Cognitive Aspects: How People Perceive, Memorize, Think and Talk About Landmarks - Landmarks: GIScience for Intelligent Services - page 91

In English language, a common schema connecting the locatum and relatum
looks like [ 228 ] :
< locatum ! spatial_relationship ! relatum >
For example, in “Cartier is at place Vendôme” the jeweller shop Cartier is the
locatum and place Vendôme is the relatum. Variations of this form exist, of course.
For example, I may describe my location with “at home”, which at the surface
omits the locatum. Also, the schema describes only binary spatial relationships
between one locatum and one relatum, but there are also ternary (or n-ary) spatial
relationships between one locatum and two or more relata. “The fountain is between
church and city hall” is an example for a ternary relationship.
Human place descriptions almost exclusively use qualitative spatial or temporal
relationships to link a locatum with its relatum. While graphic languages (maps,
sketches) still convey some geometric meaning, verbal place descriptions would
know order (“behind the library”) and even comparison (“a larger building”),
but rarely metric information. Typically it is “I am close to the intersection” rather
than “I am 30 m from the intersection”, and “to the right” instead of “in 85 ı '.
Several linguistic strategies have been identified helping with the linearization
challenge of place descriptions (e.g., [ 37 ] ). One of them is a deliberate choice of
the speaker of a survey or a route perspective. In a survey perspective references
are put in the sequence in which a sketch would be drawn (“find the café north
of the library”). In a route perspective the linear sequence follows from mentally
following a route (“find the café after passing the library”). In both cases landmarks
(the library) help with localization. Hidden behind this observation is already a
glimpse of an alternative linguistic strategy for linearization, which is zooming
through hierarchies [ 169 , 170 , 194 ] . “The café is behind the library” is linking a
less salient object (café) with a more salient object (library), i.e., zooming out on
the salience hierarchy.
Both hierarchies, by salience as well as by spatial granularity, are suited to zoom
in or zoom out. A sentence like “Cartier is in Paris, at place Vendôme” is zooming
in through a hierarchy of spatial granularity, from the coarser Paris to the finer place
Vendôme. The interpretation is actually complex:
1. Cartier is in Paris.
2. Cartier is at place Vendôme.
3. Context suggests that this is the place Vendôme in Paris.
The sentence could also have been “Cartier is at place Vendôme in Paris”, zooming
out. Grammatically, however, the interpretation of relata in this sentence remains
ambiguous. It is either of both:
1. Cartier is at place Vendôme, which is in Paris.
2. Cartier is in Paris, and also at place Vendôme.
In the prior case the locatum is related to one relatum only, which in turn is related to
another relatum. In the latter case both reference objects are related to the locatum.