LOCALISM: A METHOD FOR DESCRIBING r MEANING IN MAL TESE by ALBERT J. BORG 1. THE LOCALI ST HYPOTHESI S Psychologists are generally agreed that spatial organization is of central importance in human cognition (cf. Clark, H.H. 1973 and Sincl air de Zwart 1973). Assuming an intim ate relationship be- tween the development of intelligence in the human baby and the pro·cess whereby it acquires its mother language, the localist hy- pothesis claims that spacial expressions are more basic, gram- matically and semantically, than various kinds of non-spatial ex- pressions. Such spatial expressions are more basic linguistically in that they serve as models or structural templates, as it were, for other expressions (cf. Lyons 1977, §15.7 and Anderson 1977, §2.4). The following sentence: Ganni mexa mid-dar sa l-iskola /1/ John - he walked - from the house - to the school 'John walked from home to school' is one example of a spatial expression. It encodes a journey from one point to another in the dimension of space undertaken by a traveller, John. Mid-dar' is the expression referring to the point of departure, or the source of the traveller's movement, while 'sa 1- iskola' is the expression referring to the point of arri val, or the goal of the traveller's movement. We can ch aracteri se the preposi- tions in each of these two expressions as respectively, 'minn' the source preposition, and 'sa' the goal preposition. Observing now the sentence in /2/: /2/ Karmnu nqatel minn Pawlu Charles - he was killed - from Paul 'Charles was killed by Paul' we notice the reappearance of the preposition 'minn' before the expression referring to the agent in the passive construction. There is nothing specifically spatial about an act of killing and 3