IESBS: The linguistic expression of space

Spatial cognition is central to human thinking, and spatial language is thus an important area of study, as it may reveal fundamental properties of human thought. Recent research reveals that spatial language is much more divergent across languages than had been thought, suggesting significant cultural patterning of spatial conceptualization. Space can be treated as a complex semantic field with a number of distinct sub-domains. The location of the figure object, the thing to be located, is normally specified with reference to one or more ground objects or landmarks with distinct subsystems involved when the figure is static vs. in motion, and if static when the figure is contiguous with the ground or displaced in space. Beyond this, universals of spatial language are quite abstract, involving e.g. optional selection of major types of coordinate system. This semantic diversity is also matched by diversity of expression: languages express spatial relations in many different parts of speech or construction.