Locations and landscape features

In chapter 3, we observed a range of instances where the initial referring expression used by the speaker was insufficient to enable the listener to locate the landscape feature referred to, at least initially. In such cases, since all of the entities were represented in a spatially structured context, the standard response by B was to request information on the location of the entity, either in order to constrain the search field, or to insert a new feature on to the map. In the first section of this chapter, we shall note some of the issues raised by expressions of location in English, before going on in later sections to consider how some expressions of location can be used to create and structure the context if they are interpreted as terms of spatial deixis.

Lyons (1991: 142) draws a distinction between entity-referring and place-referring expressions, and between entities and places, suggesting that ‘it is … arguable that places (as distinct from spaces) are ontologically secondary, being identifiable as such by virtue of the entities that are located in or near them’. Such a characterisation seems appropriate to entities mentioned in prepositional phrases of a type such as behind the barn, on the shelf, over the sea, when such phrases are used to locate an object. Such an analysis is also consistent with the classic psychological distinction drawn between figure and ground (see the discussions in Clark 1976, Hanks 1987).