Peter Gärdenfors | Conceptual Spaces and the Geometry of Word Meanings

Talkkindly contributed by Peter Gärdenfors in SEMF’s 2022 Spacious Spatiality TALK ABSTRACT I begin by presenting the theory of conceptual spaces that uses geometrical notion like convexity to represent the meaning of natural concepts. Then I argue that the meanings of different word classes can be given a cognitive grounding in terms of conceptual spaces. I show that a geometric analysis can be provided for the major word classes. A universal single-domain thesis is proposed, saying that words in all content word classes, except for nouns, refer to a single domain. TALK MATERIALS · A Semantic Theory of Word Classes: PETER GÄRDENFORS Department of Philosophy, Lund University: Lund University profile: Wikipedia: ärdenfors R