Room descriptions∗

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Abstract
Verbal descriptions of rooms were collected and analyzed. The analyses are based on the initial selection of an optimal factorization of rooms and are further conducted on the level of single description units, sequencing of such units, and the global structure of the description. On all levels of analysis, correspondences are noted between the underlying cognitive structures and the particular linguistic forms in which they are expressed. It is noted that linguistic constructions may serve as markers for peculiar patterns in the structure of the description. Together, the different analyses indicate that the act of describing is not based on a naive‐realistic mapping of things and words. Rather, descriptions presuppose a cognitive structuring of the world which may not be expressed by simple recursive algorithms.