This thesis investigates the choice between reflexive pronouns (e.g., "herself") and personal pronouns (e.g., "her") in the expression of subject coreference in English locative prepositional phrases. A persistent puzzle for syntactic theories of pronoun licensing, commonly known as binding theories, it has long been observed that both pronoun forms are generally permissible, raising the question of how English users decide which form to choose. Addressing this question sheds light not only on the nature of syntactic constraints determining pronoun licensing possibilities, but also on the non syntactic factors that conspire to push preferences in one direction or the other, in particular factors relating to the meaning of the sentences in which the pronouns are contained. The main empirical and theoretical contributions of this thesis are as follows. First, it reports two acceptability judgment experiments that clarify the extent to which preferences between subject-oriented pronoun forms in locative prepositional phrases depends on two factors previously suggested in the literature: the type of eventuality denoted by the sentence--whether possession, perception, or location change--and the type of spatial relation denoted by the locative prepositional phrase--whether it involves direct contact between figure and ground. Findings reveal that the reflexive is most natural in the expression of location change and direct contact while the personal pronoun patterns oppositely, resulting in an overall gradient preference pattern across locative prepositional phrase constructions. Second, it provides a critical assessment of prior binding theoretic accounts of pronoun licensing in locative prepositional phrases and asks what our theories ought to look like in order to be compatible with the refined empirical picture. Through careful consideration of the syntactic parses that are possible for the types of sentences under consideration as well as the subject-oriented pronoun forms that are permitted within those parses, it is shown that binding theories which maintain strict complementarity between English reflexives and personal pronouns in locative prepositional phrases are untenable. Further ramifications for binding theories, specifically with respect to pronoun licensing within so-called small clauses, are also discussed. Finally, it advances understanding of what drives the effects of event type and relation type on subject-oriented pronoun choice in locative prepositional phrases. The conclusion reached in discussion of binding theories is that syntactic constraints do not play an active role in determining preferences: both pronoun forms are syntactically permitted in all possible parses of the locative prepositional phrase in the sentences under investigation. Findings from a reference resolution experiment reveal that these factors are also not rooted in functional pressures relating to the relative expectedness of subject coreference: though acceptability ratings were found to depend on expectedness as measured in this experiment, with the reflexive being most favored when subject coreference is least expected, expectedness was found not to correlate with either event type or relation type. The outlook at the close of this thesis is that the effects of event type and relation type signal that pronoun choice in English locative prepositional phrases crucially depends on the semantics of the sentences in question. Future directions for this line of research are discussed, namely studies probing the presence of a reflexivizing function in the derivation of these sentences as well as the dependency of pronoun choice on various aspects of event structure, including event trajectory and the nature of the participants involved. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]