Events and Situations

Abstract

If we inspect the role of events or situations in formal semantic theories of natural languages, a general strategy common to several theories emerges: Assume that certain linguistic constructions involve a reference to events or situations and appeal to their metaphysical properties to account for semantic properties of the constructions. I concentrate on some paradigmatic cases that illustrate this way of pursuing explanatory tasks in semantics: perception reports, adverbial modification, telicity, and attitude reports.