Landmarks in the communication of route directions

Abstract

We investigate the understanding of landmarks using a model of embedding procedures that sees affordances established on three levels. On the first level there are landmark experience and direct communication process as distinct affordance structures. On the second level the initial landmark experience has become part of the speech act thus establishing direct wayfinding communication. On the third level the communication situation of the speech act incorporating the landmark experience is changed into indirect communication thus transforming into a narrative. We apply the leveled model of narrative structure to human-generated route directions. We demonstrate how the initial experience-the landmark-is incorporated into communication structures, how it turns into a narrative in order to secure understanding and how understanding is guided via narrative structures. With this approach from Literature we contribute to the problem of in-depth natural language understanding. Ultimately our interest is in automatic generation of route directions. We show that simply referring to landmarks in route directions is insufficient for successful communication. © Springer-Verlag 2004.