Kegl's paper, ''Machine Readable Dictionaries and Educa-tion: How people are able to talk about what they see. Its chaption'' has been updated and revised. Focusing on primary educaters derive from a conference on language and space that was tion, it provides an overview of the problem area, and updates held in Tucson in 1994. The book is, however, more than a research efforts which purportedly resulted from the Workshop.
conference proceedings, because the individual papers that form It lives up to the stated thesis of the collection, to not only recap the basis of each chapter have been edited to incorporate the the Workshop but to discuss how the field has progressed and interaction that occurred during the conference to create a more what questions remain unanswered.
comprehensive overview of the linguistics of spatial discourse. ''Why Use Words to Label Ideas: The Uses of Dictionaries
The topic with which the authors are dealing can be underand Thesauri in Information Retrieval'' is an excellent overview stood intuitively by considering two ways in which humans by M. Lesk. Lesk discusses how one might use a dictionary as a interact with their environment. The first way is by dealing with thesaurus for information retrieval, and the problems and issues things in space/time. People perceive, react to, and manipulate involved including the issue of multiword phrases in retrieval; external objects. Our brains are equipped with facilities for and the distinction between lexicographers who ''split'' differdealing with spatio-temporal locations, and the aspects of reality ences and thesauri constructors who ''lump'' similarities. Nevthat may be found in those locations. Through these spatial ertheless, to include a section on Automatic Indexing and not representation facilities, people learn about and understand realinclude references past the Workshop does not do justice to ity. The second way humans interact with their environment ''seeing how things change; and how they stay the same.'' is through language. They perceive language, interpret it, and In ''Structure and Access in an Automated Lexicon and understand it. Our brains are equipped with facilities for dealing Related Issues,'' N. Calzolari elaborates the differences between with conceptual structures as expressed in propositions, statethe more generalized, machine-readable dictionary (MRD), and ments, questions, and other forms of linguistic and symbolic what Calzolari calls a ''structured lexical database'' which inexpression. People learn about and understand reality through cludes lexical facts not generally found in an MRD. While this these conceptual facilities, as well as through spatial representapaper has not been updated, it functions well, adding another tion. foundational layer to the collection.
Learning and understanding occur in parallel ways through To recap, the stated goal of the book is to provide a ''baseline these two different cognitive facilities: The spatial representaand reference point for further research and development'' in tion facilities and the conceptual facilities of the brain. A simple the field and to ''organize research'' and ''further co-operaexample may illustrate the way the same outcome can occur tion''; in general these goals have been met. The weakest part through these two different kinds of processing. A person can of this collection is that the papers are uneven in quality and learn that it is raining outside by going (or looking) outside timeliness and much of the baseline material is repeated, which and experiencing rain. Or that person can hear from someone may have been unavoidable, but it nevertheless becomes pro-(whose information is considered trustworthy) that it is raining. saic. Like other aspects of the field, automated lexicon building
In one case, the spatial representation system of the brain is has not remained static, thus it is curious that a paper about used to go outside and observe the phenomenon. In the other computational linguistics research, ''Machine-Readable Diccase, the conceptual structures of the brain are used to undertionaries and Computational Linguistics Research,'' by B. K.
stand the message conveyed. This simple example also shows Boguraev, would not have been updated since 1987. Other pathe necessity of interactions between the two cognitive systems. pers, most notably the one written by Kegl not only contains
To understand the message that it is raining outside, the spatial contemporary, distinctive information, but reports on her own representation for ''outside'' must be employed by the concepresearch since the Workshop.
tual system. Again, the editors motivation in publishing a collection of The discussion in this book deals with one aspect of the papers which were presented at the Marina di Grosetto Workinteraction between language and space: The act of talking about shop has been sustained. Creating something other than a comspace, which requires using elements of conceptual structures to pilation of disparate papers from a Workshop is a difficult task, represent spatial relationships. For example, language contains but it has been satisfactorily accomplished. The collection is prepositions that present spatial relationships such as ''above,'' readable, and perhaps because it is a publication of Workshop ''below,'' ''next to,'' ''behind,'' etc. It also contains nouns that talks, almost breezy in its tone. The benefit of this is that it present spatial locations such as ''top,'' ''side,'' and ''front,'' makes difficult concepts accessible to the non-expert in the field. and adjectives that present spatial dimensions such as ''high'' This collection of Workshop papers will be useful for a graduate or ''wide.'' Using language, speakers adopt different frames of seminar course which covers computational linguistics, particularly outside the domain. While professionals in the field will reference, and different levels or types of spatial reference. already be familiar with most of what has been assembled here,
The study of speech about spatial representations leads to an as an introduction to the field, this collection will hold up well, understanding of how the spatial facilities of the brain and its if unevenly, for another decade to come.
conceptual structures are linked. The chapters by Jackendoff; Bierwisch; and Peterson, Nadel, Bloom, and Garrett serve as solid introductions to this special branch of linguistics.
P. Zoe ยจStavri
The relationship between conceptual and spatial facilities is Research and Education a complex one. Consider the examples of the spatial language National Library of Medicine associated with the preposition ''in'' given by Bierwisch in his Bethesda, MD 20894 chapter. When we say, ''The fish is in the water,'' we mean E-mail: [email protected] something rather different than when we say, ''The boat is in the water.'' When we say, ''He has a strawberry in his mouth,'' we mean something rather different that when we say, ''He has a pipe in his mouth.'' When we say, ''There are some coins in Language and Space. Paul Bloom, Mary A. Peterson, Lynn the purse,'' we mean something rather different than when we Nadel, and Merrill F. Garrett (eds.). Cambridge, MA: The MIT say, ''There is a hole in the purse.'' And then there is the rather Press; 1996: 597 pp. Price: $50.00. (ISBN 0-262-02403-9.) different range of meanings that can be associated with ''He is not in today.'' The chapter by O'Keefe presents an interesting This book presents a good overview of one aspect of the interaction between spatial and conceptual processes in cogni-perspective on such prepositions that goes beyond simple lin-