关键词: 空间认知, 方位关系, 标准模糊性, 选择模糊性, 语用模糊性

Abstract: Many spatial relationships are inherently associated with vagueness. Much research on vagueness is conducted based on cognitive experiments. Three cognitive experiments, which perform agreement task, verbal description task, and drawing task, are designed and implemented to investigate three types of vagueness in perceptions and communications of cardinal direction relationships. Generally, if a spatial relationship is crisp, the three tasks will lead to the same result. However, if a spatial relationship and its conceptually neighboring relationship are both vague, the subjects will make different answer sin the above three tasks. In this research, the concept of “north”and its neighboring concepts, i.e., “east”and “west”, are focused on. According to the collected data, three types of vagueness: normal vagueness, selective vagueness, and pragmatic vagueness, are identified, and their conceptual membership functions are established. These three types of vagueness demonstrate different characteristics, and will cause semantic distortions in communicating geospatial knowledge.

Key words: spatial cognition, cardinal direction relationship, normal vagueness, selective vagueness, pragmatic vagueness