A semantics of pictorial representation should provide an account of how pictorial signs are associated with the contents they express. Unlike the familiar semantics of spoken languages, this problem has a distinctively spatial cast for depiction. Pictures themselves are two-dimensional artifacts, and their contents take the form of pictorial spaces, perspectival arrangements of objects and properties in three dimensions. A basic challenge is to explain how pictures are associated with the particular pictorial spaces they express. Inspiration here comes from recent proposals that analyze depiction in terms of geometrical projection. In this essay, I will argue that, for a central class of pictures, the projection-based theory of depiction provides the best explanation for how pictures express pictorial spaces, while rival perceptual and resemblance theories fall short. Since the composition of pictorial space is itself the basis for all other aspects of pictorial content, the proposal provides a natural foundation for further pictorial semantics.

图形表示的语义应该说明图形符号如何与其表达的内容相关联。与口头语言所熟悉的语义不同，此问题具有独特的空间描述能力。图片本身是二维文物，其内容采用图片空间的形式，对象和属性在三个维度上的透视排列。一个基本的挑战是解释图片如何与它们表达的特定图片空间相关联。这里的灵感来自最近的提议，这些提议根据几何投影来分析描绘。在本文中，我将争辩说，对于中心类的图片，基于投影的描绘理论为图片如何表达图片空间提供了最好的解释，而竞争对手的感知和相似理论则不足。由于图形空间的构成本身是图形内容所有其他方面的基础，因此该建议为进一步的图形语义学提供了自然基础。