An empirical study of the semantic similarity of geospatial prepositions and their senses

Spatial prepositions have been studied in some detail from multiple disciplinary perspectives. However, neither the semantic similarity of these prepositions, nor the relationships between the multiple senses of different spatial prepositions, are well understood. In an empirical study of 24 spatial prepositions, we identify the degree and nature of semantic similarity and extract senses for three semantically similar groups of prepositions using t-SNE, DBSCAN clustering, and Venn diagrams. We validate the work by manual annotation with another data set. We find nuances in meaning among proximity and adjacency prepositions, such as the use of <i>close to</i> instead of <i>near</i> for pairs of lines, and the importance of proximity over contact for the <i>next to</i> preposition, in contrast to other adjacency prepositions.