13 Dynamics in Language

If qualitative representations are our default level of representation for continuous aspects of the world, then we should expect that language—which, after all, is a symbolic system for communicating about the world—would have important connections with qualitative representations. In this chapter, I argue that qualitative representations do in fact play an important role in the semantics of natural language by examining how the qualitative representations of dynamics introduced in previous chapters manifest in language. This account comes out of Sven Kuehne's (2004) PhD thesis and subsequent work with C. J. McFate (e.g., McFate, Forbus, & Hinrichs, 2014). Although it is not yet complete, it illustrates the explanatory power of qualitative representations when understanding what is happening when one is writing, talking, or reading about change and its causes in continuous systems.