Events in Space

1. Introduction: space as a verbal category Many languages make use of verbal forms to express spatial relations and distinc- tions. Spatial notions are lexicalized into verb roots, as in come and go; they are expressed by derivational morphology such as Ineseno Chumashmaquti 'hither and thither' or Shasta eh´ 'downward' (Mithun 1999: 140-141); and, I will argue, they are expressed by verbal inflectional morphology in Nez Perce. This verbal inflec- tion for space shows a number of parallels with inflection for tense, which it appears immediately below. Like tense, space markers in Nez Perce are a closed-class in- flectional category with a basic locativemeaning; they differ in the axis along which their locative meaning is computed. The syntax and semantics of space inflection raises the question of just how tight the liaison is between verbal categories and temporal specification. I argue that in view of the presence of space inflection in languages like Nez Perce, tense marking is best captured as a device for narrowing the temporal coordinates of a spatiotemporally located sentence topic.