1980年代中期陳文尚教授開始有系統地對1960年代以前臺灣農村地區最普遍的地景之一，即閩南語稱為“大厝宅”的傳統合院式家屋，進行了一系列景觀現象學(landscape phenomenology)的研究。本文透過對陳文尚教授在傳統合院式家屋的空間命名之研究成果進行初步的回顧，展現傳統合院式家屋的命名一如地方，具有徵象(symbolic)及純描述內涵(descriptive content)，日常語言中命名所構成的空間參照體系遠比過去學者的認知要複雜許多。
Since the early 1980s a series of studies was make by Professor Wen-Shang Chen (1943-2009) to the cultural landscape and focus squarely upon the tai-tshu-theh, the traditional vernacular dwellings which prevailed in rural Taiwan before the 1960s. His work over a lifetime left an enormously rich and influential body of writing on the tai-shu-theh, not only at an empirical level, but in close phenomenological studies of Taiwanese vernacular dwellings. This essay first of all briefly reviews the works of Chen in the spatial naming system of traditional folk architecture in Taiwan. It then turns to the symbolic and descriptive contents, and looks at the complicated way in which a spatial referencing system is manifested by linguistic practice in everyday language.
