Abstract
The problem of temporally situating events in language has been approached by a number of philosophical techniques, including Davidson’s particularist theory of event individuation [6, 5] and Kim’s property exemplification theory [16]. Both of these theories have been developed within linguistic semantic traditions, as well (cf. [24, 2] and others). However, the problem of event localization (spatially situating events) has not been discussed as extensively in the semantics literature. In this paper, I discuss the procedures for identifying where events, as expressed in natural language, are located in space. Aspects of the semantics of event localization have been recently proposed, including the notion of the “shape” of a movement [8, 39], as well as treating movement verbs as “path creation” predicates [29]. In this paper, I build on these and some additional observations to outline a more general semantics of event localization. I then outline a procedure that extends the path metaphor used for motion predicates, distinguishing between the event locus and the spatial aspect of an event. In the process, I discuss how localization is supervenient upon the participants in the events.