The problem existing in current GISs is that they all use quantitative methods to store and retrieve spatial information.However

people usually use qualitative terms to describe spatial relations.Current GIS models are limited in their capacities of representation of spatial information about geographic space.If we want to ’translate’ natural languages about spatial information to formal languages which computers can understand

we must know how natural languages construct and understand spatial relations.The description of a spatial relation is the reflection of human’s cognition of spatial objects.It is not only affected by the topology and metric

but also affected by the individual characteristics of describers.To disclose the effects of culture and language on people’s perceiving and understanding of spatial relations

this paper first compared the syntactic expressions of spatial relations in English and in Chinese

then three human-subject tests about spatial relations between two linear geographic objects were conducted in two groups of people who are native speakers of Chinese and English: native English speakers were tested on English expressions;native Chinese speakers were tested on Chinese expressions;and native Chinese speakers tested on English expressions.The results of the tests were analyzed to find whether different groups of people have different understanding on the natural-language description of spatial relations between two linear objects.It was found that in some cases two groups of people have completely different opinions about the descriptions of spatial relations.Native English speakers have more extreme opinions of "strongly agree" and "strongly disagree" for every spatial relation determination

while native Chinese speakers have more moderate opinions.It indicated that cultures and languages might have effects on spatial cognitions.But when the same group of people were tested with different languages

the results showed there is no much difference

which indicated that when they read a description of spatial relation in English

Chinese speakers translated it to corresponding Chinese words and actually understood the meanings of those Chinese words

although the meaning of these two expressions are slightly different.It also suggested the corresponding words that we use to translate between two languages are actually not exactly the same.The experiments help us in discovering how people in different cultures and languages perceive and express spatial relations

so that we can build an intelligent GIS based on common sense of geography.