Qualitative Spatial Reasoning in Interpreting Text and Narrative

Simple natural language texts and narratives often raise problems in commonsense spatial knowledge and reasoning of surprising logical complexity and geometric richness. In this paper, I consider a dozen short texts — five taken from literature, the remainder contrived as illustrations — and discuss the spatial reasoning involved in understanding them. I conclude by summarizing their common features, and by tentatively drawing some morals for research in this area. Simple natural language texts and narratives often raise problems in commonsense spatial knowledge and reasoning of surprising logical complexity and geometric richness. In this paper, I consider a dozen short texts — five taken from literature, the remainder contrived as illustrations — and discuss the spatial reasoning involved in understanding them. The spatial issues that arise in these particular texts fall into three broad categories: • Fitting objects into containers. • Blocking, pursuing, escaping, and hiding. • Manipulating household objects; in particular, buttons and cords. I conclude by summarizing the common features of the spatial inferences involved here, and by tentatively drawing some morals for research in this area.