2026-09-10T09:44:36Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:27559 2026-09-10T05:38:43Z ddc:004 open_access

Through and Through: Corpus-Based Semantic Analysis of a Spatial Preposition (Short Paper) Bennett, Brandon Hedblom, Maria M. Preposition Polysemy Semantics Spatial Relation Ontology We present a corpus-based analysis of sentences containing the highly polysemous word "through" and establish a framework for categorising sentence constituents in relation to this preposition. Using the annotated corpus, together with ideas from the fields of Lexical Semantics and Knowledge Representation, we specify a typology of figure, path-verb, and ground terms, characterised by the affordances they provide for participation in "through" relationships. We find that the mode of affordance provided by the ground is often ambiguous: many types of object can provide multiple modes of grounding for a "through" relationship, associated with different geometrical conditions between figure and ground. However, this ambiguity can be explained and often resolved or reduced by considering compatible combinations of figure and ground affordances in relation to the path. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Brandon Bennett and Maria M. Hedblom 2026 Is Part Of LIPIcs, Volume 393, 17th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2026) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.15 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-275594 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.COSIT.2026.15 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode