From Topic Networks to Distributed Cognitive Maps: Zipfian Topic Universes in the Area of Volunteered Geographic Information

Figure 1

Schematic depiction of a generalization of a hypothesis of Louwerse and Zwaan [16] saying that language encodes geographical information: the places are expressed in the discourses , respectively, from which the topic representations are computationally derived. Places are structured into systems of networked rhemes or subtopics. The conceptual relatedness of p and q is grounded in the relatedness of the rhemes and and modeled by the relatedness of the derived topics α and β modeling these rhemes. According to the semiotic triangle, we assume that the relation of signs (here, texts) to their referents (here, spaces) is mediated by sign processes. We use dashed arcs to express the indirect relation of the former to the latter. In lexical variants of this approach, p and q are preferably denoted or described by some words of the underlying lexis, which are syntagmatically or paradigmatically associated and modeled by some types . Framed numbers indicate relations that potentially parallelize each other. s.r. means statistically related.