| Summary: | This cross-linguistic survey of spatial reference is about the way Hungarian and Italian languages structure the spatial domain. My chief concern is theoretical and methodological: how and to what extent the traditionally structure-centeredness of linguistic typology (LT) can be broadened? Pursuing new ways of investigation taking into account an interdisciplinary approach LT may complement and learn from linguistics of other persuasions which in turn may enhance theoretical well groundedness of LT and expand its research scope. Opening up to cognitive linguistics, which has experienced a shift towards more empirically-based inquiry recently, may provide a potential for methodological cross-fertilization in the framework of semantic typology, a new kind of work in linguistics. Semantic typology is the comparative study of linguistic categorization. Its central issue is how linguistic representations structure a given cognitive domain across languages unraveling the functioning of the syntax – semantics interface. It studies variation and universals in the constraints languages impose on semantic representations in specific conceptual domains, in our case that of spatial relations.
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