A kind of secondary reference object which serves to furnish the primary reference object with axial properties in order to locate the figure. An external secondary reference object is external to the primary reference object but not encompassing. For instance, in a sentence such as the following: The church is to the left of the grocery store, the spatial scene is viewed from a particular location and perspective by a viewer. Here the viewer constitutes an external secondary reference object who imposes particular axial properties on the primary reference object by virtue of projecting his/her own left/right axis on the spatial scene being viewed.