On the basis of a semantic analysis of dimension terms, this book develops a theory about knowledge of spatial objects, which is significant for cognitive linguistics and artificial intelligence. This new approach to knowledge structure evolves in a three-step process: - adoption of the linguistic theory with its elements, principles and representational levels, - implementation of the latter in a Prolog prototype, and - integration of the prototype into a large natural language understanding system. The study documents interdisciplinary research at work: the model of spatial knowledge is the fruit of the cooperative efforts of linguists, computational linguists, and knowledge engineers, undertaken in that logical and chronological order. The book offers a two-level approach to semantic interpretation and proves that it works by means of a precise computer implementation, which in turn is applied to support a task-independent knowledge representation system. Each of these stages is described in detail, and the links are made explicit, thus retracing the evolution from theory to practice.

Dieses Lehrbuch bietet eine umfassende EinfA1/4hrung in Grundlagen und Methoden der Computerlinguistik und stellt die wichtigsten Anwendungsgebiete in der Sprachtechnologie vor. Es richtet sich gleichermaAen an Studierende der Computerlinguistik und verwandter FAcher mit Bezug zur Verarbeitung natA1/4rlicher Sprache wie an Entwickler sprachverarbeitender Systeme.

FA1/4r die dritte Auflage wurden sAmtliche Kapitel A1/4berarbeitet und aktualisiert sowie zum Teil zu eigenstAndigen, neuen Kapiteln zusammengefA1/4hrt. Insbesondere trAgt die dritte Auflage der rasanten Entwicklung in der Computerlinguistik und Sprachtechnologie durch eine stArkere Fokussierung auf statistische Grundlagen und Methoden Rechnung.

The study examines the semantics of spatial expressions, notably spatial prepositions and distance adjectives, and the way they combine. The perspective takes its bearings from cognitive science but within that framework is interdisciplinary in its approach. Evidence is adduced to demonstrate that a sufficiently accurate analysis of spatial-semantic phenomena can only be assured by taking due account of attention processes as the cognitive basis of explicit conceptual spatial relations.