Is there a relative past tense in English? - Science Direct

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Lingua 97 (1995) l-36

Is there a relative past tense in English? Renaat Declerck Universitaire Campus, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, B-8500 Kortrijk, Belgium

Received October 1994: revised version March 1995 Abstract Traditional analyses of the past tense such as Reichenbach’s (1947) and Comrie’s (1985) assign a single semantic structure to the past tense and do not distinguish between absolute and relative past tenses in English. In the present article it is argued that we cannot do without the notion of a relative past tense. Ten empirically based arguments are adduced in support of this. The author also discusses six possible tests to distinguish between absolute and relative past tenses in concrete examples and points out that the analysis has some important theoretical implications. He argues that the distinction between absolute and relative tenses requires a model of the English tense system that is based on the concept of temporal domain, and that the traditional analysis of the meaning of the past tense morpheme (viz. ‘Event time anterior to speech time’) stands in need of qualification.

1. Introduction Tense is a notoriously difficult subject in linguistics. As a matter of fact, even its definition is controversial. Although most linguists hold that “tense is grammaticalised expression of location in time” (Comrie, 1985: 9), there is also a whole tradition of people who claim that “tense and time have in principle nothing to do with each other” (Leuschner, 1977: 99) and argue that the basic distinction between past tenses and non-past tenses is the distinction between ‘remote’ and ‘non-remote’ (or ‘actual’ versus ‘non-actual’) rather than the distinction between past and present time. In this article I will not pursue this question but assume that the former view is the correct one. (Arguments supporting this are presented in Declerck (1991).) In other words, I subscribe to the view that “tense gramaticalizes the relationship between the time of the situation that is being described and the temporal zero-point of the deictic context” (Lyons, 1977: 682). The question I will address in the present article is whether English has ‘relative’ as well as ‘absolute’ tenses. In doing so I will particularly be concerned with the past tense: ’ ’ I will use the term ‘past tense’ in the sense of ‘preterite’ (e.g. lef). This means that I will not apply the term to forms like had left or would leave, which some people call past tense forms because they 0024-3841/95/$09.50 0 1995 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved SSDI 0024-3841(95)00019-4

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is there a basis for assuming that there is a relative past tense as well as an absolute past tense in English? The definitions of ‘absolute tense’ and ‘relative tense’ are again not uncontroversial. According to Comrie (1985), an absolute tense is “a tense which includes as part of its meaning the present moment as deictic centre” (p. 36), whereas “a relative tense is (. . .) one which is interpreted relative to a reference point provided by the context” (p. 58). (In some contexts the reference point in question will be taken to be the moment of speech. However, it is not part of the meaning of a relative tense that the present moment must be its reference point, whereas this is inherent in the semantics of an absolute tense.) According to these definitions, the distinction between absolute and relative tense forms coincides with the distinction between finite and nonfinite verb forms (p. 57). Within the finite tenses Comrie then further distinguishes between “pure absolute tenses”, which relate the time of the situation directly to the moment of speech, and “absolute-relative tenses”, which relate the time of the situation to the moment of speech via one or more intermediate reference times. In this view the past tense is a pure absolute tense, whereas the past perfect is an absolute-relative one. In other words, the meaning of the past tense is “E before S” (where E is the time of the situation and S is the moment of speech) (p. 123), whereas the semantic structure of the past perfect is a combination of the relations “E before R” and “R before S” (where R is the intermediate reference point) (p. 125). According to Comrie (1985), then, all finite tense forms have an absolute tense component: there are no pure relative finite tense forms. The same claim is made in Comrie (1986: 272). The relevant passage is the following, which is preceded by the observation that the past tense, the present tense and the future tense express absolute time in independent clauses: “It is important to note that these characterizations of the meanings of these three tenses apply as much in subordinate clauses as in main clauses, as in [ 151: [ 151 While Ian was singing, Jennifer was dancing. In [ 151, the past tenses in both clauses are determined by past time reference relative to the here-andnow, i.e. are absolute deictic expressions; the fact that the actions of singing and dancing were simultaneous (relative deixis) is not expressed grammatically in English.”

The idea of a relative past tense is also absent from the (still extremely influential) theory of tense proposed by Reichenbach (1947). According to Reichenbach, all tenses realize a temporal structure involving the above-mentioned elements E, R and S. E is related to R in one of three ways: ‘E anterior to R’ (represented as ‘E-R’), ‘E simultaneous with R’ (‘E,R’), or ‘E posterior to R’ (‘R-E’). In its turn, R is related to S in terms of ‘R-S’, ‘R,S’ or ‘S-R’. (Thus, the meaning of the past tense is claimed to be ‘E,R-S’.) In this system, all finite tense forms have an absolute tense component, and there are no pure relative finite tenses. show past tense morphology. (Tenses that are morphologocally past I will refer to as ‘past time-sphere tenses’ - cf. below.)

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In Declerck (1991) I have defended the view that the English past tense can be used both as an absolute tense and as a relative one. I have also defined the latter term slightly differently from Comrie (1983, so that a tense such as the past perfect is treated as a pure relative tense rather than as an absolute-relative one. The purpose of the present article is to provide further support for this analysis, and to point out some important theoretical implications. I will also go into the most obvious question raised by it: if it is correct that the past tense can be used either as an absolute tense or as a relative one, how can we know which of these possibilities is realized in a given clause? (For example, is there a way of determining whether was is a relative past tense or an absolute one in He said that he was worried?) It goes without saying that any attempt at proving the existence of relative past tenses in English will be futile unless we consider the question within the framework of a more general theory of tense. One of the theoretical conclusions we will arrive at in this article is that the data strongly support a particular model of the English tense system, and that this model in its turn requires the notion of relative tense. It will therefore be necessary to sketch the outlines of this model, which is presented in much greater detail in Declerck (199 1). However, before doing so, I will briefly go into some terminological and methodological questions.

2. Some preliminaries It is important to distinguish carefully between a tense and a tense form. A tense is the grammatical expression of a particular temporal meaning. This means that a tense is an abstract concept: it is the correlation of a particular meaning with a particular form. The form in question may be a morpheme (e.g. the past tense morpheme), an auxiliary (e.g. will), or a combination of these (e.g. would). A tense form is a concrete verb form (such as walked or would walk) involving this kind of formal expression of a tense meaning. In accordance with the definition of tense given above, the meaning (semantics) of a tense is the temporal structure that is realized when a tense form locates a particular situation in time. Such a temporal structure consists of times (such as Reichenbath’s E, R and S) and temporal relations holding between them. According to Reichenbach, the past perfect expresses the temporal structure ‘E before R before S’. This structure therefore represents the semantics of the past perfect. The form corresponding with it is ‘PAST have V-en’ (where PAST represents the past tense morpheme and -en the past participle morpheme). It follows from the above definition of tense (i.e. the correlation of a particular temporal meaning with a particular form) that each tense has one and only one (i.e. invariant) meaning. This invariant meaning is the temporal structure which is represented by the tense. It follows that we can discern as many tenses as there are ways of locating situations in time. However, it is clear that some tenses are semantically related to each other. The English tenses fall apart into what I will call ‘past timesphere tenses’ (the past tense or preterite, the past perfect, the ‘conditional tense’, the ‘conditional perfect’) and ‘present time-sphere tenses’ (the present tense, present per-

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feet, future tense and future perfect). The former show past time morphology, whereas the latter do not. However, it is in keeping with our definition of tense that we speak of eight tenses grouped into two ‘families’ rather than of two tenses, since we have eight different forms, each of which expresses a temporal structure of its own.2 The argumentation to be presented below will involve the following steps. In section 4 I will present some observations showing that past tense forms are sometimes interpreted ‘relatively’ rather than ‘absolutely’. In some cases, it will be shown, a past tense form is ambiguous (not vague) between the two interpretations. In some cases the relative interpretation is incompatible with the analysis traditionally assigned to the absolute interpretation (Reichenbach’s ‘E,R-S’ or Comrie’s ‘E before S’). These observations make clear that the two interpretations cannot be explained in terms of a single meaning interacting with different kinds of context, but must be traced back to different semantic structures. Now, it is well-known that the different interpretations-in-context which a linguistic form can receive are constrained by the semantics of the form in question. There is no way in which a future tense form like will walk can be interpreted as locating its situation in the past (hence the unacceptability of I will walk yesterday). Similarly, there is no way in which an absolute past tense form like walked can be interpreted as locating its situation in the future (hence the unacceptability of I walked tomorrow). However, it is easily possible for a situation described by a relative past tense form to be interpreted as lying in the future: this is true of the past tense form was in He said he would read the article tomorrow while he was in the waiting-room of the dentist (cf. section 4.3). This kind of interpretation is clearly incompatible with the traditional view that the past tense locates (the time of) the situation in the past. An analysis of the type ‘E,R-S’ constrains the possible interpretations in such a way that the interpretation ‘S-E’ is ruled out. In sum, past tense forms appear to be compatible with the interpretation that the time of the situation follows S as well as with the interpretation that it precedes S. These interpretations are so radically different that it is difficult to see how they could be constrained by a common semantic meaning. Moreover, there is positive evidence that a past tense form may be semantically ambiguous between an absolute and a relative interpretation. This inevitably leads to the conclusion that the different interpretations are a question of different semantic meanings, and not of a single semantic meaning interacting with different types of context. There are in principle two ways’ in which this conclusion can be accommodated. One possibility is to assume that English has two past tenses, viz. an absolute and a relative one, which happen to correspond to the same grammatical form, i.e. the tense forms of which are homophonous. The other is to assume that there is only one past tense in English, which can express two distinct temporal meanings. Since the latter solution runs counter to the principle that each tense has a single invariant meaning, I will assume that the former solution is the correct one. (However, noth-

*

The above eight tenses

do not exhaust the possibilities. There are other forms (e.g. will have been tense label exists but which also express a structure of their own.

going to do) for which no traditional


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ing crucial depends on this. I will consider my goal in writing this article as reached if I succeed in convincing the reader of the necessity of subscribing to either of these solutions.) The conclusion from this section is that I will adopt as working hypothesis that English has two past tenses. In what follows I will refer to them as ‘the absolute past tense’ and ‘the relative past tense’, and subsume both under the label ‘past tenses’. The term ‘past tense form’ will be used to refer to the verb form corresponding with either of the two tenses. (Occasionally, the word preterite will be used as an altemative to past tense form.) What has been argued in a nutshell here will be explained at greater length below. However, before doing so, I will present a brief sketch of the model of tense presented in Declerck (199 l), which crucially involves the notions of absolute and relative past tense.3

3. A theory of tense The starting-point of the theory is that the use of a tense form in English implies that the speaker views the situation referred to as either past or non-past with respect to the time functioning as ‘temporal zero-point’ (which is usually the moment of speech). That is, any tense form locates its situation either in the ‘past time-sphere’ or in the ‘present time-sphere’. These time-spheres are no objective physical entities but represent the ways in which an English language user conceptualizes time. The past time-sphere is conceived as a timespan of indefinite length with lies wholly before (and hence does not include) the temporal zero-point (Q,). To locate a situation in this time-sphere the speaker uses a past tense form (preterite). The present time-sphere is conceived as a timespan of indefinite length which includes t, and is divided by it into three ‘sectors’: the portion of the present time-sphere that precedes tc, is the ‘pre-present sector’; the portion that is centred on h is the ‘present sector’; and the portion that follows b is the ‘post-present sector’. The tenses used to locate situations in these three sectors are the present perfect, the present tense and the future tense, respectively. For ease of reference, I use the term ‘absolute sectors’ to refer to the above three sectors plus the past time-sphere. (These timespans can be called ‘absolute’ because they are defined in direct relation to to.) The four tenses that are used to locate situations in one of these four sectors are therefore called ‘absolute tenses’. It is typical of absolute tenses that they relate their situation directly to to (by locating it in one of the absolute sectors) and not to the time of another situation or to another reference time. The conceptualization of time in terms of time-spheres and sectors can be represented as in Fig. 1. In this diagram the time line is represented as consisting of two 3 It is self-evident that in building the model in question I have borrowed many elements from what was available in the literature. For obvious reasons, the numerous references and footnotes in the book testifying to this indebtedness cannot be repeated in this article.

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time-spheres. The dotted line in the middle of the time line is meant to represent the fact that there is felt to be a break between the two time-spheres. PAST

PRE-PRESENT

t0

I I

...

POST-PRESENT

PRESENT Fig. 1

By using an absolute tense form, the speaker establishes a ‘temporal domain’ in one of the absolute sectors. A temporal domain is a set of times which either consists of the time of a single situation or comprises the times of several situations that are temporally related to each other by tense forms. In John walked too quickly the absolute past tense form walked establishes a past time-sphere domain (or ‘past domain’ for short). In this case the domain is a singleton: it contains the time of only one situation. In the following example, the domain contains the times of four situations: (1) John said that he had worked hard all day, that he was tired and that he would go to bed early. The first clause contains an absolute tense form (said) which locates the time of the situation of saying in the past sector and by doing so creates a past domain. Each of the times of the situations referred to in the other clauses is temporally related to the time referred to by said, not to t,,. This means that all the tense forms of (1) locate the times of their situations in one and the same temporal domain, which can be represented as in Fig. 2. (When representing a temporal domain by means of a diagram, we will observe the following conventions. The time of the situation referred to by the absolute tense form establishing the domain is the only time that is placed on the time line, since it is the only time that is directly related to t,. A vertical line is used to represent the relation of simultaneity, whereas a slanting line represents either anteriority or posteriority.) In order to talk about domains it is necessary to introduce some further terminology. Any time that serves, or can serve, as the origin of a temporal relation expressed by a tense form is called a ‘time of orientation’ (henceforth: TO). Since we can always introduce the time of a new situation into a domain and relate it there to any time we like, any time contained in a domain is a TO. The time of the situation establishing the domain (i.e. the one referred to by the absolute tense form) is called the ‘central TO’. In (1) the central TO is the time referred to by said. The times of the other situations are temporally related to this. In technical terms, I will say that they are ‘temporally subordinated’ to the central T0,4 or that they are 4 ‘Temporal subordination’ is a concept that is also made use of in Allen (1966), Tregidgo (1979) and Wekker (1980).

R. Declerck / Lingua 97 (1995) I-36

Fig. 2

‘bound’ by the latter. The central TO is thus the ‘binding’ TO. When the time of a situation is bound, the tense form used is a ‘relative’ tense form5 For example, the past perfect form had worked in the first that-clause of (1) is a relative tense form representing the time of its situation as anterior to the central TO (said). The preterite form was is also a relative tense form: unlike said, which establishes the domain (and is therefore an absolute tense form), was expresses a relation in the past domain, viz. the relation of simultaneity. And similarly, would go is a relative tense form, representing the time of its situation as posterior to the central TO. Since the time of a situation can always serve as the binding TO for the time of another situation, and is therefore always an actual or potential TO, I will replace the cumbersome terrn ‘time of the situation’ by ‘situation-TO’ and abbreviate this to ‘ST0’.6 It follows that we can refine the definition of temporal domain by saying that it is a set of (one or more) TOs, each of which, except for the central TO, is bound by another TO. Since a domain can only be established by a tense form, it necessarily contains at least one STO. If an absolute tense form is used, the ST0 is the central TO of the domain (and possibly the only TO in it). If a relative tense form is used, the ST0 is temporally subordinated to another TO, which may be either the central TO or any other TO in the domain (see below). It should also be noted that a TO is not necessarily an STO: it may also be an ‘implicit’ TO. For example, in John had woken up early that day the ST0 (the time of John’s waking up) is represented as anterior to the central TO of a past domain, but the latter TO is ‘implicit’ in that it is not identified as being an ST0 (the time of a situation). This is shown in Fig. 3. Another point worth making is that by ‘time of the situation’ (STO) I mean the time interval taken up by that part of the situation that is being referred to (and located in time) by the clause involving the relevant tense form. That is, we must distinguish between the ST0 and the time of the full (complete) situation as it actu-

5 There are also forms (such as the future perfect) which both establish a domain and indicate a relation in it. These are what I call ‘absolute-relative’ tense forms (see below). 6 In Declerck (1991) I used the abbreviation ‘TOSi,‘.


Fig. 3

ally takes place. In Two minutes ago John was in the library, the ST0 is the time of that part of the situation that coincides with the time indicated by &vo minutes ago. The time of the full situation may be much longer - John may have been in the library for hours and may still be there at to - but this is not what the sentence makes a statement about. All that is claimed in the sentence is that two minutes ago it was the case that John was in the library at that time. It is therefore necessary to distinguish carefully between the ST0 and the ‘full situation’. (This is not to say that the two cannot coincide. They do when the sentence refers to the complete situation, i.e. if the sentence receives a ‘bounded’ interpretation - cf. section 4.10 below.) It should be clear from the above comment on (1) that I use the term ‘relative tense’ in a different sense from Comrie’s. Whereas Comrie reserves the term for nonfinite verb forms and calls tenses like the past perfect ‘absolute-relative’, I consider nonfinite verb forms as tenseless (cf. Declerck, 1991: 7) and apply the term ‘relative tense’ to forms (like the past perfect) that relate an ST0 to a TO in a temporal domain that is established by another verb form. The term ‘absolute-relative tense’ I reserve for tense forms which both establish a domain and indicate a relation in it. An example of this is the future perfect: in He will have left, the combination of will and have left means that the tense form both establishes a post-present domain and represents its ST0 as anterior to the (implicit) central TO. (Note that the so-called conditional perfect (would have left) is not an absolute-relative tense but a pure relative one, as it expresses a double relation in a past domain, but no relation with ta: in He said he would have left by tomorrow the form would have left relates its ST0 (via an intermediate TO) to the central TO of the past domain (expressed by said) and not to ta.) It should also be clear now why I claim that the preterite can be used in two ways. In example (l), said establishes the domain, and is therefore an absolute tense form, whereas was expresses the domain-internal relation of simultaneity, and is therefore a relative tense forrn7 (The past perfect and the conditional tense, on the other hand, can only be used as relative tenses.)

’ It is true, of course, that, absolute tenses are also ‘relative’ in the sense that they relate their ST0 to a particular TO. However, because of the privileged status of the TO in question (viz. ta), absolute tense forms create a temporal domain, whereas relative tense forms invariably expand an existing one. Since these are basically different (and complementary) functions, it is necessary to distinguish between the two.

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When a relative tense form is used, the ST0 need not always be related to the central TO of the domain into which it is incorporated. The binding TO may also be another TO in the domain. For example, in (2) the boiling over is represented as simultaneous with the panicking, which is itself represented as anterior to the saying - cf. Fig. 4: (2) John said he had panicked when the milk boiled over. b I

I

Fig. 4

It should be noticed that in (1) and (2) the relative tense form used to express simultaneity is each time the preterite, irrespective of whether the binding TO is or is not the central TO of the domain. This is because there is a single system of relative tenses to express relations in a past domain: we always use the preterite for simultaneity, the past perfect for anteriority, and the conditional tense for posteriority,* irrespective of whether the binding TO is the central TO or a bound TO. (Further illustrations of this will be presented below.) An important point to be made is that simultaneity expressed by a tense form is defined in terms of coincidence, not overlapping. This does not mean that the two situations must actually cover exactly the same timespan. As explained above, simultaneity (as expressed by a tense form) is a relation between an ST0 and another TO, not a relation between the times of ‘full’ situations. In Bill said that John was crying the ST0 of the that-clause is not the time of the full situation of John crying but just that part of it that coincides with the ST0 of the head clause. The distinction between the ST0 and the time of the full situation is therefore in keeping with the claim that the simultaneity relation expressed by a relative tense forms is a relation of coincidence. The coincidence relation in question is a unidirectional one. Saying that an ST0 is represented as simultaneous with another ST0 means that the former depends for its temporal interpretation on the latter, but not vice versa. Thus, in He said he was hun* This is a slight simplification. tional tense (would + infinitive) connotations.

Posteriority in a past domain can be expressed not only by the condibut also by forms like was going to or was to. The latter have specific


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gry it is the ST0 of the that-clause that derives its temporal specification from the simultaneity relation with the ST0 of the head clause, not the other way round. Apart from the notion of temporal domain, we also need the notion of ‘shift of temporal perspective’.9 By this I mean the phenomenon that a situation which is interpreted as lying in a particular sector is sometimes treated as if it belonged to another absolute sector. A well-known example is the so-called historical present: a situation that lies in the past of to is treated as if it were a present situation. Another example, which is directly relevant to the subject under discussion, is the use of tense forms to develop a post-present domain. lo Once a post-present domain has been established and we want to incorporate an ST0 into it, we treat the central TO of the post-present domain as if it were a present TO (i.e. as if it included b or coincided with to). This means that in order to temporally subordinate an ST0 to this post-present TO we use one of the same tenses as we use to relate an ST0 to to. In other words, the set of tenses used to relate an ST0 to the central TO of a post-present domain is the same as the set of absolute tenses. This is clear from examples like the following: (3a) [If we dump his body in Soho after we have killed him] the police will think that he was killed there. (3b) Next Friday his excuse for being late will probably be that he has been caught in a traffic jam caused by the Pope’s visit. (3~) [When you arrive in Tokyo] you will see that it is already dark. (3d) [If I make up my mind to resign] you will be the first to hear when exacly I will do so.

The tense structure of the relevant clauses of (3a) can represented as in Fig. 5. (The vertical dotted line represents the shift of temporal perspective.) In (3a-d) the head clause each time establishes a post-present domain and the ST0 of the chat-clause is incorporated into it. Since the speaker treats the central TO as if it were to, he uses a ‘pseudo-absolute’ tense form in the that-clause. That is, the tenses used to relate an ST0 to the central TO of a post-present domain are the preterite or present perfect for anteriority, the present tense for simultaneity and the future tense for posteriority. In Declerck (1991) this systematic use of (otherwise absolute) tenses to express a relation in a post-present domain is labelled the ‘Present Perspective System’ (PPS). (This label captures the fact that this system is based on a shift of perspective to the present: the post-present binding TO is treated as if it

9 In order to avoid any misunderstanding I wish to state explicitly that the way in which I use the term ‘shift of temporal perspective’ is not the same as the way in which the term is used in Kamp and Rohrer (1983). ” As will be pointed out in section 6.4, there are only three types of shift of temporal perspective that are conventionalized in English. (The third type is to be observed in pre-present domains: when such a domain is developed, the pre-present central TO is treated as if it were a past TO - cf. section 4.9.) This means that the notion of ‘shift of temporal perspective’, which in itself is a very powerful device, is appropriately constrained and that the distribution of such forms can be neatly defined.

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Fig. 5

were t,,.) In (3a), the past tense form was killed does not locate its ST0 in the past (defined relative to to) but in the ‘pseudo-past’ (defined relative to the central TO of the post-present domain, which acts as ‘pseudo-b’). This means that was killed is not used as an absolute past tense form but as a relative one: it expresses a relation in an already established domain. Next to the PPS there is also a ‘Future Perspective System’ (FPS). The tense forms functioning in this system are those that do not express a relation within a post-present domain but actually establish a post-present domain. Tenses that do this are the future tense (in its absolute use) and absolute relative tenses such as the future perfect. The future tense represents its ST0 as the central TO of a new postpresent domain. The absolute-relative tense forms also establish a post-present domain but represent their ST0 as either anterior or posterior to the central TO. Examples of such tense forms are will have left and will be going to leave, in which will establishes a post-present domain and have . . . -en or be going to relate the ST0 to the (implicit) central TO of this domain. The above principles represent a rough sketch of just a fragment of the tense model offered in Declerck (199 l), but they suffice for our present purpose. What is especially important is the notion of temporal domain. That we cannot do without this concept should be clear from the fact that there exist complex sentences in which each of the various tense forms relates its ST0 to one of the other STOs: (4) After the meeting was finished he told me that he would ask Betty why she had not replied to the letter he had sent her after he had learnt about her problems. It is obvious that only one of the tense forms here (viz. told) relates its ST0 directly to t,,. The other tense forms relate their STOs either to this ST0 or to another one, which is itself related (directly or via another STO) to it. In this way the various tense forms create a structure of temporal relations, and the various STOs form a structured set of STOs, which is exactly what I mean by ‘temporal domain’. The notion of temporal domain is essential because it underlies the distinction between (pure) absolute tenses (representing an ST0 as central TO of a domain),

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(pure) relative tenses (relating an ST0 to a TO in a domain established by another verb form) and absolute-relative tenses (which both establish a domain and relate their ST0 to the central TO). It is because the notion of temporal domain is absent from their analyses that Reichenbach and Comrie do not distinguish between absolute and relative past tenses (and not even between absolute and relative uses of past tense forms). Both recognize only one analysis of the past tense. For Comrie, the past tense always realizes the structure ‘E before S’ (in our symbols: ‘ST0 anterior to to’) and is therefore by definition an absolute tense. According to Reichenbath, the past tense has a semantic structure consisting of the relations ‘E simultaneous with R’ and ‘R anterior to S’. Since the latter relation is an absolute one, this analysis too implies that the past tense cannot be used as a (pure) relative tense.

4. Arguments in favour of a relative past tense As noted above, the distinction between absolute and relative tenses is crucial to an analysis in terms of temporal domains. The arguments that will be presented in favour of the existence of relative past tenses are therefore at the same time arguments supporting the domain theory. 4.1. Post-present domains The reason why many people reject the distinction between absolute and relative preterites in English is that there is no morphological evidence for it: it is a purely semantic distinction, which is not formally marked. (I would claim that in John fell when I fell, the head clause uses an absolute past tense form and the time clause a relative one. However, the two tense forms are homophonous, viz. fell.) To obviate this criticism, I will begin by referring to the use of tenses to locate situations in the post-present. As explained above, there are two sets of tenses that can be used for this, which I have labelled the ‘Future Perspective System’ (FPS) and the ‘Present Perspective System’ (PPS). The former system consists of absolute and absolute-relative tenses, the latter of tenses that have a purely relative function. This semantic distinction correlates with a formal difference. In John will fall when I fall we use the FPS-form will fall to create the domain and the PPS-form fall to express simultaneity. This time we cannot use the same form for both functions (as we do in John fell when I fell). Similarly, in the following examples the subclause-ST0 is each time represented as anterior to the central TO of a post-present domain, but the tense form used for this in (5a) is a PPS-form (has been), whereas in (5b) it is an FPS-form (will have left) : (5a) [I will be careful not to leave -try traces.] They will not notice that I have been in their house. (5b) [They will not know that I have been in their house.] They will not know because I will not have left any traces.

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The formal distinction between the present perfect and the future perfect corresponds with the semantic distinction between a relative tense and an absolute-relative one. Notice that there is no way in which have been can be analysed as an absolute tense form in (5a). If it were an absolute tense form, the ST0 would be interpreted as lying in the pre-present, i.e. as anterior to to. In fact, the ST0 is located as anterior to the central TO (will notice) of the post-present domain. Has been does not relate its ST0 to b at all, though it is pragmatically clear (from the context) that the situation must be interpreted as posterior to t,. Similar examples can be built in which a past tense form is used as a PPS-form: (6) [He will have his autobiography written by a journalist, but] he will have the world believe that he wrote it himself. Here again, the relevant ST0 is (pragmatically) interpreted as posterior to to, but wrote does not actually relate the ST0 to ta. It represents it as anterior to the central TO of the post-present domain. Wrote is therefore an unequivocal example of a past tense form that cannot be analysed as an absolute tense form. 4.2. Post-present domains again Due to the fact that the relative tense forms used to relate an ST0 to the central TO of a post-present domain are ‘pseudo-absolute’ tense forms (i.e. the central TO is treated as if it were to), a relative past tense form such as wrote in (6) expresses anteriority. However, when the ST0 in question serves as binding TO for another STO, the past tense form is used to express simultaneity. This is clear from (7) the tense structure of which is represented by Fig. 6: (7) [When he is sixty, he will have his autobiography written by a journalist.] But he will have the world believe that he wrote it himself when he was in hospital.

Fig. 6

14

R. Declerck / Lingua 97 (1995) 1-36

In this example, was represents its ST0 as simultaneous with the ST0 referred to by wrote, which is a ‘pseudo-past’ STO, i.e. an ST0 that is past with respect to the ‘pseudo-&,’ (central TO). I1 In other words, the ‘pseudo-absolute’ past tense form wrote establishes a ‘pseudo-past’ subdomain within the post-present domain. This subdomain is developed as if it were a true past domain, which means that was is interpreted in the same way as a relative past tense form is interpreted when it relates its ST0 to a TO in a past domain, viz. as expressing simultaneity. Examples like (7) show conclusively that we must accept the existence of relative past tense forms expressing simultaneity. The form was represents its ST0 as simultaneous with the pseudo-past ST0 (wrote) in the post-present domain.r2 Since was does not express the temporal relation between its ST0 and b (which happens to be a relation of posteriority), it is neither an absolute nor an absolute-relative tense form. 4.3. Past counterpart of post-present domain Examples like (7) can be transposed into the past: (8) [He told us about what he planned to do.] When he was sixty, he would have his autobiography written by a journalist. But he would have the world believe that he had written it himself when he was in hospital. The basic difference between (7) and (8) is that the STOs that are represented as posterior to tc, in (7) (and are therefore the central TOs of the post-present domains) are represented as posterior to a past TO in (8): instead of will we now have would. The other relations, however, remain unaffected: as in (7), the when-clauses use a tense form expressing simultaneity, whereas the ST0 of the that-clause is represented as anterior to its binding TO. This means that, as in (7), the past tense form was in when he was in hospital relates its ST0 to the ST0 of the that-clause, and must therefore be a relative tense form. Moreover, it is a pure relative tense form (rather than an absolute-relative one): it expresses no relation with t,. This means that the meaning of the relative past tense can be defined as ‘ST0 simultaneous with a TO in a past domain’. Nothing is implied concerning the relation of either the bound ST0 or the binding TO to t,. This is clear from (S), in which was does not tell us anything about the temporal location of the two STOs (the time of being in hospital and the time of writing) relative to to. As a matter of fact, even though a past tense form is used, the STOs in question may actually be posterior to to. A suitable context can enforce this interpretation:

Note that because wrote expresses this relation only (and hence tells us nothing about the relation between its ST0 and ts) the ST0 may actually be posterior to tr,. I2 Note that the interpretation that the ST0 of the when-clause is simultaneous with the ST0 of the superordinate clause is due to the past tense form and not to when, since when is compatible with tense forms expressing anteriority or posteriority, as in He was shot when he had opened the gates and He was

shot when he was going to open the gates.

R. Declerck / Lingua 97 (1995) 1-36

15

(9) [The last time I saw him he told us about what he planned to do. When he was fifty-five he would retire. He would then undergo some kind of surgical operation.] When he was sixty, he would have his autobiography written by a journalist. But he would have the world believe that he had written it himself when he was in hospital. In this example, both the ST0 of the final when-clause (was) and the binding ST0 (had written) are pragmatically interpreted as posterior to t,,, but neither of these posteriority relations is expressed by was. This means that was is neither an absolute tense form (as in Comrie’s ‘E anterior to S’ analysis) nor an absolute-relative one (as it would seem to be in Reichenbach’s ‘E,R-S’ analysis). This not only proves the existence of (pure) relative past tense forms but also leads to an important theoretical conclusion. The ‘past’ aspect of meaning conveyed by the past tense morpheme of a relative past tense form is neither ‘ST0 anterior to to’ nor ‘binding TO anterior to t,,‘. It is ‘ST0 and binding TO belong to a past domain’. In other words, the semantics of the relative past tense is not ‘ST0 simultaneous with a past TO’ but rather ‘ST0 simultaneous with a TO in a past domain’. This is in keeping with the observation (made in section 3) that the relative past tense is the only tense that can express simultaneity in a past domain, which means that it is used to this effect irrespective of the location of the binding TO in the domain, i.e. regardless of whether the binding TO is the central TO, or another TO anterior, simultaneous or posterior to the central TO, or another TO related to such a non-central TO, etc. The past tense morpheme of a relative past tense form implies no more than that the ST0 (and hence also the TO binding it) belongs to a past domain. As is clear from (8)(9), it does not imply anything concerning the actual location of either TO relative to t,. What is said here about the relative past tense in fact applies to all the relative past time-sphere tenses. It is generally accepted in the linguistic literature that the past perfect expresses anteriority to a past TO (Reichenbach’s and Comrie’s ‘E before R before S’) and that the conditional tense expresses posteriority to a past TO (‘E after R before S’). In each case the ‘R before S’ relation is assumed to be expressed by the past tense morpheme. In actual fact, however, the meaning of the past tense morpheme in these relative tenses is again ‘ST0 (and hence binding TO) in a past domain’.13 This is clear from example (9), where the past perfect (had written) is used in spite of the fact that the context makes clear that both the bound ST0 (the time of writing) and the binding ST0 are to be interpreted as posterior to to. Similar examples can be adduced in connection with the conditional tense: (10) Last week he told me that at next week’s meeting he would inform the board that he would retire at the end of the year.

I3 The past tense morpheme forms part of the formal expression of any past time-sphere tense. Thus, any past perfect form involves the elements PAST, have and -ed (with PAST +have lexicalizing as had).


16

Both conditional tense forms refer to situations which, because of the time adverbials, are interpreted as lying in the post-present. The form would retire therefore cannot express the meaning ‘ST0 posterior to a TO anterior to to’ (Comrie’s (1985 : 128) ‘E after R before S’). Rather, it expresses ‘ST0 posterior to a TO in a past domain’. The observation that m examples like (9)-( 10) the past tense morpheme means ‘in a past domain’ rather than expressing a relation with t,, is important not only because it disproves the traditional analyses of the past tense but also because it proves that we cannot build an adequate theory of tense without reference to temporal domains. Once this is seen, it is clear that we cannot do without the distinction between absolute and relative tenses. The former are necessary to establish domains, the latter to indicate relations in them. 4.4. Indirect speech In indirect speech/thought, some past tense forms are ‘backshifted”, whereas others are not. Compare: (11 a) (1 lb) (1 lc) (1 Id) (1 le)

John thought that I was abroad. Betty hoped that John had thought Betty hoped that John had thought Betty hoped that John thought that Betty hoped that John thought that

that that she she

she she was had

was abroad. had been abroad. abroad. been abroad.

If (1 la) is the direct speech/thought version of the proposition expressing Betty’s hope, the only adequate indirect speech/thought version is (1 lb). The other three sentences (1 lc-e) are naturally interpreted as reporting the following, respectively: (12a) John thought I had been abroad. (12b) John thinks I am abroad. (12~) John thinks I have been (or: was) abroad. It appears that in the indirect speech/thought version of (11 a) one of the past tense forms (viz. thought) must be backshifted, whereas the other (was) must be retained. This cannot be accounted for unless we assume that we have to do with two different kinds of past tense. I would argue that in (1 la) the past tense in the head clause (thought) is an absolute tense form, whereas the past tense in the that-clause (was) is a relative one. This difference explains why only the former is backshifted in (1 lb). As an absolute preterite, the form thought in (lla) represents John’s thinking as lying in the past time-sphere, and hence as anterior to to. In (11 b), the time which fuctions as to in (1 la) is represented as a past time (hoped), which means that the time of thinking is now anterior to a past TO, so that the past perfect must be used. By contrast, the relative past tense form was from (1 la) must be retained in (11 b), because the relation it expresses (viz. simultaneity in a past domain) remains the same in (1 lb): in both sentences the situation of Betty being abroad is represented as simultaneous with that of John thinking.


17

The observation that only absolute past tense forms can undergo backshifting in indirect speech/thought would seem to provide us with an excellent test to tell whether a particular past tense form is an absolute preterite or a relative one. However, this ‘indirect speech test’ does not always work in practice, for two reasons. The first is that an absolute preterite does not always have to be backshifted in indirect speech: next to using a past perfect (temporal subordination) it is often possible to use a past tense form establishing a domain of its own. For example: (13a) John was happier when he lived in London. (13b) Mary said that John had been/was happier when he lived in London. The clause that is the HC (head clause) in (13a) is turned into a that-clause embedded under a verb in the preterite in (13b). This embedding entails that its ST0 (the time of John’s being happy), which is related to b in (13a), can be related to the HCST0 (ST0 of the head clause) (said) of (13b) in terms of anteriority (had been). However, we can also continue to use a past tense form (was), relating the ST0 directly to t,, (and thus creating another domain). l4 This means that the absolute past tense form in the HC of (13a) does not have to be backshifted in indirect speech: it may also be retained. This obscures the results of the indirect speech test. For the test to be completely reliable it would have to be the case that backshifting was obligatory for absolute past tense forms and impossible for relative ones. The second problem for the indirect speech test is that the use of a past perfect form need not always be the result of backshifting an absolute preterite: in some types of clause it can also be an instance of “indirect binding” (Declerck, 1991: 61-66; Depraetere, 1993: 140). A subclause shows indirect binding if its ST0 is not bound by the ST0 of the superordinate clause (HC) but by another TO (which usually also binds the ST0 of the HC). Consider: (14a) John was happier when he lived in London. (14b) Mary imagined that John had been happier when he (had) lived in London. Arguably, lived is a relative past tense form in (14a).15 However, the form need not be retained in ( 14b) : the sentence can receive the same interpretation if we use had lived. The latter form is an instance of indirect binding, since it relates its ST0 not to the ST0 of the superordinate that-clause (had been) but to the ST0 of the matrix (imagined). This example shows that when an STOs is to be interpreted as simultaneous with an STO, and both are interpreted as anterior to an STO,, there are in principle two ways of temporally subordinating the STO,: I4 As argued in Declerck (1991: 46-52) the temporal relation between the central TOs of two domains independently established within the same absolute sector is not specified by either tense form: both STOs are directly related to ts. It follows that the actual temporal relation between the situations is irrelevant to the use of the tense forms: they may be simultaneous or one may precede the other. In most cases, however, one of these interpretations is enforced by the context or by pragmatic considerations. I5 It is argued in Declerck (1991: 98-101) and Declerck (forthcoming) that when-clauses as a rule use relative tense forms. (For this reason they must use the PPS when the reference is to the post-present.)

18


(a) The tense form of clause, may express the relation ‘STOs simultaneous with ST02’ and leave the relation ‘STO, anterior to STO,’ to be inferred.16 In this case STO, is bound ‘directly’, i.e. bound by the ST0 of its own HC. (b) The tense form of clause, may express the relation ‘TO3 anterior to STO,’ and leave the relation ‘STOs simultaneous with ST02’ to be inferred. In this case STOs is bound ‘indirectly’. If the syntactic configuration of the clauses is such that clauses depends on clause, and the latter is embedded in clause,, the unmarked possibility is for STO, to be bound directly. But indirect binding is a valid alternative in some types of clause, e.g. when-clauses. Needless to say, the phenomenon of indirect binding obscures the indirect speech test. If, in indirect speech/thought, it is in principle possible for a relative past tense form (effecting direct binding) to alternate with a past perfect (effecting indirect binding), how can we be sure whether a given past perfect form is the result of backshifting or of indirect binding? (In the former case, the past tense form in the corresponding direct speech/thought version is an absolute tense form, in the latter it is a relative one.) 4.5. When-clauses If we disregard habitual/generic sentences and special uses of the present tense (i.e. uses that are the result of a shift of temporal perspective, as in historical speech, summaries, etc.), it is not possible to combine a present tense with a when-clause (cf. chapter 4 of Declerck, forthcoming). The following are ungrammatical if the HC is to be understood as referring to a single situation that is in progress at tc,: (15a) *He is helping me [now] when I am in trouble [now]. (15b) *I am [now] still thirsty when it is [now] five o’clock. The reason is that the present tense locates its situation as simultaneous with t,,. This means that the HC-ST0 receives its temporal specification from the location at b (which is the strongest possible kind of temporal specification), and is therefore incompatible with a time-specifying adverbial. Something similar happens when a past tense is used. Consider: (16a) I was still thirsty when it was five o’clock. (16b) He whispered that he was still thirsty. (16~) He whispered that he was still thirsty when it was five o’clock. In (16a), the HC uses an absolute past tense form locating its ST0 in the past timesphere. The precise location of this HC-ST0 in the past is specified by the whenclause. In (16b), was is a relative past tense form. It represents its ST0 as simulta-

I6 As will be stressed below, a tense form can relate an ST0 to only one other TO, not to two different TOs at the same time.


19

neous with the HC-ST0 and in so doing derives its temporal specification from the latter. In (16c), was [thirsty] does not allow this interpretation. The addition of the time-specifying when-clause entails that the that-clause cannot derive its temporal specification from the HC-STO: the being thirsty cannot be interpreted as simultaneous with the whispering. In our terminology, this means that was [thirsty] must now be read as an absolute tense form establishing a domain of its own. (For pragmatic reasons, the central TO of the domain in question is interpreted as anterior to the HC-STO, but this relation is not expressed by the tense forms: the absolute preterites whispered and was [thirsty] relate their STOs directly to to.) The semantic difference between (16b) and (16~) teaches us that an absolute past tense form is compatible with a when-clause, whereas a relative one is not (at least on a singleevent reading). This is another cogent argument in favour of the claim that there are not only absolute but also relative past tense forms in English. The above conclusion also provides a test that can sometimes be used to identify a given past tense form: if there is a when-clause, the clause on which it depends cannot use a relative past tense form (except in the special cases referred to above). However, this test obviously has very limited applicability, and it cannot be broadened to saying that if a when-clause can be added, the past tense form in the clause in question must be an absolute tense form. The reason is that, as noted in connection with indirect speech, many subclauses (not supporting a when-clause) can use either a tense form effecting temporal subordination (relative tense) or a tense form creating a new domain (absolute tense). The conclusion that a clause supporting a when-clause cannot involve a relative past tense form therefore does not in principle rule out the possibility that the same clause not supporting a when-clause does use a relative past tense form. At this point it may be necessary to refute an alternative interpretation of the data. Since absolute tense forms relate their STOs directly to to, the use of absolute past tense forms in a series of clauses leaves the temporal relations between the various domains of which these STOs are the central TOs unexpressed by the tense forms. In that case the hearer interpreting the utterances will assign a particular order to the STOs (domains) on the basis of the information provided by adverbials, by the context or by pragmatic knowledge, or (in the absence of such information) on the basis of the order in which the situations are mentioned, or on the basis of the bounded or unbounded nature of the situations (cf. the ‘Principle of unmarked temporal interpretation’ argued in Declerck (1991: 119)). This means that even if the relations between the STOs are not expressed by the tense forms, they are either expressed in other ways or inferred in the process of interpretation. For example, in John didn’t say anything but Mary protested both preterite forms are absolute preterites (because they occur in syntactically independent clauses - cf. below), but the two domains they establish are naturally interpreted as simultaneous with one another. It follows that one might reject the above argument in connection with whenclauses by claiming that in (16~) all three preterites are absolute tense forms (establishing domains containing only one STO) and that the impossibility of interpreting was [thirsty] as simultaneous with whispered is due to a constraint on the interpretation of clauses supporting a when-clause. In other words, since STOs that are not

20


represented as simultaneous may still be interpreted as simultaneous, one might claim that the simultaneity reading ruled out by the when-clause is a question of pragmatic interpretation and not (as I claim) part of the semantics of the past tense form was (thirsty]. However, it is difficult to see what kind of constraint would be at work here. The constraint cannot be that the ST0 of a clause supporting a when-clause cannot be interpreted as simultaneous with another STO, for that wrongly predicts that (17a-b) do not allow the interpretation that John’s sleeping was simultaneous with his being at home: (17a) John was at home too. He was sleeping when I arrived. (17b) John, who was sleeping when I arrived, was at home too. In these examples, was sleeping and was are absolute preterites (because the clauses are syntactically independent), but the fact that one of the clauses supports a whenclause does not prevent the two situations from being interpreted as simultaneous. As a matter of fact, this stands to reason: why should it be impossible for a situation whose temporal location is only specified by an adverbial to be (and to be interpreted as) simultaneous with another situation? Clearly, the constraint we have noticed in (16~) is not a question of one situation being (interpreted as) simultaneous with another in a case where no relation is linguistically expressed. It is a constraint which follows from the semantics of the tense form. As has been stressed in section 3, the simultaneity relation expressed by a relative past tense is one of coincidence. Next to locating an ST0 at to, representing an ST0 as coinciding with another ST0 is the strongest possible form of temporal specification. Both ways of locating an ST0 in time are therefore incompatible with the use of a when-clause. (The same is not true if the ST0 is represented as anterior or posterior. In that case the tense does not express the precise temporal location of the STO, which can therefore be indicated by a when-clause. As a matter of fact, a sentence like He said he would die is rather pointless without an (adverbial or contextual) specification of the time of the dying. By contrast, the relative past tense form was dying in He said he was dying is incompatible with such a specification, because the temporal location of the time of dying is maximally specified through the coincidence relation expressed by the relative past tense.) 4.6. Used to Costa (1972: 41) notes that a past tense form which is a ‘backshifted’ present tense (in indirect speech/thought) cannot be replaced by used to without a change of meaning. Thus, (18~) is no valid alternative to (18b): (18a) Algemon said, ‘I am happy’. (18b) Algemon said that he was happy. (18~) Algemon said that he used to be happy.


21

By contrast, a past tense form that does not result from backshifting can as a rule alternate with used to (at least, on a habitual interpretation): (19a) Algernon was happy as a child. (19b) Algernon used to be happy as a child. In my system, ‘backshifted’ tense forms are tense forms expressing a relation in a past domain, so that we can interpret Costa’s observation as meaning that, unlike an absolute past tense form, a relative past tense form cannot be replaced by used to. In my opinion, the reason for this is that the meaning of used to is ‘ST0 in the past’, where ‘past’ is defined either relative to b or relative to a TO in a past domain (as in I remembered that I used to do it). Semantically, used to can therefore be equivalent to the absolute past tense (which means ‘ST0 in the past’), but not to the relative past tense (whose meaning is ‘ST0 simultaneous with a TO in a past domain’). The following is a further illustration of this: (20a) My father said he was happy. (20b) My father said he used to be happy. The former sentence is ambiguous because was may be either a relative tense form (expressing simultaneity) or an absolute one (establishing a domain of its own). The latter interpretation is enforced by the addition of e.g. when he was a child. The substitution of used to be for was rules out the former interpretation. The data in connection with used to not only corroborate the claim that there are both absolute and relative past tense forms but also offer a useful test to distinguish between them. Here again it may be necessary to refute an alternative interpretation of the data. Those who would claim that all past tense forms are absolute preterites, but that their STOs may happen to be interpreted as simultaneous, might argue that, because of its meaning, used to cannot be used whenever the relevant ST0 is to be interpreted as simultaneous with the ST0 of the preceding clause. This claim is disproved by data like the following: (21a) I called him Mr. Cigarette because he smoked three packets a day. (21b) I used to call him Mr. Cigarette because he used to smoke three packets a day. In both cases the calling and the smoking are located in the past independently of one another - culled and smoked are absolute past tense forms - but they are pragmatically interpreted as simultaneous with each other. This means that used to does not prevent a simultaneity interpretation. As is clear from the data, used to is quite compatible with a simultaneity reading triggered by the context or by pragmatic considerations, but it cannot induce such an interpretation itself. In other words, because simultaneity is not part of its semantics, used to cannot be used if a verb form is needed which not only allows a simultaneity interpretation but actually expresses simultaneity. A past tense form, however, can be used in such cases because simul-

22


taneity is part of the semantics of the relative past tense. The data in connection with used to therefore corroborate the existence of the relative past tense. 4.7. Ambiguity The above distinction between meaning and interpretation (the former being a question of semantics, the latter of pragmatics and context as well as semantics) is related to the distinction between ambiguity and vagueness. The claim that the difference between a relative past tense form and an absolute one is of a semantic nature (i.e. they express different temporal structures) predicts that John said Mary was ill is ambiguous, since was can be interpreted either as a relative tense form or as an absolute one. (Out of context, the former interpretation is the preferred one, but the latter can be brought out by the addition of a when-clause - cf. above.) The application of Lakoff’s (1970) test for ambiguity shows that this prediction is borne out: (22) John said Mary was ill, and so did Bill.

The clause and so did Bill is interpreted as and Bill also said that Mary was ill. In this reading, was must receive the same interpretation as in the first conjunct: a relative past (simultaneity) interpretation of the first was triggers the same reading of the second was. As argued by Lakoff, this is typical of readings resulting from semantic ambiguity. Readings resulting from vagueness are not subject to this restriction. The above example can therefore be contrasted with the following: (23) Bill was as ill as John was.

In this example both verb forms are absolute past tense forms. (This is corroborated by the indirect speech test: the correct indirect speech/thought version of (23) is not She said that Bill had been as ill as John was but She said Bill had been as ill as John had been.) Because both past tense forms relate their ST0 directly to tc,, the temporal relation between the two STOs remains vague (unspecified): we do not know from (23) whether Bill was ill while, before or after John was ill. It is therefore predictable that Lakoff’s test shows was to be vague rather than ambiguous: (24) Bill was as ill as John was, and so was Mary.

Nothing whatsoever is implied here concerning the relative times of the three illnesses. Whichever of the three interpretations (viz. Bill was ill while/before/after John was) we assign to the first conjunct, all three interpretations (viz. Mary was ill while/before/after John was) remain possible in the second conjunct. The fact that the same thing is not true of (22) proves that the two readings yielded by was in (22) are a question of semantic ambiguity, not pragmatic interpretation-in-context.


23

4.8. Temporal clauses

The concept of relative tense is also necessary to account for the use of the present tense or preterite in the time clauses of examples like the following: (25a) John will leave before Mary arrivesl*will arrive. (25b) John will wait until Mary arrivesl*will arrive. (2%) John expected he would be there before I arrived/*would arrive. (25d) John said he would wait until I arrived/*would arrive. The use of tenses in such time clauses is generally looked upon as puzzling. It seems illogical that (unlike many other languages) English does not allow using a tense form expressing posteriority to refer to a situation which must actually be interpreted as posterior. However, these data do not really present a problem if one knows that conjunctions like before and until are interpreted as ‘before the time that’ and ‘until the time that’. Diachronically, the present-day conjunctions have actually developed from prepositional phrases of this kind. Evidence of this is to be found in the Old English Syntax of Mitchell (1985), the historical grammar of Visser (1970) and the Middle English Dictionavy. I7 The reason why we use arrives rather than will arrive in (25a) is that Mary’s arrival is not represented as posterior to John’s leaving but rather as simultaneous with some (implicit) TO, which is itself posterior to John’s leaving. The latter relation of posteriority is not expressed by the tense form but by the conjuction: before means ‘before the time that’. Since the situation of the beforeclause is simultaneous with this implicit TO (indicated by the time in the paraphrase), is it is not illogical that a tense form expressing simultaneity should be used. (Note that cognate languages like Dutch prefer the same system, but under certain conditions also allow relating the ST0 of the before-clause directly to the ST0 of the HC by a tense form expressing posteriority.) Sentences (25c-d) are similar to (25a-b), except that the ST0 of the time clause now belongs to a past domain rather than to a post-present one. The relation expressed by the tense form of the time clause is again that of simultaneity (with the

i7 All temporal conjunctions can be paraphrased by means of a prepositional phrase with the word time. Except for when (which means ‘at the time at which’), they have actually developed from prepositional phrases. Thus, in Old English after was not yet used on its own as a conjunction. Instead a prepositional phrase of the form ‘after then that’ (realized as after tham that/the or something similar) was used (cf. Mitchell, 1985: 346ff.; Visser, 1970: 868). In Middle English these phrases were still used, though the phrase after tyme (which literally means ‘after the time that’) was also occasionally used (cf. the Middle English Dictionary, Part A.2. p. 137). In later times these prepositional phrases were reduced to after that, which finally developed into after. Similarly, the conjunction before has developed from a phrase of the form ‘before the time that’ (variously realized in Old English as toforan tham timan the, foran to tham timan the and toforan tham the - cf. Mitchell, 1985: 379). (However, these phrases were less usual in Old English than the alternatives ar tham the, Er tham and cer, which show the same evolution from a prepositional phrase into a single word conjunction.) I8 Before Mary arrives means ‘before the time at which Mary arrives’ (hence ‘before the time of Mary’s arrival’). Mary’s arrival is therefore simultaneous with the time in question.

24


TO implicit in the meaning of the temporal conjunction). Since, as far as I know, there is no alternative explanation for the use of the past tense forms in (2%-d), these examples strongly support the claim that there are pure relative past tense forms in English. (Note that this analysis of the past tense forms in (25c-d) is confirmed by the impossibility of replacing them by used to and by the indirect speech test: the correct reported version of (2%) is not Mary said that John had expected he would be there before I had arrived but Mary said that John had expected he would be there before I arrived.)19 4.9. Pre-present domains As is clear from examples like John has lived here since 1980 and I have already locked the door, a present perfect in principle allows two interpretations, according to whether or not its ST0 includes tc,. I will call these interpretations ‘continuative’ and ‘indefinite’, respectively. Now, it is noted in Declerck (199 1: 28) that a pre-present domain established by a perfect that is given an indefinite interpretation is treated as if it were a past domain when other STOs are introduced into it. This means that, as in the case of post-present domains, there is a ‘shift of temporal perspective’ (cf. section 3) when a pre-present domain is expanded: the pre-present central TO is treated as if it were a past TO. The result is that we use the past tense for simultaneity, the past perfect for anteriority, and the conditional tense for posteriority - cf. Fig. 7, which represents the tense structure of (26a): (26a) I have never told you that you were stupid. (26b) [I don’t want to hurt him. That’s why] I haven’t come to you until he was away. (26~) [I need to talk to you badly. So] I have come to see you while you were in town. (26d) Have you told her that she had made a mistake? (26e) She has always promised that she would never lie to me. When used in isolation, the clauses You were stupid, He was away and You were in town locate their ST0 in the past and implicate that the situation is no longer valid at to. However, the same situations are clearly not treated as lying in the past in (26a-b). They are interpreted as situations that include ta. The reason is that the clauses do not use an absolute past tense form, as they do when they are used as independent clauses, but a relative one. This relative past tense form represents its ST0 as simultaneous with the central TO of the pre-present domain (which is treated as if it were a past TO) and hence as lying in the present time-sphere. This means that they ‘inherit’ a link with ta from their pre-present binding TO. This explanation, which hinges on (and therefore lends support to) the existence of a relative past

I9 By ‘correct’ I do not mean ‘grammatically correct’ but ‘doing full justice to the meaning of the original statement’, i.e. ‘having no semantic import’.

R. Declerck i Lingua 97 (1995) 1-36

25

Fig. I

tense, is in keeping with the fact that the same interpretation is no longer available when we turn the that-clause into an independent clause: (27) I have never told you. You were stupid. The reason for the semantic difference is that, with the possible exception of ‘free indirect speech’, a relative past tense form can never occur in an independent clause. The form were in (27) is therefore interpreted as an absolute past tense form, and hence as locating its ST0 in the past time-sphere. 4.10. Bounded situations Barring special uses of the present tense (as in historical speech, summaries, etc., where there is a shift of temporal perspective from the past to the present), we cannot use a nonprogressive present tense form to locate a single telic situation at to: (28a) I am writing a book. (28b) *I write a book. (grammatical only in special uses) Write a book is a telic VP, i.e. it represents the situation as tending towards an inherent (non-arbitrary) endpoint without which it is not complete and beyond which it cannot continue. The effect of using a nonprogressive (perfective) verb form is that the situation is referred to as a whole. The combination of a telic VP and perfective aspect entails that the sentence represents the situation as ‘bounded’, i.e. as actually reaching the inherent end-point. This means that the sentence can only be used to refer to the situation as a whole. Since the situation is a durative one, this renders it logically impossible for the situation to be located at (i.e. be represented as coinciding with) a single point of time, such as to.*OThis explains the unacceptability of *O For the same reason sentences like Atfive o’clock John wrote a book are unacceptable, except on an inchoative interpretation (John wrote a book and started doing so at five o’clock).

26


(28b). Now, it appears that the same kind of restriction is to be observed in subclauses in the past tense. Compare: (29a) John said that he was writing a book. (29b) John said that he wrote a book. The latter sentence is not unacceptable but is like (28b) in that (at least in standard British English) it does not allow a simultaneity interpretation. That is, wrote can only be interpreted as an absolute tense form (creating a domain of its own which is pragmatically interpreted as anterior to that established by said). The reason why it cannot be read as a relative past tense form is that the simultaneity relation expressed by the relative past tense is one of coincidence. As explained above, a situation that is represented as durative and bounded cannot at the same time be represented as coinciding with a point of time. The fact that (29a) does allow a simultaneity reading follows from the fact that an imperfective (progressive) clause does not represent the situation as bounded. In that case the reference is not to the complete situation but just to its middle. ‘Middle’ is to be understood here as meaning any portion of the situation that does not include its initial and terminal point. It need be no more than a single point.*’ The point in question (which is the ST0 of the clause in question) can then be represented as coinciding with the punctual ST0 of the head clause. It should be stressed that, as in the case of when-clauses, the impossibility of a simultaneity interpretation in (29b) is not a question of pragmatic interpretation but is due to the semantics of the relative past tense form wrote. This is clear from the following: (30) John knew that I wrote a book. Like (29b), this sentence can only be interpreted in terms of sequence. The simultaneity (coincidence) interpretation is ruled out, in spite of the fact that the two situations are durative and may in principle cover the same timespan. That is, there is no pragmatic reason why the two situations could not be interpreted as simultaneous. That they cannot be can only be explained on the assumption that wrote is a relative tense form. It is inherent in the semantics of the relative past tense that the ST0 in question derives its temporal specification from the binding STO. As noted in section 3, this follows from the fact that the relation of coincidence expressed by a relative past tense form is a unidirectional one: the bound ST0 is represented as coinciding with the binding STO, not the other way round. In (30) this requirement is not satisfied, for a bounded situation (wrote a book) can obviously not derive its temporal specification from an unbounded one (knew). For lack of specification of boundaries, the latter situation can in principle go on indefinitely. This renders it impossible to represent a bounded situation as temporally coinciding with it. (No& 21 Situations that are represented as bounded do not allow this because they are represented as ‘heterogeneous’ rather than ‘homogeneous’: a description of a situation representing it as bounded can only be a description of the situation as a whole, not of any part of it.


21

that the reverse mechanism is possible: if the binding ST0 is bounded and the bound ST0 is not, the relation of coincidence imposes temporal boundaries on the bound STO. For example: (31) He repeated three times that John was in the kitchen. The HC (head clause) is bounded here by the use of three tirnes.22 The clause John was in the kitchen does not by itself represent its situation as bounded. However, as explained in section 3, the relation of coincidence expressed by was entails that the ST0 of the that-clause is just that part of the full situation (possibly all of it) that is strictly simultaneous with the ST0 of the HC. In other words, (31) makes a statement about only that part of the that-clause situation that coincides with the ST0 of the HC. It does not tell us anything about the length of time actually taken up by the complete situation. This means that the boundedness of the HC imposes boundaries, not on the time of the full situation referred to in the that-clause but on the latter’s STO. In other words, by imposing boundaries, the HC picks out a subinterval from the time of the full situation, and it is this subinterval that is interpreted as being the ST0 of the that-clause.)

5. Tests for identifying absolute and relative past tenses The conclusion that there must be absolute and relative past tense forms inevitably brings us to the question how we can know which of the two possibilities is realized in concrete examples. So far I have given only a partial answer to this question. There is no problem in connection with syntactically independent clauses, which cannot use relative past tense forms. Subclauses, on the other hand, are more difficult to gauge. I have identified a number of principles that can in principle guide us, but each of them is subject to more or less severe restrictions: 5.1. The indirect speech test The rationale behind this test (discussed in section 4.4) is that when a direct speech/thought statement is reported in the form of a that-clause depending on a verb in the past tense, absolute preterites are as a rule backshifted while relative past tense forms are retained. In practice it is difficult to know when this test is reliable because in some contexts there is an alternative to either of these options: instead of backshifting an absolute past tense form into a past perfect, we can often create a new domain (i.e. use an absolute past tense form), and instead of retaining a relative past tense form we can often use the past perfect for ‘indirect binding’. In those contexts we cannot know whether a past perfect in the indirect speech version is a backshifted absolute past tense form or an instance of indirect binding, nor whether a past

** As noted in Declerck (1979), specification of the number of times a situation is repeated induces a bounded-repetitive reading.

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tense form is the result of creating a new domain (as an alternative to backshifting) or a relative past tense form (retained from the original statement). 5.2. Used to As explained in section 4.6, the substitution of used to for a preterite is only possible (without a change of meaning) if the latter is an absolute past tense form. This test is a reliable one, but it is obviously only applicable to clauses that receive a habitual interpretation. 5.3. When-clauses In section 4.5 it was noted that if there is a when-clause, the clause on which it depends cannot use a relative tense form expressing simultaneity. This test too obviously has limited applicability, and it cannot be broadened to saying that if a whenclause can be added, the clause in question cannot involve a relative past tense form. The reason is that, as noted in connection with indirect speech, many subclauses (not supporting a when-clause) can use either a relative past tense form or an absolute one. The conclusion that a clause supporting a when-clause cannot involve a relative past tense form therefore does not rule out the possibility that the same clause not supporting a when-clause does use a relative past tense form. 5.4. Boundedness If the situation is represented as bounded, the verb form cannot be a relative past tense form (cf. section 4.4). This is a very reliable test, but again it applies only to a subset of clauses. 5.5. The Dutch test This is a test that I have not referred to yet and which is merely suggestive because it is based on a comparison between English and a cognate language, viz. Dutch. Unlike English, Dutch can use the present perfect to represent a situation as holding at a definite past time: (32a) Ik heb Jan gisteren gezien. (‘I have seen John yesterday’) (32b) Verleden jaar is het project mislukt doordat Jan niet beef willen meewerken. (‘Last year the project has failed because John has refused to co-operate’) However, a present perfect can replace a past tense form only when the latter is an absolute tense form.23 Dutch does not normally allow using the present perfect as a relative tense expressing simultaneity.24 Compare: 23 This is the same situation as in Latin, where both the ‘pcrfectum’ (e.g. amavi) and the ‘imperfectum’ (e.g. amabam) can be used for absolute past time reference, but only the latter can also function as a relative past tense expressing simultaneity. 24 See also Janssen (1990: 32), who notes that the present perfect cannot be used after toen (‘when’), except in ‘very particular cases’.

R. Declerck / Lingua 97 (1995) I-36

29

(33a) Gisteren guf hij toe dat zijn Vader dood was. (‘Yesterday he admitted that his father was dead’) (33b) Gisteren heeft hij toegegeven dat zijn Vader dood was. (‘Yesterday he has admitted that his father was dead’) (33~) !Gisteren guf hij toe dat zijn Vader dood is geweest. (‘Yesterday he admitted that his father has been dead’) (33d) !Gisteren heeji hij toegegeven dat zijn Vader dood is geweest. (‘Yesterday he has admitted that his father has been dead’) Unlike (33b), (33c-d) are no valid alternatives to (33a). The reason is that in (33a) the past tense form in the HC is an absolute tense form whereas the preterite in the that-clause is a relative one.25 Only the former can be replaced with a present perfect (at least without semantic effect, i.e. without affecting the temporal relations expressed). It follows that a comparison with Dutch may be suggestive if one wants to know if a given English preterite form is an absolute or a relative tense form: if it can translate as a present perfect in Dutch, it is probably an absolute tense form. The Dutch test relies on the assumption that, because English and Dutch are closely related languages, their tense systems are similar as regards the use of relative tense forms. Though my intuition as a native speaker of Dutch tells me that this is correct, the validity of this assumption can only be proved by a systematic comparative study of the two tense systems. As long as this has not been done, the results of the Dutch test must be considered as tentative. 3.6. The PPS-test In the theory argued here, tense forms establishing a past domain (i.e. absolute preterites) are not formally distinguishable from tense forms expressing simultaneity in a past domain (i.e. relative past tense forms). However, the tense forms used to establish a post-present domain (i.e. future tense forms) are formally distinguishable from the tense forms used to express simultaneity with the central TO of a post-present domain (i.e. present tense forms). This suggests that we can identify the past tense form of a given clause by considering the corresponding post-present version of the clause. For example: (34a) (34b) (34~) (34d)

John was unhappy when he was alone. John will be unhappy when he is alone. *John will be unhappy when he will be alone. *John is unhappy when he will be alone.

25 This is confirmed by the indirect speech test. The correct indirect speech version of (33a) is (i), not (ii). (The latter corresponds to (33c4).) (i) Tom zei dat Jan de dag voordien had toegegeven dat zijn Vader dood was. (‘Tom said that John had admitted the day before that his father was dead’) (ii) Tom zei dat Jan de dag voordien had toegegeven dat zijn Vader dood was geweest. (‘Tom said that John had admitted the day before that his father had been dead’)

30

R. Declerck i Lingua 97 (1995) 1-36

Sentence (34b) is the only correct post-present counterpart of (34a). Since the tense form of its HC is an FPS-form (absolute tense) and that of the when-clause is a PPSform (expressing a relation within the domain), we might conclude that in (34a) too, the HC uses an absolute tense form and the time clause a relative one. If this conclusion is warranted, transposing clauses from the past into the post-present can generally be used as a simple and effective test, which can be applied in all circumstances. This PPS-test rests on the assumption that the possibilities and restrictions in connection with the use of absolute and relative tense forms in particular types of clauses are the same in a past domain as they are in a post-present one. Though this may well be the case (e.g. clauses that cannot use will cannot use would either), the assumption must be treated as tentative as long as a systematic and detailed study of the use of tenses in individual clause types is lacking. 5.7. Conclusion from section 5 The general conclusion from section 5, then, is that there does not appear to be a test that is guaranteed to be both fully reliable and applicable in all circumstances. However, some of the tests come up to the former requirement (viz. the tests in connection with used to, when-clauses and bounded VPs), and the others are at least suggestive. If several of them point in the same direction, the results can be considered sufficiently dependable to form the basis of a working hypothesis.

6. Theoretical implications 6.1. Interpreting the data The ten pieces of empirical evidence presented in section 4 lead to the following conclusions. First, there can be no doubt whatever that an English past tense form is sometimes interpreted ‘relatively’, i.e. as relating its ST0 to a contextually established past (or pseudo-past - cf. section 4.2) TO rather than to to. Secondly, there is evidence that the different readings (absolute vs. relative) are not a question of interpretation-in-context. As shown in section 4.7, the past tense form was in John said that Mary was ill is ambiguous, not vague, between the two readings. Moreover, it is well-known that the different interpretations-in-context which a linguistic form can receive are constrained by the semantics of the form in question. There is no way in which a future tense form like will sing can be interpreted as locating its ST0 in the past (hence the unacceptability of I will sing yesterday). Similarly, there is no way in which an absolute past tense form like walked can be interpreted as locating its ST0 in the post-present (hence the unacceptability of I sang tomorrow). However, it was shown in section 4.3 that it is easily possible for a situation described by a relative past tense form to be interpreted as lying in the future: this is true, for example, of the past tense form was in He said he would read the article tomorrow while he was in the waiting-room of the dentist (see also sentences (Q-(9)). This


31

kind of interpretation is clearly incompatible with the absolute past tense interpretation. Traditional analyses like Reichenbach’s ‘E,R-S’ or Comrie’s ‘E before S’ constrain the possible interpretations in such a way that the interpretation ‘S-E’ (i.e. the ST0 follows b) is ruled out. In sum, past tense forms appear to be compatible with the interpretation that the ST0 follows b as well as with the interpretation that it precedes to. These interpretations are so radically different that it is hard to see how they could be constrained by a common semantic meaning. Moreover, in section 4.7 positive evidence was adduced that a past tense form may be semantically ambiguous between an absolute and a relative interpretation. All this leads to the conclusion that the absolute and relative readings are due to the semantics of the tense form used and are not just pragmatic interpretations resulting from a single semantic meaning interacting with different types of context. This conclusion is further corroborated by the observation that only the absolute reading alternates with used to (cf. section 4.6) and allows backshifting in indirect speech (cf. section 4.4). Since used to and the past perfect are formal expressions of specific semantic (temporal) structures, it is hard to see how this observation can be accounted for unless there are two past tenses with different semantic structures. In sum, there is ample evidence that the absolute and relative readings are no pragmatically or contextually induced interpretations, but correspond with distinct semantic (temporal) structures. There are in principle two ways in which this conclusion can be accommodated. One possibility is to assume that English has two past tenses, viz. an absolute and a relative one, which happen to correspond to the same grammatical form (i.e. an absolute past tense form is homophonous with a relative one). The other is to assume that there is only one past tense in English, which is polysemous, i.e. which can express two different temporal meanings. It is not easy to choose between these two possibilites. We are faced with the same kind of problem as when a single phonological form corresponds with two distinct meanings: are we confronted with an instance of two different words being homophonous or with an instance of a single word being polysemous? As far as I can see, the analysis assuming two past tenses is preferable to the analysis in terms of a single polysemous past tense. The latter solution runs counter to the principle that each tense has a single invariant meaning. Since a tense is an abstract concept, viz. the correlation of a temporal meaning with a grammatical form, it is unsound from a theoretical point of view to entertain the idea of polysemous tenses, especially if the readings involved are so distinct that they may actually be contradictory (‘ST0 before t,’ vs. ‘ST0 after to’ - cf. section 4.3). A second point in favour of treating the relative past tense as a tense in its own right is that it has a temporal meaning that is quite similar to that of the past perfect and the so-called conditional tense. The latter two express the temporal structures ‘ST0 anterior to TO in past domain’ and ‘ST0 posterior to TO in past domain’, respectively.26 Since the 26 Note that the traditional analyses of the past perfect (‘E anterior to R anterior to S’) and the conditional tense (‘E posterior to R anterior to S’) are deficient, because these tenses do not express the relation between the binding time (R) and to. The only constraint they place on the binding time is that it

32


relative past expresses ‘ST0 simultaneous with TO in past domain’, it has the same right to be treated as a tense of its own as the past perfect and the conditional tense. 6.2. The domain-theory of tense Whichever solution is chosen, there appears to be no doubt that there is a relative past tense interpretation ‘ST0 simultaneous with TO in past domain’ which is a semantic reading, not a contextually induced interpretation. Since this semantic readinn crucially involves the notion of temporal domain, it cannot be fitted into traditional analyses like Reichenbach’s or Comrie’s. In consequence, the very least we must conclude from the data is that we need a much richer model of tense, which is based on the concept of temporal domain. 4.3. The meaning of the past tense morpheme Another important theoretical conclusion (already referred to in section 4.3) is that the meaning expressed by the past tense morpheme of a relative past tense form is neither ‘ST0 in the past of to’ (Comrie’s ‘E before S’) nor ‘binding TO in the past of to’ but ‘ST0 and binding TO in a domain which is past with respect to fo’.” This aspect of meaning is shared by the past perfect and the conditional tense, which also show past tense morphology. The difference between the three tenses resides in the other aspect of meaning they have besides this: they express an each time different temporal relation between the ST0 and the binding TO. In the case of the past perfect and the conditional, this aspect of meaning is overtly expressed by the lexical morphemes have . . . -en and will, respectively. In the case of the relative past, it is not overly expressed because simultaneity is the unmarked domain-internal relation. (Simultaneity forms are unmarked in two respects: they are formally less complex than the verb forms expressing anteriority or posteriority, and they are semantically unmarked in that they are the forms that are chosen when the use of a marked form seems unnecessary (i.e. they represent the ‘default category’.)28 must be located somewhere in a past domain. This is clear from examples like (i), in which the past perfect form obviously does not express ‘R anterior to S’. (Because of tomorrow, the binding time is actually interpreted as posterior to to). (i) A minute ago John promised that he would help Linda tomorrow after he hadfinished his homework. *’ At least, this is the meaning of the past tense morpheme in the basic use of the relative past timesphere tenses. Apart from this, there are metaphorical (shift of perspective) uses: as we have seen, the past tense can express simultaneity with a pre-present binding TO which is treated as if it were a past one, and it can express anteriority to a post-present binding TO which is treated as if it were to. (See also section 6.4 below.) 28 An illustration of the latter use is the use of tense forms expressing ‘sloppy simultaneity’ (Declerck, 1991: 41-45) in when-clauses: (i) When Bill received the letter, he wrote a reply. (ii) Bill will put out the lights when he goes out. In examples like these the when-clause uses a simultaneity form in spite of the fact that its situation is actually anterior or posterior to the HC-situation.


33

The claim that the basic meaning of the past tense morpheme in relative tenses is ‘ST0 and binding TO in a past domain’ can be simplified to ‘ST0 in a past domain’. (The bound ST0 and the binding TO must by definition belong to the same domain. There exists no such thing as cross-domain binding.) This formulation then also covers absolute past tenses, so that a single meaning can be ascribed to the past tense morpheme: ‘ST0 in a domain which is represented as (or as if) lying in the past time-sphere’. The meaning of present tense morphology can be similarly defined as ‘ST0 in a present time-sphere domain’.29 This means that the various tenses can receive a perfectly compositional analysis along the following lines; (PAST and PRESENT stand for past and present tense morphology.) Past time-sphere tenses Absolute past tense = PAST Relative tenses : Relative past tense = PAST Past perfect = PAST + have -en Conditional perfect = PAST + will + have -en Present time-sphere tenses Present tense = PRESENT Present perfect = PRESENT + have -en Future tense = PRESENT + will Future perfect + PRESENT + will + have -en 6.4. Metaphorical tense uses I have defended the claim that each tense should be assigned a single invariant temporal meaning. However, this does not rule out the possibility of a metaphorical extension of this meaning. Both absolute and relative tenses allow of some metaphorical uses (which, however, are restricted in number and well-defined). As far as absolute tenses are concerned, these are the uses which are referred to as ‘shifts of temporal perspective’ in Declerck (199 1). We can distinguish three of them (all of them fully conventionalized): (a) When a post-present domain is expanded, the central TO is treated as if it were b (cf. sections 3). This means that the tense forms used to relate an ST0 to the central TO of a post-present domain are ‘pseudo-absolute’ tense forms. As noted in section 4.1, it follows that the past tense can be used to represent an ST0 as anterior to the central TO (i.e. as lying in the pseudo-past time-sphere which is defined relative to the pseudo-@:

29 Note that because the expansion of a pre-present domain involves a shift of perspective, past timesphere tenses may also appear in such domains. However, this is immaterial to the point I am making, viz. that the use of the present tense morpheme is only possible in present time-sphere domains.

34


(35) [If we dump his body somewhere after killing him] the police will never find out where he was killed. The past tense form is here a pseudo-absolute form which is used to express anteriority to the central TO of the post-present domain. In doing so it creates a pseudopast subdomain within the latter. (b) If we expand a pre-present domain established by an indefinite perfect, we treat it as if it were a past domain (cf. section 4.9). This means that simultaneity is expressed by the past tense: (36a) He’s often come to see her while you were out. (36b) Has he told you that his father was dead? Except for the central TO, all TOs in such a domain are treated as past TOs. This means that the pre-present domain largely consists of a pseudo-past subdomain. (c) In historical writing, story-telling, captions, etc., past or post-present situations are often treated as if they were present ones. (The ‘historic present’ is a typical example of this.) Relative tenses too have metaphorical uses. The well-known use of the ‘modal past’ and ‘modal past perfect’ to represent a situation as hypothetical or counterfactual (e.g. I wish he was/had been here) or for tentativeness (e.g. I wanted to speak to you) is a typical example. Another instance is the use of the past tense in examples like (7) (repeated here): (7) [When he is sixty, he will have his autobiography written by a journalist.] But he will have the world believe that he wrote it himself when he was in hospital. As explained in section 4.2 and shown in Fig. 6, the ‘pseudo-absolute’ past tense form wrote expresses anteriority to the central TO of the post-present domain and in doing so creates a pseudo-past subdomain within the post-present domain. The past tense form was expresses simultaneity within this subdomain. Since the domain in question is not a true past domain, this use of the relative past tense is a metaphorical use. In order to take the above metaphorical uses into account, we can adapt the formulation of the meanings of past and present tense morphology as follows: PAST expresses ‘ST0 in domain represented as (if) lying in past time-sphere’ PRESENT expresses ‘ST0 in domain represented as (if) lying in present timesphere’ 6.5. The distribution of absolute and relative past tense forms The distinction between two homophonous past tenses naturally raises the question of their distribution. In section 5 it was pointed out that syntactically indepen-


35

dent clauses only use the absolute past tense. However, the picture is not so clear as regards subordinate clauses. There are some types that use the absolute past tense, some that use the relative past tense, and some other types that can use either. Hence the call for reliable tests. Needless to say, lack of space forbids my going any further into this question here. However, the reader is referred to Declerck and Depraetere (1995) which offers a detailed investigation of the distribution of the FPS (i.e. the set of absolute and absolute-relative tenses that establish a post-present domain) and the PPS (i.e. the set of tenses used to express a relation in a post-present domain). This investigation leads to a classification of subclauses into subclauses that require the use of an absolute tense, subclauses that require temporal subordination, and subclauses that allow either possibility. It might be a good working hypothesis to assume that this classification underlies not only the distribution of FPS vs. PPS but also that of the absolute past tense vs. the relative one. 6.6. Does English have a relative present tense? The conclusion that there is a relative past tense in English raises the question of whether we should also accept the existence of a relative present tense used to express simultaneity in a present domain. If we analyse was in He said he was ill as a relative past tense, it seems logical that we should also analyse is in He says he is ill as a relative present tense. Though this analysis is assumed to be correct in Declerck (1991: 34), the question has never been investigated in any detail. However, it is beyond the scope of this article to pursue the topic here.

7. Conclusion The idea of a relative past tense in English is not a novel one. It is present in various analyses that have been proposed (e.g. Allen, 1966; Tregidgo, 1979; Wekker, 1980), but it never seems to have gained widespread support. In fact, it runs counter to the two models that are probably the most influential today, viz. Reichenbach’s and Comrie’s. Besides, even those who do work with the notion of a relative preterite do not appear to have adduced any real evidence supporting it. They just refer to the fact that tense forms must sometimes be interpreted in terms of simultaneity. To my knowledge, nobody has ever adduced any evidence that this interpretation is triggered by the semantics of the tense form, rather than being a question of pragmatic interpretation. Furthermore, no one appears to have gone into the question of possible tests to identify relative preterites. In this article I have tried to fill this gap. I have presented ten empirically based arguments supporting the claim that there are absolute past tenses in English and I have discussed a number of possible tests. I have also argued that the evidence presented indirectly lends support to the tense model presented in Declerck (1991), since relative tenses cannot be accommodated unless one accepts a model that is based on the concept of temporal domain.

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