In this paper, we outline some practical solutions to some classical problems in spatial cognition. In pa rticular, we focus on the controversial area of the pragmatic interpretation of spatial preposition and verbs. Our work is given particular urgency by the need to produce solutions which are tractable enough to be implemented immediately in an NL interface to a mult imedia environment whose graphics component is written in VRML.

The first step therefore, is to describe this problem. We then proceed to discuss various current controversies, for example, whether the Landau and Jackendoff claim that a single spatial representation suffices for geometric objects and the relations between them is correct. Alternatively, as we believe, it may be the case that an altogether more sophisticated multilayered model is necessary to trace a path from the use of spatial language to viewing its pragmatic interpretation in the real or virtual world. We proceed to outline our approach. Finally, we indicate how this approache works in the context of the SONAS system.