble more closely human reasoning, and it may thus lead to more efficient and effective reasoning strategies than reasoning over numerical descriptions [Cohn and Hazarika, 2001]. Spatial calculi often focus on one particular qualitative spatial aspect, such as distance, shape, orientation, or topology, and on primitive types of objects in the Euclidean plane, such as points or regions. They define possible spatial relations among spatial entities and their axioms accordingly. Some spatial calculi use linguistic terms to define spatial relations (e.g., [Kurata and Shi, 2008]), aiming at being cognitively adequate and suitable particularly for natural language interpretation