34. Event semantics

Since entering the linguistic stage in the late sixties, Davidsonian event semantics has taken on an important role in linguistic theorizing. Davidson’s (1967) central claim is that events are spatiotemporal things, i.e., concrete particulars with a location in space and time. This enrichment of the underlying ontology has proven to be of great benefit in explaining numerous combinatorial and inferential properties of natural language expressions. This article will trace the motivation, development, and applications of event semantics during the past decades and provide a picture of current views on the role of events in natural language meaning. Besides introducing the classical Davidsonian paradigm and providing an ontological characterization of events, the article discusses the Neo-Davidsonian turn with its broader perspective on eventualities and the use of thematic roles and/or decompositional approaches. Further topics are the stage-level/individual-level distinction, the somewhat murky category of states and some results of recent psycholinguistic studies that have tested the insights of Davidsonian event semantics.