Tense and Aspect in Sentence and Discourse - CiteSeerX

Tense and Aspect in Sentence and Discourse Henriëtte de Swart & Henk Verkuyl Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS Utrecht University

Email-addresses: [email protected] & [email protected] c Henriëtte de Swart & Henk Verkuyl

August 1999

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Contents 1 Aspectual composition 1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 The verb as carrier of aspectual information . . . . . . . . 1.2.1 The Slavic tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.2 Vendler’s verb classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 The VP as carrier of aspectual information . . . . . . . . 1.4 The S as carrier of aspectual information . . . . . . . . . 1.4.1 The aspectual scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.2 Aspectual asymmetry and inner/outer aspectuality 1.4.3 The Plus-principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4.4 The construal of aspectual classes: . . . . . . . . . 1.5 How terminative is perfectivity? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5.1 Aspectual operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5.2 Comparing Slavic and Germanic sentences. . . . . 1.5.3 Thematic glue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5.4 The Finnish case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6 Plurality and aspectuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6.1 Some difficult questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.6.2 Collectivity and distributivity . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2 Time, Tense and Temporal Reference 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Subjective and objective time . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Expressing time by tense . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Past, present and future . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.1 The special status of the present . . . 2.4.2 The future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.3 Problems with the future . . . . . . . 2.5 Theories of tense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5.1 Jespersen (1924) . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5.2 Reichenbach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5.3 Beyond Reichenbach . . . . . . . . . . 2.5.4 Asymmetries between past and future

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3 The semantics of inner aspectuality 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 The index-based approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.2 The successor function . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2.3 The Path function `: structuring the VP . . 3.2.4 The participancy function π: structuring S 3.2.5 The three functions working together . . . . 3.2.6 Reduction of scopal ambiguity . . . . . . . 3.2.7 Two Paths make a journey . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Approaching outer aspectuality . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.1 Tense and Progressive Form . . . . . . . . . 3.3.2 Aspectualizers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3.3 Durativity, Habituality, Repetition . . . . . 3.3.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Events or indices? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.1 The model structure in Kamp & Reyle . . . 3.4.2 Instant Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.3 Interval Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4.4 Path Structure as Instant Structure . . . . 3.4.5 Comparison and conclusion . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Event-based approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5.2 Krifka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5.3 Parsons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5.4 Jackendoff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5.5 Pustejovsky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 The semantics of outer aspectuality 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 An event-based semantics of outer aspectuality . . . . . . . . 4.2.1 The domain of eventualities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.2 Aspectual operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.3 Duration adverbials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.4 Coercion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Logical operators: negation and quantification . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 Logical operators as eventuality description modifiers

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2.5.5 Prior (1967) . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5.6 Beyond Prior . . . . . . . . . . 2.5.7 Merging Reichenbach and Prior Temporal ontology . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6.1 Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6.2 Intervals . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6.3 Events . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4.3.2 Logical and aspectual structure . . . Aspect and logical operators in Romance . 4.4.1 Aspect shift and coercion in French Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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5 Tense and aspect at the discourse level 5.1 Temporal structure in DRT and DICE . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.1 Essentials of a discourse-based theory . . . . . . . 5.1.2 The role of rhetorical structure . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.3 The balance between linguistic and extra-linguistic 5.2 French past tenses at the discourse level . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.2 The Imparfait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2.3 The Passé Simple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Negation in discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3.1 Negative sentences in French discourse . . . . . . . 5.3.2 Negative sentences in English discourse . . . . . . 5.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Preface This is a reader for the course on Tense and Aspect in Sentence and Discourse we are teaching at the ESSLLI Summer School at Utrecht, August 9 - 13, 1999. We would like to point out that the text offered is a rough draft of what eventually should become a textbook. The aim of the book will be to bridge the gap between aspectual theories focussing on the sentential domain (the micro-perspective) and theories developing discourse structure (the macroperspective). In particular, we will try to connect interval- or index-based semantics and event-based semantics in a systematic fashion. • Chapter 1 contains an overview of issues relevant to a theory accounting for the micro-perspective on aspectuality. In particular, we will focus on compositionality as a basis for a cross-linguistically valid model of aspectuality. Languages we study include Slavic, Germanic, Finnish and Romance. • Chapter 2 presents some background notions on time and tense and discusses temporal ontology as used in various theories on tense and aspect. • Chapter 3 formalizes the semantics of so-called inner aspectuality in the index-based compositional theory and establishes a comparison with eventbased approaches. The conclusion we draw is that events are a more suitable notion to use at the macro-level. • Chapter 4 deals with aspectual phenomena in the domain of so-called outer aspectuality. The event-based analysis developed here also accounts for logical operators like negation and quantification, and outer aspectuality in Romance. • Chapter 5 extends the theory developed in chapter 4 to the discourse level. The analysis takes into account both rhetorical structure and linguistic constraints which particular tenses impose upon the temporal structure of discourse. As said the text offered here is provisional in the sense that we want to use it to prepare a book manuscript. That is why invite the reader and/or the participants in the course to send us all their comments, reactions and suggestions for improvements. 1

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Aspectual composition 1.1

Introduction

In the present chapter, we shall discuss a number of aspectual notions, which are in need of a precise characterization, our general impression being that the progress of theory formation in the field is hampered by a persistent lack of coined notions. It is not so much that some authors use the term telic whereas others use terminative or perfective or bounded , rather we see that on the semantic side of the analysis there is a lot of trouble in determining what the authors mean when they use these terms. For example, if authors speak about a perfective verb napisal in the Russian sentence (1.1a), (1.1) a.

On napisal pismo He Perf-wrote a/the letter b. On pisal pismo He Imp-wrote a/the letter

do they mean to say that there are perfective verbs like napisat ’ and imperfective verbs like Imp-pisat ’ in that language, or do they actually purport to say that the (abstract) verb pisat’ has two forms: a perfective one with na- in front of it and an imperfective one with an abstract prefix Imp- in front of it? But why don’t they speak of verb forms in that case? Is it persistent sloppyness? Or is it a measured use of the terms involved? These apparently terminological questions are contentually loaden because they are deeply connected with semantically relevant questions. For example, some authors explicitly say that a verb may denote an event1 , which triggers the question of whether they mean that interpretation of the abstract verb form pisat 0 is in the domain of events or rather that it is the interpretation of the perfective form napisal or pisal . In the latter case, however, it should be determined whether or not the perfective prefix na- in (1.1a) really belongs to the verb rather than to the sentential structure. There are indeed reasons 1 E.g.

?

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CHAPTER 1. ASPECTUAL COMPOSITION

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to assume that there is a close connection between the presence of na- and the interpretation of the direct object pismo. At that very moment the notion of ‘denotation of the verb’ becomes rather dubious because higher levels of structure seem to be involved. Moreover, one might wonder what it means for a verb to denote an event without taking into account its arguments. We have given these reflections in order to demonstrate the necessity to go carefully through a series of clarifying steps. The point at issue in this example will return in more detail shortly. First we want to introduce another set of seemingly terminological problems which turn out to be connected with contentual issues. These problems concern the notions of compositionality and coercion. The former notion is around in the field of aspectuality since the early seventies. The idea is that in sentences like (1.1) it is not the verb alone which should account for its aspectual nature, but rather higher level structures such as the VP (V plus its complements) or the S (roughly the subject NP plus the VP). Here again there is a lot of confusion. First of all, should compositionality receive a Fregean colour in the sense that the interpretation of sentences like (1.1) proceeds from bottom to top in a compositional way along the lines of current formal semantics? Or does it simply mean that one takes (somehow) into account that the arguments of the verb need to be involved in establishing the aspectual information conveyed by the sentence? In that case—in particular if one allows the verb to denote events—, one might say that the Bulgarian perfective verb napisa in (1.2a) is coerced into an (secondary) imperfective verb napisvaˇse in (1.2b). (1.2) a.

Ivan Ivan Ivan b. Ivan Ivan Ivan

napisa edno pismo Perf-wrote one letter wrote one letter napisvaˇse edno pismo Imp-Perf-wrote one letter used to write one letter

Or one might argue that due to the fact that the tenseless sentence Marie écrire une lettre (Mary write a letter) expresses a bounded event, there is some need to coerce this information into something unbounded in order to achieve the right interpretation of the French Imparfait in (1.3). (1.3) Marie écrivait une lettre Mary was writing/wrote a letter In the literature one does not find any attempt to compare the two notions involved here in a systematic way. Our purpose is to clarify this issue as much as possible in the hope of reducing the number of misleading notions associated with the issue of determining at which level which sort of aspectual information is expressed. Talking about levels at which aspectual information is expressed, let us first introduce the leading figure of the present book in which different aspectual levels are represented. Figure 1.1 determines in fact its composition in the

1.1. INTRODUCTION

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S Tadv

S Tense

S ...

S S

aspβ

VP0

NPext Det

N

VP

aspα V

NPint Det

Figure 1.1:

N

Aspectual Levels

sense that we start at the bottom and proceed to the top. On our way to the top we will discuss the problems raised and illustrated so far and we will describe the compositional machinery available. The higher we get, the more we meet places where discourse information becomes relevant, the leading idea being that sentence structure provides information for discourse by means of particular choices with respect to elements bearing aspectual information. This is a well-motivated choice: we are convinced of the need to stipulate that for each syntactic level visible in Figure 1.1 the aspectual information expressed by it is different from the preceding and following level. This is a stipulation, but so far there is no indication that we are led astray by it. We have to make two clarifying remarks, largely as a matter of terminology but, as usually, connected with theoretically relevant assumptions. The first remark concerns the syntactic structure. We want it to be useful to many theoretically diverging scholars. Basically, it can be read as a generative structure, but not tied up to a particular trend in generative syntax. People may give it a minimalist interpretation by adding functional structure to it such as an AspPhrase-projection line, or AGR-projection lines, and so forth. We will not do that, because we do not approach issues of aspectuality from a syntactic point of view. As semanticists we need syntactic structure to interpret, but we can easily live with Figure 1.1, which gives the opportunity for us to remain compatible with the generative framework, but also with a lot of other syntactic approaches. This is the reason why we speak about NP rather than about DP, about VP rather than about V0 , about S rather than about VP or IP, etc. It


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will turn out that we are closely connected with categorial approaches but this is only due to the fact that we wish to interpret the binary branches in terms of a function-argument structure along the Fregean lines. Our breaking away from a particular syntactic theory makes the present book compatible with most syntactic approaches to date because many of the aspectual issues are not of a particular syntactic nature. Of course, there is some need to explain part of the structure in more detail. At this moment, it suffices to observe that we will no longer speak about subject NP and object NP but rather about the internal argument NP and the external argument NP. This is due to our assumption that in the theory of aspectuality we are going to explain in the present part, the asymmetry between the two NPs is crucial. Connected with this point is our wish to avoid Quantifier Raising as much as possible. In other words, we will try to interpret Figure 1.1 as directly as possible allowing traces in the generative fashion rather than letting interpretation proceed on the basis of a Logical Form. As a final clarifying terminological remark we will use the term aspectuality as the term covering the two traditional notions Aktionsart and aspect. We will argue in the next section that one should be cautious in using these terms as they are tied up with a suspicious distinction.

1.2

The verb as carrier of aspectual information

1.2.1

The Slavic tradition

At the beginning of the twentieth century aspectuality seemed to be an entirely Slavic concern, even in the eyes of a lot of Western scholars who wrote about it.2 For them it was clear that the difference between the sentences in (1.1), in (1.2) and in (1.4) was of a semantic nature, as pointed out by ?:3, (1.4) a.

Ivan pil pivo Ivan Imp-drank beer ‘Ivan was drinking/drank beer’ b. Ivan vypil dva piva Ivan Perf-drank two beer ‘Ivan drank two beers’

who used the term imperfective (or durative or continuous) aspect for the Impforms, the term perfective (or resultative) aspect for the Perf-forms and the term iterative aspect for the secondary imperfectization in (1.2b). It was only later that the term Aktionsart was introduced as a supplementary notion. The basic idea underlying the distinction between Aktionsart and Aspect was the conviction that in Russian one should distinguish between verbs like ˇzdat (wait), stojat ’ (stand), etc. and verbs like pisat ’ (write), ranit ’ (wound), etc. on the ground of their being different in lexical meaning. If you wound someone, then something happens which may be described as an inherenty bounded event 2

E.g. ?, ?, ?, ?, and ?.

1.2. THE VERB AS CARRIER OF ASPECTUAL INFORMATION

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of some sort, but if you stand you may do so indefinitely. This difference in meaning is not grammatical, it is rather lexical. That is why Aktionsart is called ‘objective’ in the literature as opposed to aspect which is then called ‘subjective’ because of the idea that aspect expresses itself in the sentence. In order to underline the difference one often says that aspect is grammaticalized. It is a phenomenon arising outside the lexicon, in the sentential phrase structure. ?:134f. discusses sentences like (1.5). (1.5) Poˇcemu budiln’ik ne zvenit, ved’ ja ego zavodil Why doesn’t the alarm clock Imp-go-off, I certainly Imp-wound it up Here, the idea underlying the distinction between Aktionsart and aspect is that the Aktionsart of the verb zvenet ’ (go-off, call, ring) is such that the verb expresses a completed event sui generis, that is, taken as a lexical unit having a specific “objective” meaning. The same applies to the transitive verb zavodit ’: to wind something up is a bounded thing outside the sentence itself. The fact that the two verbs occur imperfectively (or in terms mostly found in Russian grammars, that the sentence contains two imperfective verbs) is due to the sentential environment in which they are inserted. The absence of the perfective forms prozvenet and zavesti makes it possible to express that something is missing in the situation which is normally there as the result of the Aktionsart-meaning. The same applies to sentences like (1.6), (1.6) a.

V sem’ ˇcasov Ivan reˇsal zadaˇcu Lit: At seven o’clock Ivan Imp-solved the problem ‘At seven o’clock Ivan was trying to solve the problem’ b. Vˇcera v sem’ ˇcasov Ivan reˇsil zadaˇcu Lit: At seven o’clock Ivan Perf-solved the problem ‘At seven o’clock Ivan solved the problem’

where the imperfective reˇsal ’ in (1.6) is used to indicate an attempt to do justice to the “real” Aktionsart of the verb, expressing an effort rather than a result. Note in passing that the opposition between perfective and imperfective aspect is now expressed in the form of different infixes. A final example which seems to support the fruitfulness of the distinction at hand is given in sentences like (1.7). (1.7) a.

Olga spala Olga Imp-slept ‘Olga was sleeping’ b. Olga pospala Olga Perf-slept ‘Olga slept a while’

Here the Aktionsart is supposed to be unbounded because one may sleep indefinitely, the perfective prefix po- restricting the period during which Olga slept. Many other examples are given in which the distinction between imperfective and perfective verbs is justified on the basis of a lexically scheme determining


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the Aktionsart. Sentences like (1.6) are said to have a verb whose Aktionsart express boundedness or completeness and on the basis of the scheme the imperfective has a certain semantic effect. Sentences like (1.7) start from an Aktionsart which expresses unboundedness and here the effect of the perfective prefix is to put a restriction on it. Many other variants on this theme can given, such as the marking of the beginning or termination of events, iteration, uncertainty, and so forth. At this point, we should give some antidote against this seductive picture of a system which separates the Slavic languages from, say, Germanic and Romance languages in a way often considered as quite fundamental if not unbridgeable. Indeed, up till now many Slavists claim the uniqueness of the aspectual system and they are inclined to just flatly reject any attempt to generalize over the three language groups in order to find a common basis for making the proper generalisations. This antidote consists at the present stage in two shots, which are necessarily to see a more promising picture in which the data discussed so far can be handled on the basis of quite different insights. Firstly, it should be observed that at the end of the nineteenth century the notion of verb had quite a different status from the one it has now in most theories. In the discussions about grammar in the second half of that century, attention was primarily focussed on word classes. Verb morphology was around, but it was mainly restricted to the verb itself, the notion of phrase structure not being available to systematically express any influence of the verb on what in current linguistics are called its argument NPs. Suppose we would informlly represent the argument structure of the sentences discussed so far in term of the well-known logical scheme (1.8) in which the Verb is taken as a predicate taking one or more arguments. (1.8)

P (a1 , . . . , an ) [±t]

In that case, what the Slavic tradition does, is to separate the (a1 , . . . , an )-part of this scheme from the P and to focus on the binary opposition between [+t] and [–t], where [+t] stands for the expression of telicity or terminativity or boundedness and [–t] for the expression of atelicity, durativity or unboundedness. If [±t] concerns the Aktionsart, nothing in the literature indicates the urge to analyze the perfective-imperfective opposition as including the whole structure in (1.8). On the contrary, all current Russian grammars proudly distinguish between perfective and imperfective verbs: the dependency of this opposition on the contribution of the arguments is not incorporated.3 In order to understand the reason why linguists followed this course, we have to discern the force of the lexicographic tradition, not only in the past that we are discussing but also clearly visible in the current practice of making dictionaries. What happens if one describes the meaning of verbs like write or kill in English? For write dictionaries give a meaning description which amounts to something like ‘to form letters or words ,etc.’ but this promising 3 ?,

?, ?, among many others.


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beginning to reveal the real nature of the activity is soon put aside by the more prominent meaning ‘communicating with in writing’ where mostly examples such as write a letter or write a book are given. It is this particular habit of providing examples together with the internal argument of the verb practically always given in its singular form with an indefinite or definite article, which is in the heart of what we called the lexicographic tradition of word meaning. We learn to write letter , to kill a soldier , to solve a problem, to give a book to someone, and by doing so we are nearly convinced that to write, to kill , to solve and to give inherently express a bounded event, sui generis, qua Aktionsart, so to say. What is forgotten is that one is factually learning a complete VP, which is construed from different smaller parts, one being verbal, the other being nominal. If dictionaries would systematically have given examples like to write letters, to kill innocent victims, to solve problems, to give books to friends, etc., one would certainly have developed a very different feeling for the sense of the verbs involved. In comparing the two sets of examples—one with the singular NP, the other with the bare plurals—it is possible to derive the sui generis-sense of the verbs involved, but this may very well be quite different from what the Slavic tradition pulled out of them by being fixed on the singular NP examples. It is not unreasonable to require some constant meaning in kill when occurring in to kill a soldier and to kill soldiers. Of course, there is a clear difference between to play in play a sonata and to kill in kill a soldier in the sense that to play seems to focus on the activity of playing whereas to kill seems to focus on the resulting death of the soldier. However, the crucial question is not only whether this is true or not, but also whether it is relevant. Let us consider the plural cases to play sonatas and to kill soldiers. Both pertain to something that can go on indefinitely. Note, however, that if one holds that to kill soldiers means that there is one killing for each of the soldiers involved, one can equally well maintain that to play sonatas means that there is one playing for each of the sonatas performed: one has to stop before the next play may begin. In fact, ? analyzed the meaning of play in terms of an underlying notion of perform, expressing that a sonata comes into being by playing it. So, arguably the obvious difference between the lexical meanings of the verbs play and kill might be a difference between ‘construction’ (say, in a cumulative sense) in the case of play and destruction (its reverse) in the case of kill , which entails that the verbs have something in common: both express a causal relation between the activity expressed by the verb and some resulting state. What they share can be seen as involving a processing, a dynamicity. The easiest way to grasp the point at issue is that the verbs under discussion both express ‘a going through a predication’. Someone who played a sonata performed some activity to bring about the result of a sonata having been played. Someone who killed a soldier was involved in some activity to bring about the result of a soldier having been killed. If one accepts this as the general way to characterize the contribution of verbs like play and kill , it is easy to take the next step and to allow the verb run or walk in to run a mile or to walk a mile to express the activity bringing about the result of a mile having

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been run or walked, the result notion following from the cumulative structure created by the ‘going on’-sense of the verb walk . It was exactly this point which led ?:95f. to observe: . . . we could say that moving from some point Pi to some point Pj , where the distance between Pi and Pj is the interval (Pi ,Pj ), can also be conceived in terms of the predicate add to. If someone is walking at Pm , where Pm ∈ (Pi , Pj ) such that Pi < Pm < Pj , . . ., we can say that he is adding some distance measuring units to the interval (Pi ,Pm−1 ). Summarizing, one could say that what we called the “lexicographic approach” to word meaning has blurred the aspectual picture in the sense that the focus of the meaning description was put on that aspect of meaning where at least some interaction with the (singular) internal argument NP is visible. So either one admits that Aktionsart is no longer a lexical matter and one takes into account the nature of the arguments, or one focusses on the genuinely inherent meaning of the verb itself apart from what its arguments contribute in phrase structure. This can be done by perceiving that the verbs discussed above contribute cumulative information. The natural notion of Path of some sort of movement emanating from the quotation may be called ‘nonstative’. It is this meaning element that can be isolated from the verb meaning which can be said to play its role in the aspectual composition along the lines to be sketched below. Before we will do that, we continue our historical analysis of what happened in the Slavist theories on aspectual structure by embroaching our second point This second point is related to the former in a suppplementary way. The emphasis on the lexicographic approach to word meaning can be said to be due to the lack of a satisfactory morphology and syntax. To say that aspect is a matter of morphology and semantics amounted to analyzing aspectual phenomena without any notion of phrase structure. This was, of course, due to the fact that syntax in the modern sense was non-existent in the first decennia of the twentieth century. The Bloomfieldian notion of constituent structure was not yet available, let alone the development of that notion in the second half of the twentieth century. So, there were no technical tools available for those who noticed that it was not only the verb that determines aspectuality. Even those who considered the verb as governing the case of its arguments, could not express that in a clear unequivocal way. For example, ?:291 observes that “the normal aspect of a verb is often modified or even utterly changed by the context”. The basic idea of Poutsma’s analysis seems to be that every verb has a “basic aspect” and that this aspect can be modified by the presence of constituents with which the verb occurs. In modern terms, we see here the idea of coercion and behind it the holy fear for the cherished tenets of Slavist aspectology. At the time of Poutsma’s analysis the notion of VP as a phrase structural constituent was not available at all, so the appeal to a coercive strategy, also visible in ?, was not an unreasonable move. Poutsma simply followed his informal


11

intuition about the VP as a unit and not having available a formal semantics to combine two sister nodes into a higher level structure, he fell back upon a sort of transfer mechanism changing the value of a syntactic node on the basis of the presence of another one. But having available the VP as the phrase structure level at which information about the V and its internal argument come together, coercion is at best only a second best solution, the more so if one accepts the fact that the verbs kill and play and run have something in common which plays an aspectual role independent of their sisters.

1.2.2

Vendler’s verb classes

From the point of view of the developments in the linguistic discussions about aspectuality up to and including Poutsma and Jacobsohn as sketched above, ? does not make any progress beyond what the latter two had done. All the criteria for distinguishing between the verb classes he offered, were available in the predominantly German literature, so in that sense he did not add anything new to what already was there in the linguistic literature. What Vendler did was to introduce ontological classes on the basis of linguistic clues. More precisely, Vendler offered informally a semantics by discerning a set of semantic objects in domains of interpretation in which temporality is part of what can be said to exist. This made him quite popular in the Montague tradition of formal semantics, which started up in the early seventies. Vendler offered the possibility to find denotations. Let us first introduce the Vendler classification. We will do so mainly by giving examples, assuming that the classes are so well-known that they hardly need a further detailed introduction.4 Briefly, what Vendler says is that if someone loves somebody between two points of time, then this love persists for all instants between them. This characterizes a State. If someone is walking at a certain moment, this moment is part of a walking interval. This characterizes an Activity. If someone is running a mile at a certain moment, that moment is part of an interval in which this person ran a mile. This characterizes an Accomplishment. Finally, if someone wins a race between two moments, the winning took place at a moment in between. This is called an Achievement . Table 1.1 exemplifies Vendler’s quadripartition. States: Activities: Accomplishments: Achievement:

love, know, possess, rule walk, run, swim, push, eat, write run (a mile), draw (a circle), discover, eat (a sandwich) recognize, reach, win

Table 1.1:

Vendler’s four verb classes exemplified

This quadripartition is obtained on the basis of a scheme in which two opposi4 For a detailed critical analysis of the role of Vendler classes in aspectual theory we refer to ? or to chapter 2 of ?.


12

tions play a role. They are given in Table 1.2. –Process State Achievement

–Definite +Definite

Table 1.2:

+Process Activity Accomplishment

Two criteria

Basically there are two sets of criteria to distinguish the four classes. One can distinguish States and Activities from Achievements and Accomplishments by observing that (1.10a) containing a State verb and an Activity verb is acceptable whereas (1.10b) is not well-formed under a one-event interpretation. This observation is complemented by the fact that (1.9a) is unacceptable whereas (1.9b) containing an Accomplishment verbs is fine. (1.9) a. He slept and she drew circles for an hour b. #He slept and she drew circles in an hour (1.10) a. #He ran a mile and she drew a circle for an hour b. He ran a mile and she drew a circle in an hour We immediately recognize here the well-known observation made at least sixty years before in the linguistic literature and being available to the linguistic community ever since. In other words, the criterion used is derived from the opposition between sentences like (1.11) and (1.12). (1.11) a.

#Ivan John #‘John b. Ivan John ‘John

(1.12) a.

Ivan John ‘John b. ?Ivan John

vypil Perf-drank drank pil Imp-drank was drinking vypil Perf-drank drank pil Imp-drank

dva piva two beer two beers dva piva two beer two beers

s ˇcas for about for about s ˇcas for about for about

an hour an hour’ an hour an hour’

dva piva za ˇcas two beer in an hour two beers in an hour’ pivo za ˇcas beer in an hour

The single event interpretation in which Ivan drank two beers is excluded in (1.11a). Likewise, one may say (1.12a) whereas (1.12b) is not acceptable, unless it is taken to express a habit. Vendler uses the following sets of sentences to distinguish between verbs that express a process and verbs that do not do that. (1.13) a. b.

∗ ∗

I am knowing, she is loving him She was recognizing me, he was reaching the top


13

(1.14) a. He was running, she is swimming b. She is running a mile, she was drawing a circle He rules out sentences like (1.13) on the ground that the verbs cannot have the Progressive Form, whereas the verbs in (1.14) can. This opposition sets the States and Achievements apart from the Activities and Accomplishments. It is not our intention to treat Vendler here in detail.5 Here the two tables, the criteria and the examples are given in order to refresh the memory of the readers and this should suffice to see the relevance of the two sets of examples, because they play a very important role in the analysis of aspectual and temporal structure. They make it possible for us to check whether the main claim made by Vendler—that there are four verb classes—makes sense with respect to the two criteria given here. It is important to note that in the examples Vendler is quite sloppy in his use of the term Verb. Sometimes it covers genuine verbs like walk and run, sometimes in pertains to phrases of which they are the verb, such as run a mile or draw a circle. The title of Vendler’s paper is ‘Verbs and Time’. If we take him literally in the sense that Verb pertains to the lexical verb category, then what Vendler actually did was to extend the Slavic scheme (1.8) into four verb classes, with the Verbα -information separated from the (a1 , . . . , an )-part: (1.15) a. b. c. d.

VState (a1 , . . . , an ) VAct (a1 , . . . , an ) VAcc (a1 , . . . , an ) VAch (a1 , . . . , an )

Like Vendler, ? distinguishes between four verb classes in English. He took the term ‘Verb’ literally and followed Vendler by distinguishing between four lexical classes. Given the Montagovian joy of doing genuine semantics—that is, interpretation by relating language structurally to domains of interpretation—the course followed by Dowty is understandable though misleading. In fact, Dowty fell victim to an ambiguity introduced by Montague himself. For linguists in the seventies, it was extremely uncommon to get used to the fact that an intransitive verb like walk was of the same syntactic and semantic type as walk a mile. Both are syntactically of type IV and semantically of type he, ti (which means to say that the verb denotes the set of walkers in the domain). So, rather than settling the aspectual matter at the VP-level (of the Montagovian type he, ti), he stuck to the traditional V. This ambiguity is inherent to Vendler’s proposal. Being a philosopher and trained in the formal logic of the time he may have used the notion of verb in a more broad sense, namely as ‘one-place predicate’. One could take the notion of verb in the Montagovian way as a one-place predicate at the level of VP. In that case, however, one may no longer speak of lexical classes. As soon as Vendler-classes are treated at the level of the VP, i.e. as VP-classes, the question arises what explanatory force may be 5 We refer for a very critical investigation of validity of the criteria to ?. Moreover, there are also empirical problems in the sense that Vendler’s judgments about the opposition between (1.13) and (1.14) are generally not accepted.


14

attributed to such a quadripartition for the analysis of aspectual phenomena. As observed repeatedly, the aspectual opposition terminative/telic/perfective vs durative/atelic/imperfective is crucially a binary one. Summarizing, Vendler not having the linguistic-syntactic notion of VP available appealed in the same way as Poutsma and Jacobsohn to an informal intuition about the cohesion between the verb and its internal argument, but he phrased, as they did, what he wanted to express in terms of lexical notions. By doing so, he ended up in the very traditional position of Slavic scholars who analyzed aspect in terms of lexical classes. And this is why the influence of Vendler on current semantic analyses turns out to produce conceptual anomalies.

1.3

The VP as carrier of aspectual information

Syntax makes it possible to assure that the verb in both Figure 1.2a and Figure 1.2b express the same semantic value, say [+a] and that the differences in which the internal arguments are settled at the level of the VP. Semantics makes VP [-t]

VP [+t]

V [+a]

NP [+b] Figure 1.2:

V [+a]

NP [-b]

A constant value for the Verb

it possible to assure that the information conveyed by the verb and the information expressed by its internal argument come together and form a semantic object of some sort that plays a role in the sentential structure. This entails that the semantic status of what is provisionally represented as the “molecular” feature [±t] differs from the status of the “atomic” features [±a] and [±b]. Here follows a list illustrating the four logically possible different combinations, given two sister nodes: Phrases to play a sonata, to kill a soldier to play sonatas, to kill soldiers to love a sonata, to love a soldier to love sonatas, to love soldiers Table 1.3:

Analysis [+a] + [+b] [+a] + [–b] [–a] + [+b] [–a] + [–b]

Yielding [+t] [–t] [–t] [–t]

Possible combinations of semantic values

These possibilities were first explored in this fashion in ?. It should be underscored that it would be wrong to take the features syntactically: they represent

1.3. THE VP AS CARRIER OF ASPECTUAL INFORMATION

15

essentially semantic information as purported to do the generative-semantic categories employed in ?.6 Semantically the features abbreviate semantic information that will be presented formally in chapter 3. However, in view of the fact that we have already discussed the dynamics involved in the meaning of verbs expressing change, we will informally explain the notion of Path in terms of some figures which will express the main idea of the feature combination in Figure 1.3. In order to get as closely as possible at the semantic content of the features we will relabel the feature a as addto and the feature b as the label sqa. The verbal feature [±addto] differentiates between stative and nonstative verbs. Nonstative verbs are “dynamic” in the sense that they create a predicational Path: they pertain to a going on in time during which the predication as expressed by the sentence is developing. It opens up the possibility of taking into account the essentially atemporal structure introduced by the internal argument NP by relating it to the cumulative structure introduced by the verb. The feature [±sqa] distinguishes NPs pertaining to a Specified Quantity of A (where A is the set of sandwiches or persons in the domain of interpretation) from NPs which express an Unspecified Quantity of A.7 The composite feature [+T] (for terminative, telic) represents information about what happens if you combine temporal information ([+addto]) with atemporal information ([+sqa]), the general idea being that a predication “Path” is formed involving a set some entity is going through. What happens if you are “going through” a set? In terms of set theory, this is an odd question but the idea itself is not so odd. When we interpret the VP in sentences like (1.16), (1.16) a. Judith ate four sandwiches b. The three girls wrote some letters it contains an atemporal unit ([[four sandwiches]], [[some letters]]) which in some way is involved in the development of temporal structure introduced by the verb. So, what happens set-theoretically if you relate an atemporal set to a linear structure? This question is not so odd any longer, the more so while you can send a line through a set relating its elements to it by partitioning the set, as illustrated in Figure 1.3, where (a) shows the situation at which the verb and its argument are going to be structurally related into the VP; and where (b) illustrates the effect of amalgamating the verbal and nominal information into a Path structure making (1.16) true just in case Judith first ate one sandwiches, then two and in a third step the fourth one. The main idea to get across at this moment is that the amalgamation of the features [+addto] and [+sqa] into [+t] involves the tuning of essentially 6 The formal clothing of the features involved was different due to a choice in favour of generative-semantic categorial nodes because they were considered more semantic than features. However, ?; 1976 made clear that whatever could be expressed by categorial nodes may be expressed by features. This has caused some misunderstanding in the literature, e.g. in Dowty, Hinrichs, Krifka. 7 Krifka’s term quantized is certainly modeled on the [+sqa]-feature, but Reniers has shown that there are some subtle differences.


16 (a) np s v

s s

(b) s

s1 s2

-

Figure 1.3:

0

1

s3

s4 2

3

Relating sets to linear order

temporal information with information that can be captured set-theoretically in the case of Count Nouns. Atemporal sets are unordered. Temporal structure forces us “to go through” a set imposing linear order to unordered partitions of the NP-denotation. The story is more complex because in sentences like (1.16) what we do offer is a set of combinatorial possibilities rather than just one configuration, but at this stage we aim at clarifying the notion of Path in terms of one arbitrarily chosen configuration in Figure 1.3. In order to prepare our discussion about the Partitive case in § 1.5.4 we will add Figure 1.4 in which we disentangle the [+addto] and [+sqa] of Figure 1.3 s

s

s

s

s1 s2

s3

s4

sqa 6 0

Figure 1.4:

1

a

6 2

6 3

[+sqa] as part of the noun set a

by putting them in a mapping relation, but in which we also show that the set of four sandwiches is embedded in the set a which is the semantic value of the Noun sandwiches in the NP of sentences like (1.17). Actually, Figure 1.4 could represent what is expressed both by (1.16a) and by (1.17). (1.17) Judith ate four of the sandwiches Thus, part of the [+t]-information expressed by a VP includes the information that the sense of dynamic progress contributed by the verb affects the internal argument NP with respect to just a part of the denotation of the Noun set a. At several places in ? it was observed that people like Poutsma in the twenties and Jacobsohn in the thirties in fact had already departed from the traditional Slavist position by paying more than incidental attention to the interaction between the verb and its internal argument or other complements. Verkuyl’s way to shape their intuition was the line just sketched, which ended up in recognizing the VP as the “molecular” level at which atomic information was fused together into an essentially higher level sort of semantic information. As a matter of consequence he rejected the coercive strategy on the ground that

1.3. THE VP AS CARRIER OF ASPECTUAL INFORMATION

17

when you transfer some information from the internal argument to the V you need an operator, say along the lines of ?, but also of ?. (1.18) a. Mary walked b. Mary walked a mile c. Mary walked miles

walk ⇑ walk ⇓⇑ walk

Activity Accomplishment Activity

To make walk an Accomplishment verb you need an operator, say ⇑, so whatever results is, say ⇑V. But this can only mean that ⇑ walk 6= walk and this means that the sense of constancy in what is expressed by the verb is lost.8 It should be observed, though, that by the use of type logic in the analysis of linguistic categories the idea of coercion as developed in e.g. ? is quite attractive. Along the lines of Moens one may think of coercive rules operating at the S-level as in sentences like (1.19). Pr

(1.19) Mary walk a mileterm → Mary walk a miledur P rog

→ Mary was walking a mile

Here the idea is that in natural language we need type adaptation in order to meet the demands of categories functioning as operators. That is, if Mary walked a mile is a terminative sentence and Prog is an operator expressing a state, then one can either require that Prog change the terminative sentence into a stative one, or one may assume that there is some typeshifting operator Pr which first changes the [+t] into a [-t] after which Prog has no problem in receiving its operand. In this way, the terminative sentence is coerced into having the right property. The obvious difference between the two examples of coercive strategies is, of course, that the first one concerns the construction of the predication expressed by a sentence, whereas the second one is used to accommodate a sentence into an environment requiring certain properties. In our view, the proper strategy should be to apply compositionality in the Fregean sense in those cases where it is possible and to rely on coercion only if that would be too bothersome. If that strategy is followed, it simply follows that coercion with respect to the data in Figure 1.2 and Table 1.3 as proposed by Poutsma and Jacobsohn and pursued by Pustejovsky is an inferior form of compositionality, the question being whether it makes sense to send information about the internal argument to the verb which anyhow will become available at the VP-level. A strictly compositional approach takes the a- and b-features of Table 1.3 together and amalgamates them into a higher level feature. As said one may not blame Poutsma and Jacobsohn for framing their intuitions in a coercive mode: they did not know about the VP as a syntacto-semantic unit. The same seems to apply to ?. We will point out that the use of coercive rules in the sense of Moens are not wellmotivated in the realm of what we will call inner aspectuality, but that they can be of use in dealing with phenomena in the domain of outer aspectuality. The two latter notions will be explained in more in detail in the next section. 8 The criticism against Poutsma in ?:42f. can easily be translated into a more modern objection against Pustejovsky’ strategy because Poutsma in fact followed exactly the same course as Pustejovsky did.


18

1.4

The S as carrier of aspectual information

1.4.1

The aspectual scheme

Verkuyl’s 1972-position about the compositionality of aspectual structure can be represented by scheme (1.20).9 (1.20) a.

[S Judith [TS [+sqa] b. [S Children [TS [–sqa] c. [S Judith [TS [+sqa] d. [S Judith [TS [+sqa]

[VP ate [TVP [+addto] [VP ate [TVP [+addto] [VP ate [TVP [+addto] [VP wanted [TVP [–addto]

three sandwiches]] [+sqa]]] a sandwich]] [+sqa]]] sandwiches]] [–sqa]]] a sandwich]] [+sqa]]]

terminative ⇒ [+TS ] durative ⇒ [−TS ] durative ⇒ [−TS ] durative ⇒ [−TS ]

This scheme has only an explanatory function: it turns out to be very handy to use it for organizing the presentation of some crucial notions in the compositional theory of aspectuality we are going to present. We will use the scheme to discuss four important issues: • the asymmetry involved in the scheme; • the distinction between inner and outer aspectuality it provokes; • the Plus-principle that is derived from it; • the construal of ontologically relevant classes that it implies. In the next section we will discuss the asymmetry in some detail because it plays a crucial role in the proper understanding of the quite different roles of the external and the internal argument in aspect construal; as the asymmetry was given a central place in the analysis as an answer to a certain development in the literature, we will also discuss the issue of inner and outer aspectuality. The two remaining issues will be discussed in subsequent sections.

1.4.2

Aspectual asymmetry and inner/outer aspectuality

Feature combinations soon have the appearance of an algebra: two elements combine so as to form a unit which can be input to a new combination. So, immdediately the question arises whether or not a feature algebra as applied to (1.20) should meet the requirement of associativity. This question has been 9 Of course, there are differences. At the technical level there is the difference between categories and features but as observed in the thesis itself what was expressed generativesemantically could have been expressed interpretatively in terms of features. Furthermore, the 1972-scheme served technically as a filter to exclude certain transformations. Contentually the 1972-filter included also the indirect object, which we leave outside our present scope. In spite of these differences, what is expressed by (1.20) is sufficiently present in the 1972-book to justify (1.20) as a point of departure.

1.4. THE S AS CARRIER OF ASPECTUAL INFORMATION

19

raised and answered with respect to scheme (1.20) in ?:20ff., so we will restrict ourselves here to a brief recapitulation. Translated into a linguistic structure, where we ignore the brackets marking the S and the VP, the question boils down to the question of whether the [+addto] in ate would combine first with the [+sqa] of three sandwiches after which [+addto]+[+sqa] in ate three sandwiches combines with the [+sqa] in Judith, or that the [+addto]+[+sqa]-information in Judith ate might combine with the [+sqa] in three sandwiches as well. Here something goes wrong: the combination Judith ate cannot be called [+t] at some level of syntactic structure, because Judith ate is durative. This runs counter to what is expressed by the feature system in (1.20): one cannot make a [+t] from a feature combination containing a minus-feature. It is only plusses that can make another plus. One minus is sufficient to obtain durativity. In ?, there was clearly asymmetry in the aspectual scheme, in the sense that the Verb and its complements were grouped together. This was due to the fact that the ties between the V and its complements were considered much closer that those between the verb and its subject NP. However, in the seventies the idea of asymmetry got more or less in the background because it seemed that the S-level was more important for the determination of aspectuality than the VP-level. That is, the idea became that aspectuality was determined at the S-level, VP-aspectuality being ignored as an intermediate stage. In the eighties, however, the idea of aspectual asymmetry became essential to the present theory of compositionality, in the sense that it crucially incorporates the generative distinction between external and internal argument along the lines of ?;1981. First of all, empirically this line of thought was supported by observations such as that to run a mile as a VP meets the same aspectual criteria as John ran a mile, as shown in (1.21).10 (1.21) a. run a mile in an hour, #run a mile for an hour b. John ran a mile in an hour, #John ran a mile for an hour Secondly, it was a strong disagreement with ? which induced the position that each structurally formed level has its own form of aspectuality which differs from any other level unless it could be proven that they are identical. Lindstedt’s idea can be easily demonstrated by the following list which applies to Finnish data but which can be explained in terms of the corresponding English translations. (1.22) a. b. c. d. e.

Pekka Pekka Pekka Pekka ...

read read read read

the the the the

paper Imp paper one hour Perf paper one hour a day Imp paper one hour a day a week Perf Perf

In Finnish the sentence under analysis contained the NP lehte¨ a (the paper) with genitive case. This gives (1.22a) an Imperfective interpretation: ‘Pekka 10 In ?:23–27 a number of similar arguments are given from which the VP emerges as an aspectually independent level.


20

read in the paper or Pekka was reading the paper’. The idea is that a strict . . .(Perf(Imp(Perf(Imp))))-structure is imperative, the alternative being the sequence . . .(Perf(Imp(Perf(Imp(Perf))))). For ?, this sort of analysis was the reason to sharpen the distinction between inner and outer aspectuality, his position being that aspect formation in sentences in Pekka read the paper is crucially different from what is achieved by adding adverbials and other adjuncts, due to the fact that inner aspectuality is derived from interaction between the verb and its arguments. So, here is the outline of the position emerging: 1. inner aspectuality is the level of argument structure; 2. the VP as part of the argument structure has its own aspectual properties which deviates from the aspectual properties displayed at the S-level. The first point invokes the Plus-principe that we will discuss shortly. It puts the first position to test. The second point incorporates the view that sentences with a plural external argument have distributive interpretations and one can perceive easily that the distribution is sensitive for aspectuality in a structural way. That is, in the distributive interpretation of sentences like (1.23), (1.23) a. Three girls ate a sandwich b. Three girls broke a glass the telicity/terminativity expressed by the VP is to be distributed over each of the girls. We will discuss the two points in much more detail when proceeding. The aspectual analysis of sentences like (1.22b), (1.22c), etc. is left aside until chapter 4

1.4.3

The Plus-principle

The force of the scheme (1.20) however abbreviatory it is, consists in the prediction that terminativity is the marked category. There are different roads leading to a durative interpretation, there is only one way to get a terminative interpretation. Note that (1.20) gives only four of the logically eight possibilities. If we were to include the indirect object as participating in compositional construal, the terminative interpretation would be the only plus-configuration out of sixteen, as discussed in ?:105 with respect to sentences like (1.24). (1.24) a. Den Uyl handed out the Labour Party badge to a congress-goer b. Den Uyl handed out Labour Party badges to a congress-goer c. Den Uyl handed out the Labour Party badge to congress-goers Here only (1.24a) is terminative on the basis of a [+sqa]-specification of all three NPs, all other possibilities containing a minus value. One should not overestimate the importance of the Plus-principle, but ever since its existence in the eighties it has shown a methodological force which makes it a useful tool in deciding about the solution of empirical problems that show up. A point in case is the treatment of sentences like John pushed the

1.4. THE S AS CARRIER OF ASPECTUAL INFORMATION

21

cart where the Plus-principle fails to give the right prediction. So, it requires a solution on the penalty of loosing the attraction which it displays in the case of (1.20). We refer to the solution proposed in ?. Here it suffices to observe that verbs like push are neither [+addto] nor [−addto], but give away a more complex argument structure, the lexical verb push being analyzed as ‘give push(es) to’. In other words, push the cart has a more complex argument structure than eat a sandwich or walk a mile. We are demonstrating the force of a principle here rather than analyzing empirical data. So, we feel free to give another possible problem for the Plus-principle in order to show how it blocks the way for lukewarm adaptions. Consider English sentences like (1.25) and Russian sentences like (1.26). (1.25) a. For an hour Mary lifted tables b. # For an hour Mary began to lift tables (1.26) a.

Miˇsa kuril (sigaretu) Miˇsa smoked (a cigarette) Miˇsa was smoking b. Miˇsa zakuril (sigaretu) Miˇsa za-smoked (a cigarette) Miˇsa started smoking c. Miˇsa kuril sigaretu s ˇcas #Miˇsa zakuril sigaretu s ˇcas

The durative English sentence Mary lifted tables and the imperfective Russian sentence (1.26a) are compatible with durational adverbials like for an hour and s ˇcas. However, as soon as one adds an aspectualizer in English or a perfective prefix in Russian, the situation changes drastically: the resulting sentences no longer are compatible with a durational adverbial as shown in (1.25b) and (1.26c). So, here again the Plus-Principle warns against an unprincipled solution. It suggests that aspectualizers and the perfective prefix in this interpretation do not belong to the argument structure but rather operate on it. Indeed in chapter 3 we will present a solution for aspectualizers and Slavic prefixes expressing a beginning in terms of a modification on the predicational Path. Summarizing, we have illustrated how a feature-algebraic mechanism leads to the position that terminativity as expressed by sentences like Judith ate three sandwiches in (1.20a) is construed on the basis of plus-information only. The principle is restricted to a certain area of inner aspectuality, but it protects the analysis of aspectuality against arbitrary choices: begin and za- turn out to behave like operators on structures that obey the Plus-principle rather than being part of them.

1.4.4

The construal of aspectual classes:

As a notational abbreviatory variant of underlying semantic operations, the feature-system has a very fruitful consequence which can be demonstrated with the help of Figure 1.5. The algebra unifies verbal and nominal information. In


22

[-sqa]

[+sqa]

NP States V

Processes

[–add to]

Figure 1.5:

Events

[+add to]

Three compositionally formed aspectual categories

Figure 1.5, the V and the NP determine the parameters. On the basis of possible feature-combinations classes can be construed as demonstrated in Table 1.4 and [−addto] + [−sqa] [−addto] + [+sqa] [+addto] + [−sqa] [+addto] + [+sqa] Table 1.4:

⇒ ⇒ ⇒ ⇒

State State Process Event

Construal of the three classes

in the sentences in (1.27). (1.27) a.

+

−

−

Judith loved sandwiches +

−

+

b. Judith wanted a sandwich c.

+

+

+

+

−

Judith ate sandwiches +

State State Process

d. Judith ate three sandwiches Event In the literature, this tripartition has been put forward, e.g. in ?, ?, ?, among others. It runs counter to the bipartition found in ?, ?;1996 , among others. Evidently the present authors did not play on the same side of the field. At this stage we shall not speak out on what we agree on. Here it suffices to observe that whatever Figure 1.5 and Table 1.4 express, they offer the possibility that it is the VP rather than the S that is said to pertain to States, Processes or Events. So, they do not speak out on whether or not the external argument is to be excluded. Never did Verkuyl so far, due to his reluctance to meddle in ontological questions. In her analysis of tense, De Swart ended up in treating Processes as States. In Chapter 4 we will pick up this theme again, observing that Figure 1.5 and Table 1.4 give away our view that it is language which determines ontological choices. To cloth information in the form of (1.27c) indicates that one wants to speak about something that Judith did (in principle) unboundedly, whereas by the choice of the determiner a in (1.27d) a speaker presents the information as pertaining to a bounded event. We have seen that the two sentences may be true in a domain of interpretation.

1.5. HOW TERMINATIVE IS PERFECTIVITY?

1.5 1.5.1

23

How terminative is perfectivity? Aspectual operators

In the present section, we will set out to generalize over several languages with respect to their aspectual behaviour. The now aspectual standard tests with for an hour and in an hour apply in a large number of languages, but in each of the languages the factors involved in the test are encoded differently. Thus, in Dutch determiners play a role in aspectual composition, whereas in Finnish it is case which is deeply involved. In Slavic it is the prefix of a verb which is part of the compositional machinery, whereas in French part of the tense information plays a crucial role. We will try and generalize over these languages with a view on the tree in Figure 1.1, focussing on the question about why we should need an aspectual operator aspα . We will first argue that we need the aspα -operator in order to generalize over Slavic and Germanic sentences. Our next step is to draw Finnish data into the picture arguing for another aspectual operator between the V and the internal argument NP. This move enables us to make the Plus-principle more interesting by showing that it really works fine-grainedly in the domain of the VP itself. At that point, we shall present the view that the tree in Figure 1.1 if (at least) extended to Figure 1.6 may unify the languages S ...

S S

aspβ

VP0

NPext

VP

aspα V

NP/PP asp

NPint Det

Figure 1.6:

N

asp-positions

under analysis on the assumption that languages can pick out certain positions from the set of aspectual asp-positions available, dependent on the linguistic means they employ to govern the relation between the verb and its arguments.


24

1.5.2

Comparing Slavic and Germanic sentences.

Our attempt to generalize over Slavic and Germanic languages raises intriguing questions with respect to the following sentences. (1.28) a. #John drank two beers for about an hour b. #Ivan vypil dva piva s ˇcas (1.29) a. John drank two beers in an hour b. Ivan vypil dva piva za ˇcas (1.30) a. John was drinking/drank beer for an hour b. Ivan pil dva piva s ças (1.31) a. ?John was drinking/drank beer in an hour b. ?Ivan pil pivo za ças One question is: how can sentences in the two languages express the same information with respect to the aspectual standard test, if they do not do this in the same way? It was obvious for the traditional Slavic scholars discussed above that the perfective prefix vy- in the b-sentences of (1.28) and (1.29) should be held responsible for the semantic anomaly of (1.28b) and for the well-formedness of (1.29b) and in fact it is still obvious for the large majority of present-day scholars. However, it is as obvious for Western scholars that the terminative nature of the corresponding a-sentences is due to the compositional machinery discussed above. So the question is allowed whether the situation in Slavic languages should perhaps be described differently. Let us first show that terminativity is not identical to perfectivity. This can be achieved by looking at the following analysis of the Slavic data. To begin with, there are cases like (1.32) in which all constituents have plus-values, whereas (1.32a) is durative/imperfective and (1.32b) terminative/perfective. (1.32) a.

On ˇcital He Imp-read [+sqa] [[+add to] b. On proˇcital He Perf-read [+sqa] [[+add to]

etu knigu this book [+sqa]] etu knigu this book [+sqa]]

Secondly, sentences like (1.33) and (1.34) discussed in ? show that both the imperfective and the perfective forms of a verb may occur in the scope of negation: (1.33) Przez lata nie -long/for years neg

czytal zadnej ksia˙zek Perf-read-3sg no book-Gen

(1.34) Przez lata nie -long/for years neg

przeczytal ani jednej Perf-read-3sg not even one

ksia˙zki-Acc. books

Sentence (1.33) means that for years it was the case that he did not read books, whereas (1.34) expresses that for years he did not read a single book. The


25

important thing to note in this connection is that both (1.35a) and (1.35b) are durative. (1.35) a. Przez lata nie czytal zadnej ksia˙zek b. Przez lata nie przeczytal zadnej ksia˙zki This is shown by the fact that they have the same behaviour in the For-test in (1.33) and in the In-test in (1.36). (1.36) a. ?W rok nie czytal zadnej b. ?W rok nie przeczytal ani jednej

ksia˙zek ksia˙zki

This is a very strong indication for the need to distinguish between terminativity and perfectivity. However, it should be observed that this does not imply that there is no overlap between the two notions. In other words, Germanic languages have a terminative VP generally without a prefix on the verb to mark this. In Slavic languages a perfective prefix might be seen as encoding terminativity plus information concerning definiteness or specificity, which in Germanic languages is expressed by the determiner of the internal argument. One might argue that under negation the terminative part of this information would in Slavic languages be neutralized as it is in Germanic languages, the definiteness or specificity information being retained. We offer this suggestion here as part of our strategy to accept the distinction between aspect and Aktionsart only when necessary and certainly not along the lines of the traditional distinction discussed above. A third consideration suggesting that one cannot simply equate Germanic terminativity in Germanic languages with perfectivity in Slavic languages is induced by the observation that in the absence of the determiner the NP pivo (beer) is marked as [–sqa]. A problem arises because the sentence (1.37b) means that John drank the beer. (1.37) a.

Ivan vypil [+sqa] [[+addto] b. ?Ivan vypil [+sqa] [[+addto]

dva piva [+sqa]] pivo [−sqa]]

Here the feature-system employed could be argued, in the absence of a determiner, to assign a [−sqa]-specification to pivo whereas a [+sqa]-specification would be required. The presence of vy- imposes a definite interpretation on the internal argument NP. This point has been stressed by several authors, for example by ?, ?,1989 and ?. For Czech ?:229 presents examples like (1.38). (1.38) a.

Pletla vetry Imp-knitted-sg-fem sweaters-pl-Acc ‘She was knitting sweaters’ b. U-pletla vetry Perf-knitted-sg-fem sweaters-pl-Acc ‘She knitted (all) the sweaters’


26

Here the perfective prefix u- contributes the sense of ”all-ness” and specificity of the set of sweaters. Filip compares the effect of the presence of the prefix uto the use of the definite article in definite descriptions. The idea that the perfective prefix in Russian and Czech restricts options made possible by the absence of an overt determiner is confirmed by Bulgarian sentences like (1.39), Bulgarian having a definite article suffixed to the Noun kafe as pointed out in ?. (1.39) a.

∗

Az izpix kafe I Perf-drank coffee b. Az izpix kafeto I Perf-drank coffee-the ‘I drank the coffee’

The definite article is required given the presence of the perfective prefix iz -. Bulgarian is among the Slavic languages an important member from the point of view of aspectual composition: it expresses perfectivity and imperfectivity just like the other Slavic languages, but it is the only Slavic language having a definite article. By its presence one can see formally what remains invisible in Russian cases like (1.37b). The presence of vy- should be explained in a more general way, because Russian has determiners like dva (two), tri (three), etc, nekiy (some, a certain), koy-kako’y (some, a few) which are involved in the making of the [+sqa]-feature information. One option is that the tenseless (1.40) (1.40) Ivan -pit’ dva piva is terminative in the way of its Germanic counterpart, dva piva being [+sqa], and that vy- is simply added to the verb stem as some sort of warrant, whereas the Imp-operator (or, for that matter, the absence of vy-) would modify the terminative nature of (1.40) in the same way as the Progressive Form in English in the b-sentence of (1.41) modifies the terminative nature of its a-sentence. (1.41) a. John was crossing the street b. John crossed the street We will pursue this line of thought concluding that the presence of the perfective prefix has structurally something to do with information about the internal argument NP. This was clearly shown by the two sentences in (1.35) which display a clear difference in interpretation: the (1.35a)-part of (1.33) simply expresses that the speaker wants to remain neutral with respect to the situation reported by the sentence. The (1.35b)-part of (1.34) stresses the fact that the person in question did not read a single book in spite of the fact that he could have done that. The presence of the perfective prefix prze- gives away the singling out of a specified quantity. This can be explained by assuming a structural relation between the perfective prefix and the internal argument. It should be observed at this point that it is not right to speak about the perfective prefix in sentences like (1.37) Ivan vypil dva piva. For Czech, ?:231


27

points out that the two perfective prefixes in (1.42b,c) have different effects on the interpretation of the sentences. (1.42) a.

Pil kavu Imp-drink-sg-masc coffee-Acc ‘He was drinking coffee’ b. Na-pil se kavy Perf-drink-sg-masc refl coffee-Gen ‘He drank some coffee’ c. U-pil kavu Perf-drink-sg-masc coffee-Acc ‘He drank a sip of coffee’ d. Vy-pil kavu Perf-drink-sg-masc coffee-Acc ‘He drank all the coffee’

The use of na in (1.42b) restricts the interpretation of the internal argument NP to an indefinite specified quantity ‘some’, whereas u- in (1.42c) imposes the more specific interpretation of a small portion of the noun set denotation. Finally, vy- in (1.42d) contributes the set of universal quantification and a sense of definiteness. Two sorts of idiosyncrasies should be observed. Firstly, the use of the genitive does not seem to bear on the absence or presence of perfective prefixes. Filip observes, for example, that in (1.42c) the accusative kavu could be replaced by the genitive kavy without any change of meaning. Secondly, the prefix uin (1.42c) has clearly a different contribution to make than in (1.38b), so one may assume that the choice of the verb stem also determines the effect of the perfective prefix on the internal argument. Summarizing, we may say that there are reasons to assume that the perfective and imperfective operators can be seen as applying to the taking of the internal argument by the verb. In this sense they overtly contribute to the making of the VP what in Germanic languages (mostly) takes place without an appeal to morphological encoding. Moreover they contribute to the interpretation of the NP in the absence of quantificational or referential information. So essentially, Imp and Perf may be seen as VP-operators in Slavic languages. Before we try to characterize the semantic side of this idea, let us first pay attention to structural matters. Where do we locate these aspectual operators? Two proposals have been made to that effect. The first one is Verkuyl’s analysis in (1.43). (1.43) [Ivan [V P [V vyi [V −stem -pil]][N P [Det ei ] [pivo]]]] This expresses the idea that vy- in (1.37b) Ivan vypil pivo is in fact the determiner of the NP pivo. It presumes a movement of the determiner to the prefix position. The other position is adopted in ?. It assumes that iz - in the


28

Bulgarian sentence (1.44a) is a predicate of a small clause. (1.44) a.

Ivan izpija dve biri Ivan Perf-drank two beers b. [Ivan -pija[sc [dve biri][iz]]]

The first position presents some difficulties that are made visible in Figure 1.7. Figure 1.7a indeed gives the position of (1.43). The perfective prefix is sent vp[+Tvp ]

vp

np2

v

Perf

Perf

vstem (a) Figure 1.7:

vp[+Tvp ] vstem (b)

np2

Two ways of analyzing a perfective prefix

from NP2 to its place adjoined to the V-stem. But in this position it fails to account satisfactorily for the relation between the V and the NP2 : it cannot be said to govern the process of amalgamation. Figure 1.7b, on the other hand, has a better structural position to offer for Perf. It governs the lower VP in the sense that it operates on the information conveyed by its sister node. It provides the quantificational plus-value at the upper VP-level requiring that the NP2 be interpreted as [+sqa] in Slavic languages as Russian and Polish or requiring it by the presence of the definite article as in the Bulgarian sentence (1.39b). We will opt for the option provided by Figure 1.7b rejecting the option in (1.44b) on the ground that a small clause analysis cannot explain why the Bulgarian sentence Az izpix kafe (lit. I Perf-drank coffee) is unwellformed and the Russian sentence (1.37b) is only well-formed in the interpretation that Ivan drank the beer. In other words, an appeal to (1.44b) requires for these cases the stipulation that the subject of the small clause be [+sqa]. Note that this stipulation is local in the sense that the process of putting iz- into the right place is not governed at the level at which the verb and its internal argument come together. The presence of a perfective operator in a position governing the whole VPdomain is very much compatible with the fact that in Slavic languages there are also verbs which are considered perfective without having a perfective prefix, as in (1.45). (1.45) a.

Toj kupi edno kuˇsta Bulgarian ‘He bought one house’ b. Dal pieć kanapek Polish ‘He gave five sandwiches’ c. On izdal pyat’ knigi Russian ‘He published five books’


29

In all these cases the imperfective counterparts have an infix: kupuvaˇse, dawal , and izdawal , respectively. In order to get the picture clear, we will assume that the internal structure of a VP in Slavic languages can be defined as in Figure 1.8. One drawback of vp

vp vp

perf v Affix

vp

imp np2

vstem (a) Figure 1.8:

v Affix

np2

vstem (b)

Perf and Imp as operators

this picture is that Affix should be interpreted as the presence of a prefix, infix or suffix. So, its structural position in front of the Vstem should be modified in this sense. For the imperfective operator imp there are, in principle, two possibilities when the Verb itself is [+addto]. The first one is that the Verb combines with a [+sqa]-NP to yield a [+Tvp ]-interpretation at the lower level VP which is to be undone by the imp-operator. The second one is that the Verb combines with a [−sqa]-NP to yield a [−Tvp ]-interpretation at the lower level VP which is transmitted to a [−Tvp ]-interpretation at the higher level VP by the IMPoperator. We will return to this matter later on. As to the Perf-operator we observe that, dependent on the lexical nature of the [+addto]-Verb, the V has a perfective prefix (as vy- in vypit ’) or not (as in kupit ’) and that the NP should have a [+sqa]-specification. In order to see how this is obtained, we need to go into the internal structure of the NP.

1.5.3

Thematic glue

In view of the need to get a clear picture of the interaction between the verb and its internal argument NP, it is necessary to go into the internal argument of the NP. In ? it is argued that the structure in Figure 1.9 can be used to provide for the main idea guiding us, namely that the Det can be split up into a part which gives the quantificational information and a part in which the definiteness of the NP is decided upon. The quantificational information is represented here simply by |.|, roughly indicating cardinality information about the Noun set, whereas ±Def is actualized as an article in English, or French,


30

NP Det2 Det1

Spec ±Def

N

(Mod)

Det0 |.|

Figure 1.9:

NP structure

but not in Russian. Consider the following cases: (1.46) a. b. c. d. e.

a child the children some children the next three children at least three children

–Def [SG = 1] child +Def [PL ≥ 2] child –Def [PL ≥ 1] child +Def [Mod next][PL = 3] child –Def [Mod at least][PL = 3] child

The leading idea is that an NP like a child in (1.46) receives its indefiniteness from the spec-part of the Det2 -node and its singular information from the Det0 part, the numeral sg being interpreted as providing the information that in the set denoted by child a singleton will be selected. By the indefiniteness feature of Spec this singleton is not identified but rather introduced into the discourse along the lines of current Discourse Representation Theory. In the children the collection of sets containing two or more children is intersected with a context set in the sense of ?, yielding a definite set identified by discourse. The NP some children in (1.46c) in the well-known sm-interpretation selects among sets of children meeting the quantificational requirement ≥ 1. In (1.46d) the modifier next provides specific context-dependent information useful in the selection of the proper set containing three children. Note that the at least-meaning can also be accounted for in terms of modification, as shown in (1.46e). We have discussed the NP-structure in some detail in order to prepare for our discussion on Finnish case and on strategies used in Germanic languages in order to bring about the same sort of information. In order to complete the picture we need to embark fruitfully on issues of Finnish, we will briefly discuss the notion of thematic role as applied to the internal argument. We will refer to this role as the Θint - or simply Θ-role. It is illustrated in Figure 1.10, where α provides the information about the contribution of the NP to its thematic role in the predication. In ?:298–316 attention was paid to the question of how to deal with sentences like (1.47) in the context of the question of how to match the type-logical


31

VP V

PP/NP Θα

NP N

Det Spec

Det

±Def

|.|

Figure 1.10:

Θ-role information

properties of the internal argument NP with those of the verb. (1.47) a.

Jan liep naar de winkel John walked toward the store b. Jan liep tot de winkel John walked to the store

This question boils down to asking how de winkel (the shop) denoting an atemporal semantic object can be “drawn into” temporal structure. Recall that Figure 1.3 poses the same question with respect to sentences like Judith ate four sandwiches. So, it seems not unreasonable to try and find an answer covering both cases. This can be achieved by assuming that between the V and the atemporal NP is a sort of thematic glue, clearly dependent on the lexical information provided by the verb and pertaining to the information about how much of the NP-denotation is involved in the predication. In Dutch it is clear that John reached the shop in (1.47b), whereas in (1.47a) it is left in the dark whether or not he actually reached it. Consider also cases like (1.48). (1.48) a.

Judith Judith b. Judith Judith

at een boterham ate a sandwich at van een boterham ate from a sandwich

Here it is obvious that in (1.48a) Judith went through the whole process of eating a sandwich, whereas in (1.48b) she ate only a proper subpart of it. The same applies to Dutch sentences like (1.49). (1.49) a.

Hugo Hugo b. Hugo Hugo

schoot een bok shot a stag schoot op een bok shot at a stag

In giving these examples we have exemplified the values of α in Figure 1.10. We will distinguish between (a) = (in (1.47b), (1.48a) and (1.49a)); (b) ⊆ (in


32

(1.47a)); and (c) ⊂ (in (1.48b) and (1.49b)). The precise interpretation of these set-theoretical symbols will be given later on. Here their intuitive sense of completeness, indeterminateness and incompleteness will be sufficiently clear. The idea of assigning a thematic role to a preposition that lexically provides information about the Path of the predication and that expressed one of the three options, seems workable. Also, the idea that in VPs lacking such a preposition the same semantic role may be assumed in the form of an abstract operator on the Prep-position, doesn’t seem unreasonable either. Yet, we do not pretend to present a complete analysis here and we leave open the possibility that solutions for Germanic languages do not apply to the other languages under consideration. It is only after considering the different languages and comparing them as to how they express the same sort of information that we can decide on the merits of the solution suggested by structures as those in Figure 1.10. For example, the treatment of Finnish data in the next section will suggest that it might be necessary to extend Figure 1.10. So, we simply postpone the final evaluation of the ideas exemplified here until we have a full picture of the Slavic, Finnish, Germanic and Romance data.

1.5.4

The Finnish case

In the aspectual literature, the relevance of Finnish has been acknowledged at least since the twenties of this century. ? discussed some examples from ?:301, who took sentences like (1.50) clearly as an indication that non-Slavic languages may express aspectuality. an rakensi taloa (1.50) b. H¨ He built house-Part ‘He built at a house/worked on a house’ a. H¨ an rakensi talon He built house-Acc ‘He built a/the house’ The verb form rakensi is not aspectually marked as its Russian counterpart postr´ oil is by the presence of po-, it is rather the difference between the partitive and the accusative case which brings (1.50a) and (1.50b) into the two groups collected in (1.51). (1.51) a.

On str´ oil dom He was building a house H¨ an rakensi taloa b. On postr´ oil dom He built a house H¨ an rakensi talon

The sentences in (1.50a) are all durative/imperfective, those in (1.50b) terminative/perfective. Note that Finnish and English do not mark the verb to make this difference. Note also that Finnish does not have an article. So it needs some help from noun morphology.


33

Let us first show that Finnish sentences such as (1.50) are relevant in the present context. In ? sentences like (1.52) are discussed together with one of the appropriate aspectual tests: (1.52) a.

Korjasin radioni I repaired my radio-Acc I repaired my radio b. Korjasin radiotani I repaired my radio-Part I was repairing my radio

(1.53) a.

#Korjasin radioni tunnin I repaired my radio-Acc for an hour I repaired my radio for an hour b. Korjasin radiotani tunnin I repaired my radio-Part for an hour I was repairing my radio for an hour

This shows that Jacobsohn’s point was correct. More recently, ? paid attention to the Partitive case in Finnish from the point of view of its contribution to the aspectuality of sentences. In the present section, we will discuss some of his examples and use them to refine the picture of the internal VP-structure. We give the examples and the glosses exactly as he gives them: (1.54) a.

Ammu-i-n karhu-a /kah-ta karhu-a/ karhu-j-a shoot-Pst-1sg bear-Part/two-Part bear-Part/ bear-Pl-Part I shot at the (a) bear/ at (the) two bears/ at (the) bears b. Ammu-i-n karhu-n /kak-si karhu-a/ karhu-t shoot-Pst-1sg bear-Acc/two-Acc bear-Part/bear-Pl-Acc I shot the (a) bear/ two bears/ the bears

(1.55) a.

Saa-n #karhu-a /#kah-ta karhu-a/ karhu-j-a get-Pst-1sg bear-Part/two-Part bear-Part/ bear-Pl-Part I’ll get the (a) bear/ at (the) two bears/ at (the) bears b. Saa-n karhu-n /kak-si karhu-a/ karhu-t gt-Pst-1sg bear-Acc/two-Acc bear-Part/bear-Pl-Acc I’ll get the (a) bear/ two bears/ the bears

(1.56) a.

Etsi-n karhu-a /kah-ta karhu-a/ karhu-j-a seek-Pst-1sg bear-Part/two-Part bear-Part/ bear-Pl-Part I’m looking for the (a) bear/ at (the) two bears/ at (the) bears b. Etsi-n #karhu-n /#kak-si karhu-a/# karhu-t seek-Pst-1sg bear-Acc/two-Acc bear-Part/bear-Pl-Acc I’m looking for the (a) bear/ two bears/ the bears

The internal arguments being constant in (1.54) – (1.56), Kiparsky distinguishes between three verb classes on the ground of the differences marked by #. Thus,


34

verbs like saada (get) do allow for the partitive case only if the internal argument has a bare plural. By contrast, verbs like etsi¨ a (seek) cannot have accusative case: they need the partitive. The verb ampua (shoot, shoot at) does not have any restriction of this sort. Kiparsky observes that a sentence like (1.57) has three readings. (1.57)

Ammuin karhuja a. I shot at the bears b. I shot bears c. I shot at bears

From the examples in (1.57) one may derive that if Kiparsky’s observation is correct in the sense that none of the three readings is marginal, then it follows straightforwardly that Figure 1.10 is not sufficient to deal with them. The atreadings a and c could be dealt with by Θ⊆ or Θ⊂ , but for the analysis of (1.57b) one cannot appeal to Figure 1.10. Moreover, one should be able to explain why Saan karhuja (I ’ll get bears) in (1.55a) is allowed, whereas the other partitive cases are not allowed. Furthermore, the unacceptability of Etsin karhut in (1.56b) must be explained as well as well as the fact that neither the other accusative forms are allowed. We will try and solve this problem by extending Figure 1.10 into Figure 1.11. VP V

PP/NP CaseAcc/P art

PP/NP Θα

NP N

Det

Figure 1.11:

Spec

Det

±Def

|.|

Case information

Suppose that the case-operator CaseAcc requires that whatever is contributed as the internal NP denotation should be affected totally. That is, CaseAcc is the instruction to complete the Path. As such it is an instruction involving the Verb-information: in terms of Figure 1.3b on page 15, Accusative requires that the arrow be followed up to the end of what is offered by the NP: whatever is made available is fully affected by the dynamics of the Verb. This would explain why Ammuin karhut in (1.54b) means ‘I shot the bears’ and not ‘I shot bears’: a bare plural would run counter to the idea of a finite partition


35

of the set of bears, the essence of bare plurals being that no such partition is available. The thematic role is to be taken as Θ= , which forces karhut into applying to a set of bears not only identifiable by the previous discourse or by the context but also partition-able as was the set of four sandwiches in our example above. What we see here is an interaction between CaseAcc and Θ= . One might say that on the CaseAcc side of this interaction full commitment as to the truth of Ammuin karhut with respect to the full Path is required, whereas the Θ= side contributes the sense of completeness of the [+sqa]-information: the NP “gives all it has available’. As for CaseP art , one could say that it invokes the same sort of determinacy as the Accusative, only the Verb dynamics should be restricted to a proper subpart of what is expressed under total affectedness: the Path is not affected completely. This means that the use of CaseP art in (1.57) warrants the predication with respect to at least some entities of the internal NP denotation: they are tied up to the Path. We shall associate Part with the proper subset sign ⊂ in the intuitively clear sense of incompleteness. If this is the essence of the contribution of Case to the interpretation of the aspectual VP-information, then one predicts that the proper analysis of the triple ambiguity of (1.57) follows from an insight into the possible combinations of Case and Θ. We end up with Table 1.5, which contains the relevant combinatorial possibilities. That is, one could argue that Θ= requires the whole NP Case Acc= Part⊂ Part⊂ Part⊂

Thematic role Θ= Θ= Θ⊆ Θ⊂ Table 1.5:

Finnish Ammuin Ammuin Ammuin Ammuin

karhut karhuja karhuja karhuja

English I shot the bears I shot bears I shot at bears I shot at the bears

The interaction between Case and Θ

being available for the predication, that Θ⊆ provides a sense of indeterminacy and that Θ⊂ expresses a sense of incompleteness.11 Given the proper subset specification for CaseP art the interpretation of Ammuin karhuja brings about the existence of entities affected by the predicate. So, I shot bears. This warrant cannot be given in the case of Θ⊆ , which on our analysis provides indeterminacy. Note that the definiteness or indefiniteness does not of any influence on this indeterminacy, just like the fact that we speak about the school in John walked toward the school does not bear on the indeterminacy of what has taken place. The present analysis also explains why Ammuin karhua with Partitive case for the internal argument cannot mean ‘I shot a bear’ and why Ammuin kahta karhua cannot mean ‘I shot two bears’. CaseP art operates on cardinality information by “taking away” some part of a larger whole. But in the case of a bear one cannot partition the cardinality 1 and taking away a part from a set of 11 We

do not exclude the possibility of just having Θ⊆ covering all three possibilities.

36


two entities does not guarantee that one obtains a proper partition. In general, CaseP art may not affect quantificational information expressed by Det0 because it is not sensitive to the nature of the entities quantified over. It is neutral as to Mass or Noun. From this analysis it follows that in cases where the verb is not [+addto] the use of the Partitive case should be okay, as in (1.56a). If CaseAcc is taken to operate on the Det0 -information of the internal NP, then the unacceptability of (1.56b) follows too.

1.6 1.6.1

Plurality and aspectuality Some difficult questions

Ontological questions are extremely difficult if not unsolvable. Consider the following triple: (1.58) a. Peter warned him three times b. What Peter did was to warn him three times c. What Peter did three times was to warn him If a speaker says (1.58a), we may paraphrase that sentence both as (1.58b) and (1.58c). It would be very nice if we could discern quite distinct situations connected with these paraphrases: in the case of (1.58b) Peter repeated himself in one and the same situation, in (1.58c) Peter gave his warning on three clearly different occasions. In that case (1.58b) would pertain to one event with three sub-events, whereas (1.58c) would pertain to three events. However, we cannot commit ourselves to the existence of such a clear-cut distinction here, because the notion of event itself is quite obscure. May an event spread out over three different days? May three times quantify over sub-events? The same sort of difficult questions pop up as soon as the external argument of a sentence is a plural NP such as given in (1.59). (1.59) a. Three girls lifted a table b. John and Mary walked three miles c. Ivan i Maria napisali pismo Ivan and Mary Perf-wrote a letter Suppose that (1.59a) applies to a situation in which three tables were lifted. In other words, each of the girls lifted her own table. Note that it is not necessary that they were in the same room. They may have done what they did without having any knowledge of each other. Do we speak about one event with three subevents? Or do we speak about three events? We consider these questions as irrelevant to a proper analysis of what is expressed by the sentences in (1.59). Whatever is a proper ontological answer, at least what should be observed is that the VP lift a table plays an important role because one may say that each of the girls “had her own VP”. In more technical terms this amounts to saying that each of the girls has her own predicational

1.6. PLURALITY AND ASPECTUALITY

37

Path in the sense informally introduced above. There is some interpretation in which Mary’s part in the walking is complementary to what John walked within the total sum of three miles, but we will put this interpretation aside here, because it will be discussed shortly in the next section. On the interpretation that (1.59) is about six miles, both John and Mary undergo the predication ‘walk three miles’. In the same way, Ivan and Mary both completed the same letter or both Ivan completed a letter and Mary completed a letter, but if the sentence applies to two letters it is excluded that Ivan completed his letter whereas Mary did not, or reversely. So the information expressed by na- is distributed over the two members of the external argument denotation. We will take these facts as strong signal that a theory of aspectuality should include a proper treatment of plural quantification. It should be noted that in sentences like (1.60), (1.60) Some girl lifted three tables there is no need to distribute over the girls: the sentence is about three tables that were lifted by some girls. Likewise in sentences such as (1.61), (1.61) Three girls lifted four tables each of the girls underwent the predication ‘lift three tables’, whereas it is impossible to say of the tables that each of them is related to a different set of four girls. This shows the asymmetry in the behaviour of the external argument and the internal argument. In view of these observations, it is necessary to pay some attention to the distinction between collectivity and distributivity.

1.6.2

Collectivity and distributivity

Let us consider some of the sentences discussed above in more detail and focus on what is taking place in the interpretation. We compare the following of sentences in order to create a precise though informal picture postponing precise definitions up to chapter 3. (1.62) a. b. c. d. e.

Three girls lifted four tables Four girls lifted a table Some girl lifted four tables The twelve passengers killed a villain Hans and Uwe wrote a book about DRT

Dist 3 × 4 = 12 4×1 = 4 1×4 = 4 12 × 1 = 12 2×1 = 2

Coll 1×4=4 1×1=1 1×4=4 1×1=1 1×1=1

We will say that all sentences in (1.62) allow for two distinct interpretations which we will call distributive and collective. Not in all cases distributivity can have the same form. Sentence (1.62c) shows that distributivity over a singleton set is the trivial application of an operation that basically presumes plural cardinality. The two columns behind the sentences display important information. What we obtain as the result of interpreting (1.62a) distributively is the total sum of 12 tables, as there are twelve villains in (1.62d) and two books

38


in (1.62e). In all cases, the distributive interpretation amounts to multiples of the quantificational information expressed by the internal argument as determined by the quantificational value of the external argument. In the collective cases, the total amount is equal to what is expressed by the internal argument. This means that distributivity crucially involves a dependency relation between the external argument and the internal argument. We shall show shortly that the distributive multiplication is more complex than we presented here, but for the moment the description of the arithmetics involved gives a correct picture. Basically, what happens seems to be governed by the law of distributivity as exemplified in (1.63). (1.63) 3 girls lifted 4 tables = . . . = girl1 lifted 4 tables + girl2 lifted 4 tables + girl3 lifted 4 tables We see that the semantic value of lifted four tables is taken as a factor in a multiplication as in (1.64) which is subjected to the law of distributivity. (1.64) 3 × 4 = (2 × 4) + (1 × 4) = (1 × 4) + (1 × 4) + (1 × 4) In (1.62a) the factor is offered as in 3 × 4 but this secures the interpretation in which the factor is spelled out. It is also important to see that the law of distributivity operates asymmetrically in (1.63). That is, it does not obey the commutative law as (1.64) does. This is an empirical fact due to the important role of the VP in the interpretation. It operates as a factor. To encode this role, the VP forms a structural unit and this blocks commutativity. The collective interpretation abstracts from the quantificational information conveyed by the external argument: it secures a 1 × 4-operation in the case of (1.62) which amounts to saying that the external argument denotation is taken as a whole with respect to the information expressed by the VP. The collective interpretation comes out very clearly in sentences like (1.65). (1.65) a. The twelve passengers killed that villain b. Hans and Uwe wrote that book about DRT Here it is impossible to have a distributive interpretation unless we are talking about that villain and that book about DRT as a type analogous to our use of the NP that computer in sentences like (1.66). (1.66) I saw that computer in at least ten offices here in the building So, in principle the easiest way to think about the distributive and collective interpretation is to assign both to any sentence and leave it to the context or to a particular choice of referring elements to exclude one of them. If one follows such a line of thought and one would attempt to describe the relation between the external argument denotation and the VP, Figure 1.12 would illustrate the functional machinery involved with respect to (1.62a). If one calls the function regulating the relation between the external argument denotation (a set of individuals) and the VP-denotation (a set of factors) π, one may say that the distributive interpretations are governed by π taken as an injection, whereas the collective interpretations are determined by π taken as a constant function.12 12 The

name π has been chosen to evoke the notion of participancy


39

g1

- 4t1

g1

g2

- 4t2

g2

g3

- 4t3

g3

(a) : π-injective Figure 1.12:

q - 4t 1

(b) : π-constant Two functional modes

We can now characterize more precisely what it means for a sentence like (1.62a) to have a distributive interpretation. One can say that each of the girls receives “her own VP-value”, in the sense that each of the three VP-denotations involved must be different from one another. This requirement follows from the injectivity constraint on π. As to the collective interpretation one may say that all girls are mapped to the same VP-value which amounts to saying that none of the participants in the external argument denotation may claim the satisfaction of whole predicate for herself. In Hitchcock’s movie Murder on the Orient Express the twelve participants all contributed to the killing but their explicit purpose was to escape from the judgment they they as an individual should be tried as in individual satisfying the predication ‘I have killed that villain’. Neither Hans nor Uwe may claim ‘I wrote that book on DRT’ on the collective interpretation. The functional modes offered by (1.12) seem to give exactly the right interpretations. As a final point of the present section, we would like to say a few words about the function values in the case of a distributive interpretation. It is easy to see that a sentence like (1.62) is true if it turns out to be the case that in the domain of discourse there were only eight tables available for the lifting. It follows straightforwardly from this restriction on the cardinality of the set of tables that some of them must have been lifted twice. However, for (1.62) a table lifted twice counts as two lifted tables. Suppose that table t1 was lifted by Mary at index i1 and t1 was lifted by Jane at index i2 , where we stipulate that indices with different values can never be actualized simultaneously in real time (even if there would be an overlap between the intervals involved). And suppose that the following configuration would hold for the situation described to make (1.62) a true sentence: (1.67) a. Mary → 7 {hi1 , t1 i, hi2 , t2 i, hi3 , t1,3 i} b. Jane 7 → {hi2 , t1 i, hi3 , t2 i, hi4 , t1,4 i} c. Judith → 7 {hi3 , t5,6,7,8 i} This configuration covers a situation in which one table was lifted four times. Yet it is possible to say that twelve tables were lifted in the obvious sense that there


40

were twelve table liftings. Note that (1.67) satisfies the injectivity constraint on π: each of the girls has a different function value, a different predicational Path. It is obvious that if t1 in hi1 , t1 i pertains to a singleton set, and t5,6,7,8 in hi3 , t5,6,7,8 i to a set of four members, all pairs in (1.67) make up functions, because function are defined as sets of pairs fulfilling the proper conditions. In other words, given the fact that the proper conditions for functionhood are fulfilled, one may write (1.67) in a more general fashion: (1.68) a. Mary b. Jane c. Judith

7→ f1 7→ f2 7 → f3

This is another way of saying that each of the distributed VP-factors can be taken as a function assigned as value of π to each of members of the external argument denotation. In this way, the dependency of tables on indices can be modelled in a standard fashion on the basis of the empirical fact that sentences like (1.62a) Three girls lifted four tables may pertain to just eight object tables whereas each of the three girls may claim that she lifted four tables. The distributive multiplications in (1.62) can be seen as yielding index-dependent values. Our discussion about distributivity and collectivity is not a deviation from the aspectual road we are following in the present chapter. On the contrary, it leads through the centre of the domain which is under investigation in the present book: the domain of aspectuality and temporality. In particular, the issue of the token-dependency raised here is very important because what happens in the making of a VP out of a temporal part (the verb) and an atemporal part (the internal argument) is the origin of a mapping between them: atemporal entities are “drawn” into temporality. The functional format seems to be a proper tool for accounting for this match. In this light it is interesting to discuss sentence (1.69a) understood as referring to the situation described in (1.69b). (1.69) a. Jones did it slowly, deliberately, in the bathroom with a knife, at midnight; b. Jones buttered the toast slowly, deliberately, in the bathroom, with a knife, at midnight; It is the second sentence of the famous paper ? which opened up event semantics. Davidson had a huge problem: the pronoun it could not refer properly to a singular term because there is no proper antecedent available. It is clear that butter the toast may be a candidate, because the it seems to cover exactly that information, but for Davidson butter the toast is not a constituent that can be referred to: it is not a singular term. Therefore he proposed to introduce events to secure a correct antecedent for it . Above we have noticed that persistently in the history of our field there are problems concerning the constituenthood of the VP. Poutsma and Jacobsohn fell victim to it, Vendler stumbled over it, and now we see that Davidson could


41

not come to grips with it. The simple question is, why should or could one not refer to functions? Note that in terms of π one can account properly for sentences like (1.70): (1.70) a. Three girls buttered their toast in the bathroom b. They did it at midnight Sentence (1.70a) had a collective interpretation covered by π-constant which means that the girls were involved in buttering toast without any of the girls being allowed to claim that she did the job alone. On the distributive interpretation it is evident that there is no need to assume that they were in the same place, so there may have been three different bathrooms. But notice now that the it in (1.70) cannot refer anaphorically to one event. Per girl there is an ‘it -referent’ as well as an ‘it -antecedent’. What is referred to is the factor involved in the multiplication in which each of the girls is involved. The it cannot be said to refer directly to an entity. It is in some way connected with the presence of buttered their toast in (1.70a) but this information is given “lump sum”-like as the 4 is given in 3 × 4. In order to get at the precise anaphoric reference one should first spell out the hidden real factors by applying the law of distributivity. It is only then that we can understand the plural structure involved in (1.70a) and in (1.70b). We will return to this issue in due course. Here it may be considered as the venenum in cauda of the survey of the sentential structure in which the relation between the external and internal argument should be accounted for. As such we observe that collectivity and distributivity form part and parcel of the theory of aspectuality. All phenomena discussed here apply to Slavic languages, the important empirical observation being that perfective prefixes in sentences with a plural external argument distribute over the individuals in the external argument denotations as shown by the Bulgarian sentences in (1.71) (1.71) a.

Tri momiˇceta izjadoxa pet sandvica Three girls Perf-eat-Aor. five sandwiches Three girls ate all together five sandwiches b. Tri momiˇceta izjadoxa po pet sandvica (vsjaka) Three girls Perf-eat-Aor. times five sandwiches (each) Three girls ate all together five sandwiches

The collective interpretation can be fully understood in terms of π-constant: none of the girls may claim that she ate five sandwiches. The distributive reading is marked by the presence of the distributive particle po (which occurs in the multiplication 2 po 3 = 6) and (for some) in the presence of the floating quantifier vsjaka. The thing to note, however, is that in this interpretation for each of the girls the information expressed by the perfective prefix iz- applies. In other words, the phenomena of collectivity and distributivity so closely connected with the presence of plural NPs is relevant for Slavic aspectuality too. As in the Western literature too much attention has been paid to sentences in which Mary or John were involved in some bounded or unbounded event. It seems


42

time to open up the realm of plurality and to extend the domain of aspectuality so as to include it.

1.7

Conclusion

The general picture offered in this chapter is that it is possible to proceed from the bottom to the top of Figure 1.1. As pointed out in § 1.5 the VP structure is more complex than shown in that figure which would provide us with a sequence of aspectual operators: aspβ - aspα - asp - CaseAcc/P art - Θα . This looks formidable, in fact a little bit too much. But as suggested above, this sequence is available to us as analysts. Languages select some of them to provide themselves with the appropriate means to express aspectuality. Finnish may not need aspα and French may skip the CaseAcc/P art - Θα interaction because it uses, say,aspβ - aspα. Our aim was to show that if languages are investigated as to compare how they express aspectuality we need to have the whole sequence available. Some parameters came up: commitment to the whole or partial truth, completeness, indeterminacy and incompleteness. It also became clear that there are different aspectual layers. It is important to see that all this has been investigated abstracting away from tense. The VP and the S as carrier of aspectual information are tenseless semantic objects. So, there is some need to see what tense contributes.

Chapter 2

Time, Tense and Temporal Reference 2.1

Introduction

2.2

Subjective and objective time

Since Antiquity two images of time have been discussed: the flow of the river, and the line made up of stationary points. On the one hand, time is linked to motion, i.e. changes in the world, and on the other hand, time can be conceived as a stationary order of events represented by numbers. In order to model these two pictures, MacTaggart (1908) distinguishes between the A-series and B-series conceptions of time. The A-series conception is based on the notion of past, present, and future. The B-series is based on a simultaneity and earlierlater calculus defined over objectively existing instants. The B-series embodies the ‘objective’ view on time. It is independent of a point of view, and just gives a temporal ordering of events by the precedence relation. If some event is ordered as preceding another, this relation will never change as time goes by. So this type of temporal ordering is permanent; it is not related to the point of speech, and it is consequently non-deictic. The A-series embodies the ‘subjective’ (or intersubjective) view on time. If we order propositions with the help of past, present or future, we introduce their relation to some deictic center, the point of speech. Depending on the speech time, the truth value of a proposition may change as time goes on. This then captures the flow of time, since the present will become past, i.e. flow into the past. Both the static and the dynamic view of time are part of our conception of time. Lakoff and Johnson (1987) draw attention to metaphors built on the tension between static and dynamic views of time. Metaphors are either built on the idea that time is a moving object (1) or time is stationary and we move through it (2): 43

44

CHAPTER 2. TIME, TENSE AND TEMPORAL REFERENCE

(1) a. Coming up in the weeks ahead . . . b. The time has long since gone when c. Let’s meet the future head-on (2) a. As we go through the years . . . b. As we go further into the 1980s, . . . c. We are approaching the end of the year These metaphors are concerned with our interaction with the flow of time, but they present different views of how we do that. Temporal logic is mainly concerned with the A-series. Language is concerned with both: tenses are typically concerned with the A-series, but many time adverbials have to do with the B-series as well. Moreover, there is the interpretation of tensed sentences in narrative discourse, where the construction of an ordering of events is at issue. The idea that the expression of tense in natural language is essentially deictic is best demonstrated by showing that a statement couched in A-concepts cannot be reformulated into a statement in terms of B-concepts—or its truth conditions defined by B-concepts. Take for instance the A-statement in (3a): (3) a. It will rain in London b. It rains in London at a moment of time after 1.51 pm on the 10th of November in the year 1994 Suppose (3a) is uttered at 1.51 pm on the 10th of November in the year 1994. According to B-theorists, this statement is completely equivalent with the Bstatement in (3b). It should be noted that it is only possible to perform this reduction if the time of utterance is known. For this reason, the suggested procedure is not perfect. Indeed, it is not truly possible to express past, present and future in terms of the B-theory, without some ‘hidden’ reference to the speech time. Another problem for a ‘pure’ B-theory is the asymmetry between the past and the future. In fact, one would have to claim that the future is just as real as the past, and statements about the future are true or false today, exactly in the same manner as statements about the past. This view makes it impossible to consider the idea that it is impossible to change the past, but that different options are open to us for the future. It is a fundamental part of our experience of reality that for instance today, one can choose to travel to Los Angeles tomorrow, and one can also choose to stay home. Furthermore, it is clearly also a part of our experience that one today cannot choose to travel to Copenhagen yesterday. If you were not in Copenhagen yesterday, you have lost any possibility you may have had of going there yesterday. If our experience of freedom of choice as well as the passing of time are not illusions, we need a theory of time which has certain properties of the A-series, not just the B-series.

2.3. EXPRESSING TIME BY TENSE

2.3

45

Expressing time by tense

When we think about temporal issues from a linguistic point of view, what we are interested in is the expression of temporal notions in natural linguage. In order not to confuse things, it is important to start by distinguishing time from tense. Tense is the linguistic device which is used to express time relations. Comrie (1985) provides an account of tense from the viewpoint of language universals and linguistic typology. This allows him to establish the range of variation that is found across languages in tense, and what the limits are to that variation. Comrie assumes that all cultures have a conceptualisation of time, even though not every language has tense. When a language is traditionally described as ‘tenseless’, it does not follow that there is no conceptualisation of past, present and future. According to Comrie, it would be equally logical to assert that speakers of languages lacking grammatical gender categories have a radically different concept of sex from speakers of languages with such grammatical categories. Not every culture seems to conceptualise progress, though, so the picture is more ‘static’, and does not appeal to the notion of change. The notion of change seems to be strongly present in modern Western culture. All languages have ways of locating in time, but there are different classes of expressions. One class is the set of lexical items in a language that express location in time. The information they express can bear on the A-series ( now , today, yesterday or on the B-series (on May 13, 1998 ). But many languages express temporal information by means of verbal morphology. Thus English, for instance, has grammaticalised expressions of location in time, which are realized on the verb or in the verbal complex: present, past, future, pluperfect, future perfect. Comrie assumes that tense is the grammaticalised expression of location in time. In most languages that have tense, tense is indicated on the verb, either by the verb morpholgy (English), or by grammatical words adjacent to the verb, as with certain auxiliaries (Bamileke-Dschang). Example: (4) a. a` kè tán’´ n ‘He bargained yesterday’

[Bamileke-Dschang]

b. a` lè tán’´ n ‘He bargained some days ago’ c. à lè lá?´ n’t´ an ‘He bargained a long time ago’ Tense is thus primarily a category of the verb. Noun phrase arguments of a verb are often outside the scope of the tense, whereas the verb is necessarily within the scope of the tense, e.g.: (5) a. By 1999, every graduate student will have met a prime minister b. All the fugitives are back in jail now

46


Escaped prisoners can no longer be described as fugitives when they are back in jail. Similarly, (5a) can be true even if none of the people involved in the meeting are graduate students of prime ministers at the time of the meeting. Although tense is primarily a category of the verb or the sentence, one occasionally finds tense expressed elsewhere, or with a different domain. In certain American Indian languages, tense can be shown on noun phrases, thus distinguishing the ‘entity that was an X’ from the ‘entity that is an X’, as in: (6) inikw-ihl-’minih-’is-it-’i fire in: house plural diminutive past nominal ‘the former small fires in the house’

[Nootka]

Tense describes the way in which events, processes and states relate to the time axis. At least, this is what the basic meaning of tense does. Often, a grammatical category has several secondary meanings, derived from the basic meaning. For instance, the past tense in English is used in counterfactuals, so it does not refer to the past, but to a situation not anchored in reality: (7) If I were rich, I would buy a nice house The past tense is also often used to indicate politeness. It is more polite to say (8b) than (8a): (8) a. I want to ask you something b. I wanted to ask you something Similarly, the future has modal uses, because of the close ties between future and modality (see below): (9) Will you do this for me? = Are you willing to do this for me There is also a distinction to be made between the core meaning of the tense, and certain implicatures which can be derived from it. For instance, the past tense asserts that a situation held at some time prior to the present moment. This often comes with the implicature that the situation no longer holds, as in (10a): (10) a. John was in the garden b. John was in the garden when I came in, and for all I know, he still is Grice’s maxim of relevance suggests that a statement reported in the past tense is not about the present moment, otherwise the speaker would have used the present tense. Thus the use of a form explicitly locating a situation in the past suggests that that situation does not hold at the present. That this is an implicature, and not part of the meaning of the past tense is shown by (10b), where the implicature is cancelled (or suspended). Similarly, there is a feeling that events reported in the present perfect are ‘closer’ to the speech time than events reported in the simple past. This implicature can arise because the present perfect is defined in terms of current

2.4. PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

47

relevance. Naturally, recent events typically have more current relevance than remote events, which gives rise to the implicature. That it is not part of the meaning of the simple past to describe a remote past is illustrated by (11a). That the present perfect can relate to an event which happened a while ago is illustrated by (11b): (11) a. John broke his leg five minutes ago b. John has broken his leg. It happened six weeks ago, but it hasn’t healed yet. In similar ways, the pluperfect can come with the implicature that the event happened in a remote past, because it happened before some other event. However, if that event is close enough, there need not be a large distance: (12) Susan came back a minute ago. But Bill had already left This is not to say that languages cannot develop in such a way that these implicatures become part of the meaning of the tense. In modern Eastern Armenian, an original pluperfect has been reinterpreted as a remote past. The same is true for certain varieties of English spoken in areas of Africa. Comrie uses the traditional terms ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ tense to refer to tenses which do and which don’t take the present moment as their deictic centre. The three basic absolute tenses are the present, the past and the future. The basic meaning of these tenses is: present tense means coincidence of the time of the situation and the present moment. Past tense means location of the situation prior to the present moment. Future tense means location of the situation after the present moment.

2.4

Past, present and future

A very old idea is of course that the most obvious division of TIME is into present, past and future, so a language should have three TENSES to mark these distinctions. This view goes back to the ancient Greeks. The problem from the start was that most languages had ‘too many’ tenses. For instance, ancient Greek has a present, an aorist (a type of past), and a future, but also an imperfect, a (present) perfect, and a pluperfect. Very early on, grammarians realized that notions of time were mixed with other kinds of information. According to the Stoics, we need to distinguish between tenses which convey the meaning of completed action (perfect, pluperfect), tenses which describe an incomplete, ongoing action (present, imperfect), and tenses which are indifferent to this distinction (aorist, future). From the start, the study of tense is thus mixed with the study of aspect , the perspective presented on the internal structure of the situation. We will talk more about aspect later, and concentrate on tenses in relation to the division into three parts of the time axis for the moment.


48

2.4.1

The special status of the present

There is something special about the present, namely that it is always ‘now’, never some other time, but that the ‘now’ we know today is not the same as the ‘now’ we knew yesterday, or the one we will know tomorrow: ‘The rule is, jam tomorrow, and jam yesterday, but never jam today’ ‘It must come sometimes to ‘jam today’, Alice objected. ‘No, it can’t’, said the Queen. ‘It’s jam every other day: today isn’t any other day, you know.’ ‘I don’t understand you’, said Alice, ‘It is dreadfully confusing’. Lewis Carroll, Alice in wonderland Comic: (13) A: Honey, I can’t sleep. I’m worried about the future. B: The future? You mean the stuff that’s not in the past, or that’s not happening right now? A: Well, you know, things that didn’t already happen and aren’t happening now, but may happen . . . uh . . . when it’s not . . . uh . . . now. B: When it’s not now? A: That’s not possible, is it? I mean, for it to be not now . . . so . . . why should I worry about it?? B: Honey, I can’t sleep. I’m worried about the future Borges in his story ‘The garden of forking paths’: Then I reflected that all things happen, happen to one, precisely now . Century follows centuray, and things happen only in the present (p. 90) The future exists now. (p. 101, immediately before Yu Tsun kills Albert) The present tense is essentially deictic: it refers to the moment of speech of the utterance situation. Just like ‘I’ always picks out the speaker, and cannot refer to anyone else in the utterance situation, the reference of the present tense and of ‘now’ is fixed by their reference to the speech time. But the flow of time means that the speech time shifts from one day to the next, or from one utterance to the next, or even from one word to the next. If we picture the moment of speech as being somewhere on the time axis, this can only be an abstraction. There are typically two images for the relation between the ‘eternal now’ and the flow of time. Either ‘now’ is like a person standing in the river: the person has a fixed position, that the water in the river flows by. Or the ‘now’ is like a particle of water in the river, and it flows by static objects such as calendar terms. Both images show the tension between the static and the dynamic view of time (the A-series and the B-series), and all the examples above play with this idea. Although the present tense is described as locating the situation at the speech point, it is relatively rare for a situation to coincide exactly with the


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present moment, i.e. to occupy literally a single point in time which is exactly the same as the present moment. One set of examples is performative sentences: (14) a. I promise to leave tomorrow b. I bet you ten dollars that the Sharks will win Although these situations are not strictly momentaneous, because it takes a certain period of time to utter even the shortest sentence, they can be conceptualised as momentaneous, especially in so far as the time occupied by the report is exactly the same as the time occupied by the act. Another set of examples involves the so-called reportive use of the the simple present: (15) John gets the ball, Bill takes over, and suddenly Max scores! The report is simultaneous with the situation described, so there is literal coincidence between the time location of a situation and the present moment. Hoewever, situations of this kind are relatively rare, and the more normal uses of the present tense, in languages where there is a separate grammatical category, go far beyond this restricted range. A more characteristic use of the present tense is in referring to situations which occupy a much longer period of time than the present moment, but which nonetheless include the present moment within them. In particular, the present tense is used to speak of states and processes which hold at the present moment, but which began before the present moment and may well continue beyond it as in: (16) a. Sue is a student at Stanford b. Mary likes fish In each of these examples it is indeed true that the situation holds at the present moment, i.e. at the speech time. But it is not the case that the situation is restricted only to the present moment. As far as the present tense is concerned, in its basic meaning it invariably locates a situation at the present moment, and says nothing beyond that. In particular, it does not say that the same situation does not continue beyond the present moment, nor that it did not hold in the past. Whether or not the situation is part of a larger situation extending into the past or the future is an implicature, rather than part of the meaning of the present tense. This implicatures is worked out on the basis of other features of the structure of the sentence, and one’s knowledge of the real world. Of other relevant features of sentence structure, aspect will be one of the most important in deciding whether the larger situation is restricted to the present moment or not: thus the use of the progressive or the habitual necessarily requires that the situation in question be not momentaneous. Similarly, time adverbials may express the duration of the larger situation: (17) Since 1994, Sue is a student at Stanford But this does not change the general definition of the present tense itself.


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2.4.2

The future

If we analyze the past tense as locating a situation prior to the moment of speech, we can give a mirror image of the future tense as locating a situation at a time subsequent to the present moment. This is indeed the analysis Comrie adopts, even though he is well aware of conceptual differences between the past and the future. He points out that the past subsumes what may already have taken place, and is immutable, beyond the control of our present actions. The future, however, is necessarily more speculative, in that any prediction we make about the future might be changed by intervening events, including our own conscious intervention. Thus the past is more definite than the future. However, the fact that past and future differ from one another in certain respects is not inconsistent with their being similar to one another in other respects, perhaps even those crucial respects that are relevant to tense. The future makes a clear prediction about some future state of affairs (18a), and is in this way distinct from modal constructions that make reference to alternative worlds (18b): (18) a. It will rain tomorrow b. It may rain tomorrow The truth of (18a) can be tested by seeing whether it does in fact rain tomorrow or not. The truth value of (18b) cannot be assessed by observing whether or not it rains tomorrow, since both presence and absence of rain are compatible with a modal possibility operator. It is thus possible to have future time reference which is not necessarily modal. The clearest cases of languages having a future tense are languages which distinguish different degrees of remoteness in the future, i.e. have near and distant futures. In Haya or Bamileke-Ngyemboon, for instance, the remote future tense can only be used in referring to a situation which is located temporally subsequent to tomorrow, and collocation with any other time reference (past, present, tomorrow) is ungrammatical. One linguistic problem with studying the future tense is that most European languages have a clear grammatical distinction between past and non-past (the latter subsuming present and future time reference), but either no grammatical distinction or a much less clear grammatical distinction between future and non-future, in particular between future and present. Diachronically, most auxiliaries involved in the explicit future tense construction are derived from modal expressions, e.g. of desirativity, such as English will . This makes it hard to distinguish tense from modality. In many European langauges, the so-called present tense is in fact the normal verb form used to indicate future time reference, as for instance in German (19a), which is at least as common as the specific future tense construction in (19b): (19) a. Ich gehe morgen I go tomorrow b. Ich werde morgen gehen I will go tomorrow


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In English, the use of the present tense to refer to the future is restricted to ‘scheduled’ events. Thus, (20a) is felicitous, (20b) is not: (20) a. The train departs at five o’clock tomorrow morning b. It rains tomorrow Our knowledge of the world as it is indicates that rain is not schedulable the way the departure of trains is scheduled. In some other languages, there is no specific future tense, but the conceptual difference between past and future leads to a system in which the tense reference is dependent on the modal system. The future is subsumed under the irrealis, and the present and the past under the realis. Dyirbal and Burmese are languages of this kind.

2.4.3

Problems with the future

Chapter XI of Aristotle’s On Interpretation is probably the philosophical text which has had the greatest impact on the debate about the relations between time, truth and possibility. In this text we find the famous example of ‘the seafight tomorrow’. Central to the discussion is the question of how to interpret the following two statements: (21) a. Tomorrow there will be a sea-fight b. Tomorrow there will not be a sea-fight The question arises whether statements like (21a) and (b) can be said to be true (or false) already today. Alternatively, is the truth value of a statement undetermined, such that it cannot be said to have any actual truth value today? The answers to these questions bear upon the interpretation of modality. For if we assume that (21a) is true today, is the statement then not also necessary today? And further, if it turns out that there is no sea-fight tomorrow, can (21a) be possible today? On grounds of his basic assumption of indeterminism, Aristotle claimed that neither statement could be necessary today. However, the same does not apply to statements about the past or the present; they are either necessarily true or necessarily false. Aristotle is apparently a ‘past-determinist’ and a ‘present-determinist’, but a ‘future-indeterminist’. The logicians of the Middle Ages in general took the Aristotelian view that a statement can change its truth value with time. A proposition such as ‘Socrates runs’ is not true at all times. The truth value depends on the actual state of affairs. The idea of ‘the truth of a proposition at a given time’ thus comes into the picture. The truth value of the proposition was regarded as relative to the time at which it was put forth—its ‘moment of utterance’. The problems of the future were also discussed. Buridan (XIIIth century) presents a paradox of self-reference in relation to tense. Imagine the following scenario: Socrates wants to cross a river and comes to a bridge guarded by Plato, who says: (22) Plato: Socrates, if in the first proposition which you utter, you speak the truth, I will permit you to cross. But surely, if you speak falsely, I shall

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CHAPTER 2. TIME, TENSE AND TEMPORAL REFERENCE throw you into the water. Socrates: You will throw me into the water

Plato must admit that he cannot keep his promise. Buridan maintained that the sophism when uttered by Socrates has a truth value, i.e. it is either true or false. It is however, “not determinately true or determinately false”. This means that we cannot know whether it is true or false, until we have seen how Plato acts when Socrates is crossing. Buridan thus holds the view that a statement about the contingent future is true or false, although its truth value cannot be known by anybody now. For the Medieval logicians, the problems related to the future were most intimately connected to the relation between two fundamental Christian dogmas: human freedom and God’s omniscience. God’s omniscience is assumed to also comprise knowledge of the future choices to be made by men. But if God already now knows the decision I will make tomorrow, then an inevitable truth about my choice tomorrow is already given now! Hence, there seems to be no basis for the claim that I have a free choice, a conclusion which violates the dogma of human freedom. So the argument goes from divine foreknowledge to necessity of the future, and from there to the conclusion that there can be no real human freedom of choice. Several solutions were proposed, which roughly argue that divine knowledge is different from human knowledge. God relates in the same way to all times. Time should be regarded as a system in which the basic relations of succession and simultaneity are given in a timeless way—owing to the fact that time is given to God in a timeless way. The conceptual difference between past, present, and future is relevant only when humans are invoved, either as the subjects of cognition, or as participants in communication. A modern version of Anselm and Ockham’s ideas is worked out by Leibniz. Leibniz’s central idea is that God has chosen the best of all possible worlds, and made it actual. But in actualising the creatures of that world, He did not change their free natures. So it is not necessary for a man to do that which he will in fact be doing according to the foreknowledge of God. It would have been possible for him to make different decisions, leading to different acts. For Leibniz there is a difference in modality between the past and the future. For while it is not possible to cause a past event, it is now possible to cause some of the future events. While there is no alternative to the actual past, there are alternatives to the future. These alternatives correspond to the concept of possible world. The view of time as branching towards the future has some interesting consequences for the interpretation of future tenses like (23a) and (b): (23) a. He will die b. He is going to die (23a) has a trivial reading which just claims that man is not immortal. It can also have a strong “predicting” kind of reading, which may still be in the faraway future, though. (23b) does not have the trivial reading. Moreover, it strongly suggests that the dying is near and somehow unavoidable: we must

2.5. THEORIES OF TENSE

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have evidence from context and situation that this is about to happen, otherwise we could not felicitously utter the sentence. In (23a), the dying might be a mere possibility we are considering, in (23b) it is not. What is necessary is that which holds in all possible futures, and what is possible is that which holds in at least one possible future. A future event is necessary if and only if it is unchangeably caused by present or past events. Among the possible contingent futures, there must be one which has a special status, simply because it corresponds to the actual course of events in the future. This accounts for the differentation between ‘tomorrow’, ‘possibly tomorrow’, and ‘necessarily tomorrow’. The branching future suggests an identification of the present with reality: what happens, happens now. But according to McCawley (1993) for instance, we need to distinguish between actuality and non-actuality in the future as well. The difference in natural language between ‘will’ and ‘possibly will’ suggests that the modal expression relates to a choice among alternative future histories, whereas will relates to future time within a given future history. Thus modality introduces branching, and future time refers to a later moment on a particular branch. This means that a sentence like (24a) is different from (24b): (24) a. Bill will finish his novel b. Bill may finish his novel c. Bill must finish his novel d. George said in June that Mary would finish her thesis by January, but he was wrong The meaning of (24a) is clearly not that there is some time branch containing a future point at which Bill finishes his novel, because this is the meaning of (24b). (24a) does also not mean that on all branches leading into the future from the present there is a point at which Bill finishes his novel. This is the meaning of the necessity statement in (24c). What (24a) says is that at some point in the actual future, Bill will finish his novel. This leaves it open whether there are other possible but nonactual futures in which Bill does not finish the novel. McCawley agrees that the notion of actual future is tricky because one normally has very little conception of which of the infinitely many possible futures is the actual one. This is quite unlike one’s knowledge of the past. Nonetheless, McCawley stresses the fact that speakers of natural languages “indulge in the rashness of making statements that purport to describe the actual future” (McCawley 1993: 433). That such statements as (24a) are interpreted as referring to the actual future is confirmed by the kind of examples in (24c). If one can apply words like right, wrong, true and false in talking about previous statements about the future, this indicates that one can talk about how the actual future in the past turned out to be. In the case of (24c), the actual future with respect to the evaluation time in June was not what George said it would be.

2.5

Theories of tense


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2.5.1

Jespersen (1924)

As already mentioned at the beginning, the traditional idea is that the most obvious division of TIME is into present, past and future, so a language should have three TENSES to mark these distinctions. The first modern linguists who tried to account for further subdivisions in the three basic temporal domains is probably Jespersen (1924). According to Jespersen, time must be thought of as something that can be represented by a straight line, divided by the present moment into two parts: the past and the future. Within each of the two divisions, we may refer to some point as lying either before or after the main point of which we are speaking. For each of the seven resulting divisions of time, there are retrospective and prospective versions. This leads to a total of 21 tenses:

post-future future ante-future present post-preterit preterit ante-preterit

Cc Cb Ca B Ac Ab Aa

after-future future before-future present after-past past before-past

Some but not all of theses tenses are grammaticized in English.

2.5.2

Reichenbach

Reichenbach (1947) suggested that in order to understand how tenses work, we must consider not only the time of utterance, and the time of the event in question, but also a ‘point of reference’. The introduction of a separate reference point is motivated by tenses like the pluperfect in (25): (25) By five o’clock, John had already left The event of leaving is located before the speech time, but also before the time of five o’clock, which functions as the reference time. The Reichenbachian schema for the Pluperfect is thus E–R–S, where the – lines indicate precedence. The notion of reference also helps to distinguish between the simple past and the present perfect in examples like (26): (26) a. I left b. I have left In both cases, the event takes place before the speech time. However, there is a difference in perspective Reichenbach accounts for by having the reference time R located in the past for the simple past, so we get the schema E,R–S, where the comma indicates simultaneity. R is in the present for the present perfect, which gets the schema E–R,S. This underscores the idea of ‘current relevance’ attached to the present perfect.


Structure E–R–S E,R–S R–E–S R–S,E R–S–E E–S,R S,R,E S,R–E S–E–R S,E–R E–S–R S–R,E S–R–E

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New name Anterior Past Simple Past

Traditional name Pluperfect Simple Past

Example I had left I left

Posterior Past

—

I would leave

Anterior Present Simple Present Posterior Present

Present Perfect Present Simple Future

I have left I leave I will leave

Anterior Future

Future Perfect

I will have left

Simple Future Posterior Future

Simple Future —

I will leave I shall be going to leave

For Reichenbach, the relation between S and R, and the relation between R and E are fundamental. The different combinations bring us up to 9 fundamental tenses. English does not distinguish between the Posterior Present and the Simple Future. Reichenbach suggests that, in French, the construction with aller ‘to go’ grammaticalizes the Posterior Present, and the Futur Simple the Simple Future. Thus, ‘Je vais partir’ has the structure S,R–E, and ‘Je partirai’ has the structure ‘S–R,E. Reichenbach points out that the position of E relative to S is not important. This explains the three different schemata associated with the Posterior Past and the Anterior Future. Comrie (1985) proposes a slightly different notation which captures exactly that. He proposes to use complex relations like E relevative R relative S, which are to be read as ‘E relative to R and R relative to S’. This leads to representations like the following: Pluperfect Future Perfect Posterior Past

E before R before S E before R after S E after R before S

The Perfect of the Future is constrained by the fact that E must take place before R, but R must be located after S. Whether E ends up being located before, simultaneous with or after S is irrelevant, and the formula makes no claim about it. This modification is an elegant generalization of the Reichenbachian schema.

2.5.3

Beyond Reichenbach

Prior (1967) and others have pointed out that Reichenbach’s schema is too simple in that it provides for only one reference point, while at least two points of reference are necessary to account for tenses that are more complicated, such as:


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(27) a. I would have left by then b. I shall have been going to see John In Comrie’s system, the tense in (27a) gets the representation E before R1 after R2 before S. It describes a situation located before a reference point, which is in turn located after a reference point which is located before the moment of speech. Similarly, (27b) requires a representation E precedes R1 after R2 after S. In other words, the event E precedes a reference point R1 , which in turn is located after a reference point R2 , which is located after S. According to Prior, the introduction of multiple points of reference makes it unnecessary to make such a sharp distinction between the point of reference and the point of speech: the point of speech is just the first point of reference. But with several refinements and modifications along these lines, the Reichenbachian model has proven very popular and successful in linguistics.

2.5.4

Asymmetries between past and future

Still later developments try to account for the asymmetry between past and future by arguing that we have a past-present-future division around the deictic center (the moment of speech), which can be shifted back in time for a second past-present-future division in the past, but cannot be shifted forward to create further subdivisions in the future. This reduces the number of times in the future, while leaving open a rich system of distinctions in the past. These systems are typically neo-reichenbachian in nature, in that they use multiple points of reference (Wunderlich, Martin, Vet). Wunderlich (1970) and Martin (1971)/Vet (1981) develop tense systems for German and French respectively. They both introduce a distinction between past and non-past. Within these domains there are subdivisions into past and future. Consider the system for French proposed by Martin (see Vet 1981: 15):

passé composé ai fait

présent fais

futur ferai

passé surcomposé ai eu fait

futur antérieur aurai fait plus-que-parfait avais fait

plus-que-parfait surcomposé avais eu fait

imparfait faisais

conditionnel ferais conditionnel antérieur aurais fait

The idea of these systems is to create a ‘present in the past’ around which is developed the same system of tenses as in the present. So each ‘kernel’ has a future and a past. The secondary reference points have only a past, not a future. The asymmetry between past and future is thus present at two crucial levels


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in the system. Systems like these come closest to the expression of tenses in natural languages such as English, French and German. They can be considered as fine-tuning of the general Jespersen-Reichenbach line of research.

2.5.5

Prior (1967)

If we adopt a logical point of view, the most relevant question is not how many tenses there are, but how to develop a logic which reasons with tensed statements. There are a number of ways that time considerations can be brought into logical structure. A first possibility if to have time appear as an extra argument in the propositional fucntions that we have so far considered. For instance, instead of having the one-place predicate in (28a), we would have the two-place predicate in (28b): (28) a. Bald(x) b. Bald(x, t) c. Rt Bald(x)) (28b) expresses that x is bald at time t. In a modern version, using event variables instead of time variables, this notation is used by Davidson (1967), and in a large number of analyses of temporal phenomena formulated in the (neo)-Davidsonian tradition, e.g. Parsons (1990). A second possibility is to have operators Rt , expressing that the proposition they are combined with is true at the indicated time. For example, we would have (28c) as an alternative notation to (28b). A third possibility is to treat time as ‘indices’. Just as a proposition is not flatly true of false, but is true in certain worlds and false in others, a proposition would be true at some times, and false at other times. “Now” would have the same special role among the time indices that “the actual world” has among the world indices. That is, unless something indicates the contrary, a proposition is evaluated with respect to the “actual” indices: it is taken as referring to the present time, to the actual world, to the place where it is uttered and so forth. Prior develops several systems of temporal logic, which are a mixture of the second and the third possibility. Prior introduces two operators P for past, and F for future. These temporal operators are defined over propositions. There is no operator for the present tense. A proposition p is interpreted with respect to the given time of evaulations. The operators P and F are interpreted by the following conditions: (29) a. t |= P p if and only if ∃t0 [t0 ≺ t ∧ t0 |= p] b. t |= F p if and only if ∃t0 [t ≺ t0 ∧ t0 |= p] Two more operators can be defined in terms of P and F , namely H ‘has always been’, and G ‘is always going to be’: (30) a. Hp = ¬P ¬p b. Gp = ¬F ¬p

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P and F look suspiciously like the modal operator 3, whereas H and G are similar to 2. Indeed, the version of tense logic developed by Prior and others can be considered as a variety of modal logic, with temporal relations playing the role of “alternativeness” relations: instead of looking at alternative possible worlds, we look at alternative times at which the proposition can come out true. Moreover, tense operators can be freely iterated, and thus yield more complex tenses. For instance: (31) a. John left Pp b. John had left PPp c. John would leave PFp d. John would have left PFPp e. John will leave Fp f. John will have left FPp g. John has always loved Mary Hp h. John would always love Mary P Gp Prior develops a number of different tense logics, depending on the axioms of the system. The most basic tense logic is Kt , defined by the following set of axioms: (32) A1 p, where p is a tautology of the propositional calculus A2 G(p ⊃ q) ⊃ (Gp ⊃ Gq) A3 H(p ⊃ q) ⊃ (Hp ⊃ Hq) A4 p ⊃ HF p A5 p ⊃ GP p The basic rule of inference is Modus Ponens, and there are two rules which introduce tense operators: (33)RG If ` p then ` Gp RH If ` p then ` Hp


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One can develop more complex systems, by adding more axioms, such as: (34) a. P P p ⊃ P p b. F F p ⊃ F p For instance, one probably wants the inferences in (34a) and (b) both to go through. Note that the future is not in all respects a mirror image of the past. Given an indeterministic standpoint, one wants (35a) to come out true, but (35b) false: (35) a. P p ⊃ GP p b. F p ⊃ HF p (35b) can easily be ruled out if we adopt a model with a branching future. Such a model was only worked out later by Prior, after a suggestion by Kripke that the branching future was like a possible world semantics. If we add both (34b) and (36), we get a system which allows for branching time: (36) F P p ⊃ (P p ∨ p ∨ F p) More complex tense logics can be developed by adding more and more axioms, but we will not go into further details here.

2.5.6

Beyond Prior

Linguists have not found the Priorean system fully satisfactory. One problem is that there is no distinction between the Simple Past tense and the Present Perfect: both are represented by the formula P ϕ. One of the attractive features of the Reichenbachian system was that the notion of reference time allows us to account for the ‘double’ nature of part present, part past of the present perfect. Another problem concerns the present tense. Neither Prior nor Reichenbach captures the distinction between the Simple Present tense and the Present Progressive. But at least for Reichenbach, the Simple Present is a tense like the others. In Prior’s system, the Present Tense is indicated by the absence of any temporal operators. This sets the Simple Present aside from all other tenses. If we look at the truth conditions, we see that all tenses are in fact derived from present tense statements. E.g. ‘John left’ is represented as P p, which means that the statement ‘John leaves’ is true at some point in time in the past. The only way to properly interpret this is to view this as a reportive use of the Simple Present. But we already pointed out earlier that this is not the most straightforward interpretation of the Simple Present. However, the use of the Simple Past in ‘John left’ does capture the basic use of the tense. This means that the interpretation of the basic use of the Simple Past is formulated in terms of an unnatural use of the Simple Present. This is not very intuitive. One way of giving the deictic nature of tense more content is to introduce a special operator for the ‘now’ of the sentence. Kamp (1971) introduces the N -operator, which gets the following interpretation for t0 the speech time:

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(37) t |= N p

if and only if t0 |= p

This interpretation guarantees the equivalence of (38a) and (b): (38) a. John is asleep b. John is asleep now More importantly, the N-operator captures the deictic character of the present tense by allowing us to go back to the speech time in embedded contexts. Consider an example like (39): (39) Someday you will be grateful for what I am doing now The now in (39) refers to the time when the sentence is uttered. If we wouldn’t have the N -operator, the sentence would be represented as in (40a): (40) a. F (p ∧ q) b. F (p ∧ N q) (40a) gives us the interpretation that ‘you are grateful’ and ‘what I am doing now’ are both true at some future time t0 . The introduction of the N -operator in (40b) allows us to relate the time of what I am doing to the speech time, rather than the time at which the being grateful is true. The N -operator also accounts for the difference between (41b) and (c), as represented in (42): (41) a. A child is born who will rule the world b. A child was born which would rule the world c. A child was born which will rule the world (42) a. P (∃x (Child(x) ∧ Born(x) ∧ F Rule-the-world(x))) b. P (∃x (Child(x) ∧ Born(x) ∧ N F Rule-the-world(x))) The interpretation of (41b) is just like (41a), but prefixed with the past tense operator. (41c) is different, because the ‘will’ locates the ruling-the-world part in the future of the speech time rather than just the future of the time of birth. Given the interpretation of the N -operator as bringing us back to the utterance time of the sentence, the F -operator in (42b) determines some moment in the future which we now have, even though it occurs within the scope of P . Kamp carries the formal properties of indexical operators one step further and introduces a system of double indexing. The idea is to interpret a sentence with respect to two moments in time, say t and t0 . The first is called the moment of utterance, and the second is called the moment of evaluation. We begin to evaluate a statement made at time t with respect to this time t. But the evaluation process may lead us to consider moments in time other than t. An example: in order to determine whether P ϕ is true in a given model at time t, we must try and find a moment earlier than t at which ϕ is true. Now if ϕ contains an expression like now which necessarily refers back to the original t,


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then we will need some way of keeping track of this t. We can do this by always considering two moments in time, one of which will allow us to ‘remember’ the speech time. One can carry this reasoning one step further (Vlach, 1973) with examples like (43b) as the past tense variant of (43a): (43) a. One day, all persons alive now will be dead b. One day, all people alive then would be dead The Priorian recipe for obtaining the past tense consists in prefixing the Poperator to the formula for the present tense sentence. This would lead to (44a): (44) a. P F ∀x (N Alive(x) → Dead(x)) b. P KF ∀x (N Alive(x) → Dead(x)) (44a) gets the intended reading wrong, because ‘then’ should refer to some point of reference defined by the sentence (or context), rather than to the point of speech. In order to account for such complications, Vlach introduces another operator K (‘then’), which resets the point of speech, equating it with the current point of evaluation. Formally: (45) hs, ti |= Kϕ iff ht, ti |= ϕ Thus, K acts as a substitution operator replacing the point of speech t0 by the current reference point t. The correct rendering of (43b) is then as is (44b). Kamp carries the formal properties of indexical operators one step further and introduces a system of double indexing. The idea is to interpret a sentence with respect to two moments in time, say t and t0 . The first is called the moment of utterance, and the second is called the moment of evaluation. We begin to evaluate a statement made at time t with respect to this time t. But the evaluation process may lead us to consider moments in time other than t. An example: in order to determine whether P ϕ is true in a given model at time t, we must try and find a moment earlier than t at which ϕ is true. Now if ϕ contains an expression like now which necessarily refers back to the original t, then we will need some way of keeping track of this t. We can do this by always considering two moments in time, one of which will allow us to ‘remember’ the speech time. We will not go into the formal details here. Kuhn (1979) discusses some examples of tense logical systems involving double indexing. But once you get the idea, you can go further. A sentence like (46) is still inexpressible in systems that include N and K: (46) There will always jokes be told that were told at a certain time in the past ∃t < t0 ∀t0 > t0 ∃x (Tell(x, t0 ) ∧ Tell(x, t) The relevant reading is that there is a time t preceding the speech time t0 such that for all times t0 later than t0 there is a joke which will be told at t0 which was also told at t. This leads to a proliferation of operators and reference times (e.g. ˚ Aqvist and Guenthner, 1977).

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Examples like these show that, when the complexity of natural language examples increases, one might be better off with a quantificational account of tense (similar to predicate logic formulas), than a treatment of tense as operators on propositional formulas. We will not go into the formal details here. Kuhn (1979) discusses some examples of tense logical systems involving double indexing. Prior was very concerned with the issue of expressibility. Kamp (1968) has demonstrated that not every temporal operator can be expressed in Prior’s system. Consider a sentence like (47): (47) Bill has been watching little Alice ever since Mary left This sentence is true at time t iff there is some time t0 preceding t such that (i) the proposition that Mary leaves is true at t and (ii) the proposition that Bill is watching little Alice is true at all times from t0 onwards, up to (and including) t. Sentences like these cannot be expressed in a Priorean tense logic where the structure of time has certain natural properties (like being like the real numbers). Kamp shows that every temporal operator in a linear, dense, non-ending instant-logic can be defined in terms of his two operators U and S. U (ϕ, ψ) is like until and is read “ it will be the case that ψ until it will be the case that ϕ” (or “ it was the case that ψ until it was the case that ϕ”). S(ϕ, ψ) is like since, and is read “ it has been the case that ψ since it was the case that ϕ” (or “ it will have been the case that ψ since it was the case that ϕ”. The official semantics is given in (48): (48) a. t |= U (ϕ, ψ) if and only if ∃t00 [t ≺ t00 ∧ t00 |= ϕ ∧ ∀t0 [[t ≺ t0 ≺ t00 ] → t0 |= ψ ∧ t0 |= ¬ϕ]] b. t |= S(ϕ, ψ) if and only if ∃t00 [t ≺ t00 ∧ t00 |= ϕ ∧ ∀t0 [[t00 ≺ t0 ≺ t] → t0 |= ψ ∧ t0 |= ¬ϕ]] Although the system with S and U is more powerful than classical Priorean tense logic, it is no more satisfactory when it comes to providing natural representations of tensed sentences from languages such as English. As Kamp and Reyle (1993) point out, the possibility of iterating tense operators in formulas like P P ϕ, F P ϕ has no counterpart in natural language. Spelling out such formulas in natural language quickly becomes awkward, because English has no straightforward way of iterating tenses. A tense is always associated with a verb, and tenses cannot just be piled on top of the other. Even the complex tenses (such as the Pluperfect) can at best provide paraphrases for tense logical formulas with two, or at most three layers of tense operators. An even more important observation is that English does not only use operators, it also refers to times explicitly with the help of nouns such as time, moment, and time adverbials. A theory of temporal reference ought to explain how the tenses contribute to the meaning of complex statements like the ones in (49): (49) a. Alvin rang on Sunday b. Alvin will ring on Sunday


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The phrase on Sunday has the property that it refers to the nearest Sunday—in the future or in the past—to some given, contextually salient time. In particular, in a context in which no times have yet been made salient, the phrase will refer either to the next Sunday after the day on which the utterance takes place, or to the last Sunday before it. Given that the past tense of rang in (50a) indicates that the described event lies before the time of utterance, the token of on Sunday must refer to the last Sunday before the utterance time. Given the future tense in (50b), reference is made to the first Sunday after the speech time. A theory of temporal reference in natural language needs to combine the information provided by tense and time adverbials to determine the temporal structure of sentences like (49). Priorean tense logic does not provide the tools to do so. Consider maybe a simpler example like (50): (50)

John left yesterday a. Yesterday[P[John leave]] b. P[yesterday[John leave]]

If we treat the time adverbial and the tense separately, we have to decide which one to give scope over the other. But both scopal configuations in (50) fail to capture the meaning of the English sentence. (50a) claims that John’s leaving takes place in the past of yesterday. So John may have left two days ago, or a month, or a year ago. (50b) claims that it is true in the past that John’s leaving takes place yesterday. The information provided by the tense operator is entirely redundant here, although it wasn’t so in (49a). What we want is of course a combined action of the tense and the time adverbial, such that the event takes place at (or within) the time period described by the time adverbial. This is almost impossible to realize within Priorian tense logic, because there is no way to refer to the time at which the proposition is true. In a Reichenbachian system, one can of course exploit the notion of reference time in describing the semantics of time adverbials. Partee (1973) is one of the first to point out certain analogies between tenses and pronouns in English, which suggest that we need a referential approach to natural language tenses, rather than an interpretation in terms of operators. She argues that the three main uses of pronouns, namely deictic, anaphoric and bound variable interpretations are found with tenses as well. The deictic use of the past tense morpheme appears in a sentence like (51): (51) I didn’t turn off the stove When uttered, for instance, halfway down the turnpike, such a sentence clearly does not mean either that there exists some time in the past at which I did not turn off the stove, or that there exists no time in the past at which I turned off the stove. The sentence clearly refers to a particular time, but it is not an instant. Most likely, it is a definite interval, whose identity is generally clear from the extra-linguistic context, just as the identity of she in a sentence with a deictic use of a pronoun. Anaphoric uses of tenses are illustrated with sentences like (52):


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(52) a. Sheila had a party last Friday, and Sam got drunk b. When Susan walked in, Peter left The time adverbial or temporal clause provides a descriptive specification of the time of the main clause. Both main clauses in (52a) refer to the same time variable. Bound variable interpretations of tenses are illustrated with examples like (53): (53) a. If Susan comes in, John will leave immediately b. Richard always gave assignments that were due the next day c. Mary teaches every other day Partee analyzes (53a) as ‘For all times t at which Susan comes in, John leaves in the immediate future of t. The kind of sentence in (53b) is closely parallel to sentences involving a universal quantifier like all . Reference to times also plays a role in the phenomenon of discourse anaphora. Compare the two-sentence texts in (54a) and (b): (54) a. Last week Fred bought his ninth cat. He paid 75 ECU for it b. Bill left the house at a quarter past five. He took a taxi to the station and caught the first train to Bognor. There is a very strong tendency to take the second sentence of (54a) as talking about the same time as the first. However, the second sentence of (54b) is naturally understood as describing two events that directly follow the one described in the first sentence. The temporal relations between sentences brought together in a narrative discourse is an important feature of the use of tense in natural language. Clearly, there is no way to express such temporal anaphora in tense logic, because such a system does not capture the notion of reference.

2.5.7

Merging Reichenbach and Prior

For decades, Priorean tense logic and Reichenbachian tense systems have existed side by side, the first being cherished by logicians, the second by linguists. To my knowledge, one of the few serious attempts to bring the two traditions together is the nominal tense logic developed by Blackburn (1993, 1994).1 According to Blackburn, an important reason why Reichenbachian systems are so successful is that they allow reference to times. Given that natural language tenses have referential import, and the anaphoric properties of tense, and the role temporal constructions play in discourse are centre stage, this makes Priorean tense logic a less suitable system for the study of tense expressed by natural language. For example, an utterance of (55a) does not mean that John ran at some completely unspecified past time, but that he ran at some particular, contextually determined past time: 1 Compare also McCawley, 1993, who tries to achieve something similar by introducing definite description operators.


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(55) a. John ran b. P (John run) c. P (i ∧ John run) The natural representation of this sentence in Priorean tense logic in (55b) fails to mirror the referential nature of the English original. Blackburn’s solution is to make Priorean tense logic referential by adding a new type of propositional symbol, called nominals to the language. Nominals are typically written as i, j, k, etc. The point of introducing nominals lies in their interpretation: we shall insist that in any model, nominals are to be true at exactly one time. Nominals thus ‘name’ the unique time at which they are true. The sentence in (55a) is now translated as in (55c). In order for (55c) to be true, John must run at the past time picked out by i. This gives us a ‘definite’ time at which the situation takes place. Nominals thus mirror Reichenbach’s notion of reference point. The table given above for Reichenbach’s logic, can now be extended with one more column, in which the same tenses are described in nominal tense logic:

Structure E–R–S E,R–S R–E–S R–S,E R–S–E E–S,R S,R,E S,R–E S–E–R S,E–R E–S–R S–R,E S–R–E

Name Pluperfect Simple Past

Example I had left I left

Representation P(i & Pp) P(i & p)

Future in the Past

I would leave

P(i & Fp)

Present Perfect Present Prospective

I have left I leave I will leave

Pp p Fp

Future Perfect

I will have left

F(i & Pp)

Simple Future Future in the Future

I will leave I shall be going to leave

F(i & p) F(i & Fp)

Blackburn sums up these entries by saying that he has factored the English into a ‘shift’ and a ‘refer’ component. The shift component is Prior’s contribution, and is performed by the tense operator. The refer component is Reichenbach’s contribution, and is performed by the nominals. Note in particular that, unlike in Prior’s system, the simple past and the present perfect are represented differently. This does not yet solve all the problems related to the interpretation of the present perfect, but it captures the idea that the simple past is ‘definite’ in nature, whereas the present perfect is ‘indefinite’. Sentences which require more than one point of reference can be represented by formulas containing more than one nominal, e.g: (56) I shall have been going to see John F (i ∧ P (j ∧ F (I see John)))


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Blackburn extends his system to introduce indexical and calendar adverbials. For instance (57a) is interpreted as in (57b): (57) a. John climbed yesterday b. P (yesterday ∧ John climb) Blackburn also gives an interpretation of discourse anaphora based on the Hinrichs/Partee system in his nominal tense logic, to show that we can actually treat discourse relations in this extended Priorean logic.

2.6

Temporal ontology

2.6.1

Points

Reichenbach (1947) thought of R, S and E in terms of points in time, sometimes called ‘moments’ or ‘instants’. Prior formulated the semantics of his tense logical operators in terms of truth at points or moments. Moments or instants are like atomic particles of time with zero duration, which yield intervals of nonvanishing duration only if they are combined into very large packages. This may be a rather abstract conception of time, which one does not really encounter in ordinary situations. Even sentences like (58) refer to some small duration rather than to some duration-less point: (58) a. The astrologer needs to know the exact time of birth b. The very moment Jane came in . . . c. Right then, the alarm went off There is even something counterintuitive about treating a continuum such as time through the discrete notion of point. However, the use of instants has proven to be a fruitful way of analyzing all kinds of temporal notions. It is the concept of time that lies at the root of theoretical physics, where it has been standard practice at least since the days of Galilei and Newton to identify the basic constituents of time with the real numbers. According to this conception, these basic constituents are indivisible, and strictly ordered by the relation or earlier and later: for any two distinc elements t1 and t2 , either t1 is earlier than t2 , or else t2 is earlier than t1 . Formally, such time structures can be represented as pairs hT,

Tense and Aspect in Sentence and Discourse - CiteSeerX

Tense and Aspect in Sentence and Discourse - CiteSeerX

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