Pinning down polysemy: A formalisation for a Brazilian Portuguese preposition

This paper presents a formal definition for a number of distinct cases where the preposition “em” (in) can be applied in Brazilian Portuguese. The aim of this work is to establish a mathematical model using qualitative spatial reasoning formalisms within the idea of precisification from supervaluation semantics. Our long term goal is to implement this model into artificial intelligent systems to allow for seamless communication with humans in a common speech.