Aspect matters in sentential
temporal interpretation
Dr María J. Arche
University of Greenwich, UK
am94@gre.ac.uk
Tense & Aspect in Generative Grammar,
Lisbon, 1st & 2nd July 2010
Two classical puzzles
(1) John said that Bill was depressed
(1.1.) Bill’s depression locates at a time prior to Bill’s
saying
(1.2.) Bill’s depression overlaps with John’s saying
(2) John said that Bill is depressed
Bill’s depression is understood as overlapping
with the time of John’s saying AND with the
utterance time.
Questions throughout the years
• How can a past interval be understood as
located in two different points in time?
– Traditional answer: overlapping interpretation
corresponds to a semantics where there is ‘no
past’, but present.
• If present tense refers to the present moment,
the utterance time per excellence, how come
can a present tense form be understood as
overlapping with a past interval?
In common
• The cases in (1) and (2) have the same
underlying question in common: how can
these forms refer to intervals that seem not to
be the ones they should be referring to?
• Can past mean something other than ‘past’?
• Can present mean ‘past’?
• Why only under certain circumstances?
Non uniformity of Tense
Hopeless?
• A great number of authors have advanced
different analysis and proposals.
• In general, the shortcomings are:
– They look like ad-hoc explanations
– Non uniform account of tenses
– Systematic ambiguity of tenses is predicted, but it
obtains only in certain cases
– Optionality of the rule (SOT-deletion).
– The system becomes overcomplicated to explain
specific cases.
Proposal _ This talk
• What if there was no problem to start with?
– In past under past cases: Tense head has no
responsibility. It always means ‘past’. Simultaneity in
the past is due to the content of the Aspect head.
– Present under past: Reference to the Speech Time is
only apparent. What the preset tense does is to
establish an overlapping or inclusion relation between
the two intervals the clauses make an assertion about.
• Go through classical accounts for both issues and
suggest a simpler account that relies on the
content of the temporal heads.
Past and past under past sentences
• Semantics of Past: before the Utterance Time.
(3) John went to the cinema
go-------------UTT
• Past under past:
(4) John said that Bill went to the cinema
• Embedded past is located with respect to the
main clause past.
• Result: “backward shifted reading” (BSR)
---------go-------say--------UTT
Some Previous proposals past under past
• Ladusaw 1977
– Transformation that changes an underlying present into
morphologically past if embedded under another past tense.
• Enç 1987
– SR: embedded tense bound by matrix tense =correference.
• Two past tenses
– BSR: embedded tense refers to a different time in the past.
• Ogihara 1996, 2007
– SR: Tense deletion rule (applying before LF) under identity under
c-command conditions.
– BSR: Tense does not delete.
• Abusch 1991, 1997
– Embedded past is anaphoric to main past
– 2 LFs: one where embedded tense is non-locally licensed and one
where it is interpreted de re and locally licensed.
Syntactic accounts on Tense
(Zagona 1990, Stowell 1993)
• Tense is a dyadic predicate that
takes two-time denoting arguments
(ZPs).
• Reference Time (RT) is understood
similar to a nominal PRO. In main
clauses, it refers to the Utterance
Time.
• Past locates the RT “after” the Event
Time (EvT).
TP
ZP
RT
(PRO)
T
T’
VP
ZP(EvT)
TP
RT
T’
T
VP
ZP(EvT)
• In compound clauses, the
RT is bound by the main EvT.
• Result: the embedded EvT
is ordered with respect to
the main EvT: backward
shifted reading.
Sequence of Tense Account (Stowell 1993, Kusumoto 2005)
TP
ZP
RT
(PRO)
T
•Morphological Past works as a Polarity
Item.
• Semantic PAST is in T
• In SOT cases, there is no semantic
PAST in Tense
• Morphological past is a Polarity Item
from the Past in the main clause.
T’
VP
ZP(EvT)
TP
RT
T’
T
VP
(PAST/∅)
ZP(EvT)
•PAST DOES NOT MEAN ‘PAST’
Some Facts
• BSR reading emerges ONLY with IMPERFECT
aspect.
– Also noted by Stowell 1993, Boogaart 1999,
Gennari 2003, Arche 2006, a.o.
• Romance languages with a contrast
imperfect/perfective show that the reading
disappears when the perfective form is used,
regardless of the inner aspect characterization
of the predicate.
Examples
(5) Juan dijo que Marta estaba enferma
Juan say-pf-3ps Marta be-impf-ill
‘Juan said Marta was ill’
• BSR
• SR
(6) Juan dijo que Marta estaba construyendo una
casa
Juan said that Marta be-impf-3ps building a house
‘Juan said that Marta was building a house’
(7) Juan dijo que Marta estuvo enferma
Juan
say-pf-3ps Marta be-pf-ill
‘Juan said Marta was ill’
BSR
# SR
(8) Juan dijo que Marta estuvo construyendo una
casa
Juan said that Marta be-pf-3ps building a house
‘J said that Marta was building a house’
The idea in short
• Within a syntactic approach to
Aspect, I will propose that the
content of the Aspect head
(imperfect) suffices to derive both
BSR and SR.
• BSR and SR are not a case of
ambiguity but vagueness.
Syntax of Tense AND Aspect
(Demirdache & Uribe-Etxebarria 2000)
TP
RT
(PRO)
T
T’
AspP
TT
Asp’
Asp
VP
EvT
Ordering Predicate
Within
After
Before
VP
• Clauses make an assertion about
a specific interval “Topic Time”
(TT), Klein 1994.
• Tense orders the TT with respect
to the RT.
• Aspect is a temporal head
consisting of the same predicates
than Tense.
• Aspect orders the TT with
respect to the ET.
Tense
Aspect
Present
Imperfect
Past
Perfect
Future
Prospective
TP
T’
RT
(=UTT)
• Main TT binds subordinate
RT
• Subordinate TT is located in
the past with respect to the
main event (BSR) and within
the Event Time.
•Due to the semantics of the
imperfect, the assertion only
concerns the beginning of the
event (which is before the
main EvT).
• This is compatible with two
situations: the event finishing
before the main event and the
event not being finished, and
therefore, containing the main
TT (i.e. the saying time).
T
(after)
AspP
TTi
AsP’
AsP VP
(after)
EvT
CP/TP’
RTi
T
(after)
T’
AspP
TTj
Asp’
Asp
(within)
ET
VP
depressed
----------|
-----------------------say----------UT
BSR
(9) Juan said last week that Marta was depressed
last month, but she got well quickly.
depressed
----------------------------------SR
-----------------------say----------UTT----(10) Juan said last week that Marta was depressed. It
all started last month and she continues feeling
that way.
Under this approach
• Past always means past
• We make sense of the aspectual characteristic of
these cases: imperfect (temporal predicate
meaning ‘within’) is required.
• The SR is an effect of the semantics of the
imperfect: the end of the event is not asserted
(Cipria & Roberts 2000, Demirdache & UribeEtxebarria 2000, Gennari 2003, Arche 2006).
• SOT is not a case of ambiguity (2 LFs) but
vagueness (along similar lines than Gennari’s).
Gennari’s 2003 account
• SR can be accounted for as an aktionsart
matter: stative -atelicity.
• SR emerges only with stative sentences
– States
– Habituals
– Progressives
Properties of statives (Moens & Steedman
1988)
• Statives: tend to obtain beyond the interval
specified by the tense morpheme; thus, they
overlap with other intervals mentioned in the
discourse.
Superinterval Property
• Statives: logically entail or lexically specify a
superinterval that contains the truth interval
of the sentence provided by the tense
operator.
• Progressives, habituals, all share the
superinterval property: the superinterval of a
stative sentence, if large enough, may overlap
with the UTT and other times contextually
provided.
Comments
• Imperfectivity and stativity should be differentiated
(Bertinetto 2001, a.o.). Imperfectivity should not be
regarded as the morphological marking of atelicity
(unlike accounts by e.g. Cipria & Roberts 2001).
• Since the semantics of the imperfect locates an
interval within another interval, the previous
initiation of that latter interval is entailed.
• This is a property of the imperfect rather than a
property of aktionsart characterization or a property
of the progressive only, which is straightforwardly
captured by the description of imperfect as an
ordering predicate.
– If progressive is in place, but the auxiliary is in the
perfective, the SR is no longer available.
Present under past
(11) Juan dijo que Marta está deprimida
Juan said that Marta be-pres-3ps-depressed
‘Juan said that Marta is depressed’
• For many speakers present under past sentences
are dis-preferred (over past under past).
• Intuition reported in the literature:
– Marta’s depression overlaps with both the present
and the past interval of Juan’s saying.
Proposal
• Similar lines than before: based on what we
have in the syntax: ordering predicates.
• Reference to the UTT may be an optical effect.
• The interpretation can be rather described as
one where Juan’s saying is included within the
interval in which Marta is depressed.
• The predicate that establishes that relation of
inclusion is the present tense. (Recall that this
is precisely its semantic content).
• This is in accordance with the fact that in
many languages present under past is the only
form that SR readings can have:
(12) Japanese, Hindi √SR
a. John-wa Mary-ga ninsinsi -te i -ru to it -ta.
John TOP NOM pregnant PROG PRESENT COMP say PAST
b. John-ne kah-aa ki Mary garbhvati hai
John-Erg l say-Pfv that Mary pregnant is
‘John said that Mary was pregnant’
TP
T’
RT
(=UTT)
T
(after)
• Main TT binds
subordinate RT
• Subordinate RT corefers to the main TT and
is located within the
subordinate TT and
within the subordinate
EvT, as present tense is
imperfect from the
aspectual point of view.
• This suffices to derive
the so called DAR.
AspP
TTi
AsP’
AsP
(after)
VP
EvT
CP/TP’
RTi
T’
T
(within)
AspP
TTj
Asp’
Asp
(within)
ET
VP
Previous accounts
• Abusch 1991, 1997, Ogihara 1996
– Creswell & von Stechow 1982
• Temporal de re (the speaker’s perspective)
• Present tense clause is ‘scoped out’ and
accesses the UTT.
Question
• If independent access to the UTT was the
case, the situation described in the
subordinate clause would not be constrained.
• However, it seems that if the situation cannot
be understood as occupying a span of time
including the past interval of the main clause,
the sentence is considered as anomalous.
Relative vs. complement clauses
(13)# Juan dijo que Marta está tocandose la pierna
‘Juan said that Marta is touching her leg’
• If we compare cases like this with relative clauses
where present tense can be justified as a result of
QR (wide scope) (9), they look different.
(14) Juan se casó con la chica que está tocándose la
pierna (ahora)
Juan married the girl who is touching her leg now
• It seems that a QR analysis is justified and
appropriately captures the possibilities of
temporal interpretation in the case of relative
clauses.
• However, it seems to me that the so-called
DAR does not have to do with the UTT or the
present but with overlapping of the two TTs.
• The reference to the present moment (UTT)
may be a misleading optical effect.
Conclusions
• The temporal predicate “within” can explain
two delicate cases: SOT and DAR.
• SOT has been explained as a subcase of the
BSR.
• For DAR the reference to the present has been
argued to be an optical effect. Present tense
establishes an overlap between the two TTs in
the sentence.
Appendix
Aspect as an inductor of SOT.
Perfect in the main clause
See Cable 2008 for English
(15) Juan ha dicho que Marta estaba deprimida
Juan has said that Marta be-impf-3ps depressed
‘Juan has said that Marta was depressed’
• (Intuitive) Temporal analysis of present perfect:
– Tense head: present
– “Pastness” comes from Aspect (perfect)
– Aspect: perfect
TP
Imperfect Past under
present perfect
T’
RT
(=UTT)
AspP
(within)
TTi
Ha dicho
‘Has said’
AsP
(after)
AsP’
VP
EvT
RTi
CP/TP
T’
T
(after)
estaba
Be-impf
AspP
TTj
Asp’
Asp
(within)
ET
VP
Imperfect Past under Present Perfect
depressed
-----------|
has
-----------------------said----------UTT
depressed
---------------------------------------------------------said----------UTT----has
BSR
SR
Perfective under present perfect
(16) Juan ha dicho que Marta estuvo deprimida
Juan has said that Marta be-pf-3ps depressed
‘Juan has said that Marta was depressed’
depressed
-----------|
has
-----------------------said----------UTT
depressed
---------------------------------------------------------said----------UTT----has
BSR
#
#SR
Present perfect under past
(17) Juan dijo que Marta ha estado deprimida
‘Juan said that Marta has been depressed’
been depressed
has
---------------------------said----------UTT
DAR
TP
T’
RT
(=UTT)
T
(after)
AspP
TTi
Present perfect under
past
AsP’
AsP VP
(after)
EvT
CP/TP’
• DAR is borne out also
with present perfect.
RTi
T’
T
(within)
AspP
TTj
Asp’
Asp
(within)
ET
VP
References
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• Arche, M.J. 2006. Individuals in Time. Tense, Aspect and the
individual/stage distinction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
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temporal-aspectual domain: the ‘‘perfec- tive=telic
confusion.’’ In Semantic Interfaces (Reference, Anaphora and
Aspect), Carlo Cecchetto, Gennaro Chierchia, and Maria
Teresa Guasti (eds.), 177–210. Stanford, CA: CSLI.
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Pretérito: Truth Conditions and Aktionsart Effects in a
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