Nearness as context-dependent expression: an integrative review of modeling, measurement and contextual properties

ABSTRACT Nearness expressions such as “near” are context-dependent spatial relations and are subject to the context variability effect. Depending on the provided context, “near” has a different semantic extension. We perform a literature review to identify the effect of context on “near”. To integrate the insights from different disciplines, we apply Turney’s contextualization framework which distinguishes between two types of features: primary and contextual. Primary features are the qualitative and quantitative distance measures and contextual features are the context factors used to determine a threshold on the nearness measurements. Additionally, we identify the appropriate features for different spatial tasks discussed in the literature. By doing so, we seek to build a foundation for a context-dependent model for “near”.