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

摘要： 很多定性空间关系都具有含糊性, 很多含糊性研究都基于特定的认知实验进行。针对主方位关系, 设计了3个不同的认知实验任务, 即认同判断、关系描述和画图任务, 以考察在知识获取和传输中的含糊性。如果一个空间关系不具有含糊性, 这3个实验任务得到的结果应该是一致的。然而, 当一个空间关系及其相邻概念都具有含糊性时, 被试将对上述3个任务做出不同的回答。研究主要关注“北”及其相邻概念, 即“东”和 “西”。根据实验结果,识别了3种含糊性, 即标准含糊性、选择含糊性和语用含糊性, 并且建立相应的概念化隶属度函数。这3种含糊性模型, 有助于探讨空间知识传输中的语义扭曲。

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