# pictorial semantics **Opening (not a real abstract):** Because humans cannot know one another’s minds directly, every form of communication is a solution to the same basic problem: how can privately held information be made publicly accessible through manipulations of the physical environment? Language is by far the best studied response to this challenge. But there is a diversity of non-linguistic strategies for representation with external signs, from facial expressions and fog horns to chronological graphs. Among these alternatives, the class of pictorial representations dominate practical communication— witness the proliferation of maps, road signs, newspaper photographs, scientific illustrations, television shows, architectural drawings, and even the fleeting imagery of manual gesture.1 In such cases, what bridges the gap between the physical media of pictures and the information they manage to convey? In this paper **Authors:** [[greenberg]]