Semantics of Pictorial Space

Abstract

A semantics of pictorial representation should provide an account of how pictorial signs are associated with the contents they express. Unlike the familiar semantics of spoken languages, this problem has a distinctively spatial cast for depiction. Pictures themselves are two-dimensional artifacts, and their contents take the form of pictorial spaces, perspectival arrangements of objects and properties in three dimensions. A basic challenge is to explain how pictures are associated with the particular pictorial spaces they express. Inspiration here comes from recent proposals that analyze depiction in terms of geometrical projection. In this essay, I will argue that, for a central class of pictures, the projection-based theory of depiction provides the best explanation for how pictures express pictorial spaces, while rival perceptual and resemblance theories fall short. Since the composition of pictorial space is itself the basis for all other aspects of pictorial content, the proposal provides a natural foundation for further pictorial semantics.

On not-at-issueness in pictures

“…In this paper, I point out empirical parallels between the at-issue vs. not-at-issue distinction in pictures and a specific subcase of this distinction in natural language and discuss the ensuing implications for our understanding of how meaning works across domains. This paper, thus, continues the tradition of applying formal linguistics tools to pictorial representations (Greenberg 2011;2021;Abusch 2012;Abusch & Rooth 2017;Maier & Bimpikou 2019;Rooth & Abusch 2019;Cohn 2020, a.o. ), but it expands on it in two specific ways.…”

“…First, it raises the question of how the at-issue vs. not-at-issue distinction operates in the pictorial domain, which, to my knowledge, has only been raised by Schlenker (2019) so far. And second, it asks how meaning-form mappings operate architecturally in pictorial representations, a question that has been raised for sequences of images in pictorial narratives (Cohn 2020) and for highly conventionalized cases of semantic composition within smaller structures (e.g., speech and thought balloons in Maier 2019 or tagging in Greenberg 2019), but not for single image iconic pictorial representations of events or individuals. The findings of this paper point to substantial parallels between pictures and natural language at the level of pragmatic reasoning about meaning as well as at the level of compositional structuring of meaning.…”

Emojis as Pictures

“…On reflection, resemblance has turned out to be too vague, and arguably neither sufficient nor necessary for pictorial truth (Goodman 1976;Greenberg 2013). The geometrical notion of a projection function has been used with some success as a replacement for resemblance in pictorial semantics (Abusch 2020;Greenberg 2021).…”

Musical meaning within Super Semantics

“…We turn to a definition of pictorial semantics with variables, taking as primitive the notion of an eventuality projecting onto a picture from a perspectival point in a world (see Greenberg 2013Greenberg , 2019a for a definition of projection onto a picture from a perspectival point in a world, without reference to eventualities).…”