The temporal essence of spatial objects

Abstract

We present an ontological stand in which spatial entities and events are considered on a par, in a common domain of entities. Thus, everything that has a spatial extension also has a temporal extension. We show the kind of questions this raises for the reference to objects and events in language and how some of them can be addressed in such a theoretical framework. This model indeed provides a means of formally defining some differences between usually accepted categories of concrete objects referred to in natural language: the difference between mass terms and singular nouns, between singular and collective entities, and between material objects and events.