Talk by Seungho Nam
The Semantics of Paths and Spatial Orientations
This paper provides a formal analysis of locative PPs in English -- one
built on the notions "path" and "orientation"(front/back, left/right,
etc.): The former for movement readings, and the latter for stative
readings. A locative PP is interpreted as denoting either a path or an
orientation (depending on the choice of preposition and verb). Formally,
in terms of mereological primitives (a space of "regions" and a
"part-to-whole" relation between regions) we define "path structure" and
"orientation structure". Too quickly: "paths" are certain sequences of
regions, and "orientations" are directed rays with a designated region
(the origin). The analysis accounts for several semantic phenomena
including the "symmetry" effect, the "aspectual" effect, and
"perspectival" interpretations of locative PPs. We account for them with
two fundamental characterizations of locatives: (i) "symmetric" locatives
and (ii) "homogeneous" paths.
Paul Dekker, November 2, 1995