Speaking of location: Future directions in geospatial natural language research—introduction

Abstract

Research into the description of location using human (natural) language has been approached from linguistics, geospatial and computer science perspectives and has addressed a wide range of topics. The papers presented in this Section reflect this diversity. Understanding the ways in which people use spatial language is an important focus in the presented papers, and is addressed from several different angles. One important theme explores the frames of reference (FoR) that apply in different languages and settings, with particular attention given to the way in which changes from one FoR to another (e.g. between ego-centric and geo-centric) depend on whether a setting is urban or rural (Palme..