The Topic is Open

We can open a door, open an umbrella, or open a jar; we open the safe (open the door of the safe), open the cookies (open the box and plastic pouch) and open a valve (turn the knob and open the pipe). I take open to mean CAUSE X TO BE OPEN and to describe the process of opening. given the diversity that occurs, is it possible to characterize the objects of a verb like open? In this paper I argue that there are similarities among the possible physical objects of the verb open, based on the objects; underlying geometric structure. This regularity, derived from an analysis of tokens extracted from the Brown corpus, is used in the remainder of the paper to analyze similarities amongst abstract use of open: (open a meeting, open a gulf). The proposed analysis also explain limits in usage: #open the chair; #open the question.