Spatial Relations

Abstract

Ever since the 1980s, research on the cross-linguistic representation of spatial relations has burgeoned. Surprisingly, however, very little of this work has had any impact on cognitive neuroscience, and most researchers who study the cortical underpinnings of concrete conceptual knowledge have ignored spatial relations completely, preferring to focus on objects and actions instead. Due to this rather stark asymmetry, this chapter has a different organization than the previous two. The first section focuses entirely on cross-linguistic similarities and differences in the grammatical-semantic representation of three main types of spatial relations: topological, projective, and deictic. Then the last section addresses a number of neuroscientific issues, including a review of what has been learned so far about the implementation of these kinds of concepts in the brain, and a discussion of how the typological literature can both inspire and guide future research in this important but relatively neglected area of inquiry.