This paper discusses spatial terms in Japanese. Japanese is a language that uses common nouns such as ue “on/over/above” and naka “inside” to represent spatial and temporal locations as opposed to languages like English, which uses prepositions such as on, in, under and between to express spatial locations. I consider Japanese common nouns for spatial locations to be relational nouns that are two-place predicates, one of whose argument slots is filled with the entity represented by the other NP in the NP1-no NP2 construction. The corpus data [1] suggests that spatial nouns are often semantically ambiguous among physical, metaphorical and temporal locations. Therefore, the ontological information used in the Generative Lexicon (GL) [5] is useful for spatial term disambiguation.
This study considers common nouns representing spatial locations to be relational nouns.
While languages like English use prepositions such as in, on, under, or between to
represent spatial locations, languages such as Chickasaw in North America use relational
nouns to express locations [
Japanese is one such language that expresses locations by using relational nouns like naka
“inside,” ue “on/above,” and shita “under.”
(2) a. mune-no mae-de tenohira-o awase (4179)
chest-GEN front-LOC palms-ACC hold
“Put your palms together in front of the chest”
1 The numbers in round parentheses indicate the sentence IDs of the output of the data in Yahoo!
Chiebukuro section of [
Mae “front” and naka “inside” are relational nouns that do not stand alone semantically. Mae “front” is semantically unsaturated so that it always means something’s front, as musuko “son” is always someone’s son, e.g., Bill’s son. Mune “chest” is the argument of the relation represented by mae “front.” Similarly, sensuikan “submarine” is the argument of the relational noun naka “inside.” 1.2
Nouns such as father, friend, and enemy are called relational nouns. Because a father is a father of someone, a friend is of someone, and so is enemy, they are considered to represent functions or relations father-of, friend-of, and enemy-of.
[
As for Japanese, [
I include what [
l x[name-of(x)(ey.hero(y))] 1.3
This paper further regards common nouns that represent spacial locations to be relational nouns. For example, naka “inside,” ue “on/above,” and shita “under” are two-place holders, and nouns such as aida “between” which requires another argument are three-place predicates. (4) a. [[ue“on=top”]] = l xl y[on(y)(x)] b. [V P [[NP kohi-no ue]-ni] [miruku-o] [V ireru]] coffee-GEN on-DAT milk-ACC put “put milk on (the surface of) coffee” c. [[kohi no ue“on co f f ee”]] = l x[on(ey.coffee(y))(x)] (5) a. [[aida“between”]] = l xl yl z[between(z)(y)(x)]
Spatial Noun Translation ho toward naka in aida between/among ue on mae in front of/before shita under ue-no top ato after chikaku near mawari around shita-no under tonari-no next to ura back atari around ato-no after chokuzen immediately before chuo center chushin center fuchi edge gawa side ge low hidarigawa to the left side of mannaka in the middle of
moto under mukogawa over omote surface sayu to the both sides of soba beside soto outside uragawa backside ushiro behind yoko beside
TOTAL as in (6b). (6) a. Chunichi-yori b. [PP[NP[NP ha-to haguki]-no aida]-ni] [vP[NP kasu-ga] [V P tamari]] (2908) teeth-and gum-GEN between-DAT plaques-NOM accumulate “Plaques accumulate between teeth and gum.” c. [[hato haguki
no aida “the place between teeth and gum”]] = l x[between(e y.gum(y))(e z.tooth(z))(x)] 2
preferences toward the better one as in (6a), rather than being used for physical directions Hanshin-no ho-ga tsuyoi (2219) Chunichi Dragons-than Hanshin Tigers-GEN direction-NOM strong “Chunichi Dragons is stronger than Hanshin Tigers” b. (neko-ga) watashi-no ho-e
ki-masu. (5177) cat-NOM me-GEN
direction-GOAL come-HON “Cats come toward me.”
Mae “front/before,” on the other hand, is ambiguous between physical and temporal locations, e.g., shuppatsu-no mae “before departure” (4000) and mune-no mae “in front of the chest” (4179).
On the contrary, ue-no “TOP-GEN” in the ue-no NP construction is unambiguously used metaphorically. Ato “after” only applies to temporal order while ushiro “back” only implies literal location. Similarly, ue “top” is used for physical locations in the NP-no ue “on NP” construction. However, abstract nouns cannot use ue but form noun compounds with a suffix jo “on.” (7) a. netto-jo-de iroiro mite-tara (3508) internet-on-LOC various watch-then “While surfing on the internet” b. netto-no ue-de iroiro mite-tara internet-GEN on-LOC various watch-then “While surfing on the internet” (8) a. kohi-no ue-ni awadate-ta miruku-o funwari ire-ta nomimono (6320) coffee-GEN on-DAT whip-PAST milk-ACC to float put-PAST drink “a drink of coffee with whipped cream floating on it” b. *kohi-jo-ni awadate-ta miruku-o funwari ire-ta nomimono coffee-on-DAT whip-PAST milk-ACC to float put-PAST drink “a drink of coffee with whipped cream floating on it” 3
Disambiguation of Spatial Language Using Generative Lexicon
The Generative Lexicon (GL) theory [
The formal quale in GL contains ontological information. For example in (8a), coffee is a drink according to its formal quale, and its higher ontological category is a physical entity, which implies that ue “on” is interpreted physically. Furthermore, feature matching between relational nouns the other NP is the key to disambiguation of spatial nouns.