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21.2: Tense relates Topic Time to the Time of Utterance

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    138746
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    In Chapter 20 we quoted the following standard definitions of tense:

    (2)    a. “Tense is grammaticalised expression of location in time… [T]enses locate situations either at the same time as the present moment…, or prior to the                 present moment, or subsequent to the present moment.” (Comrie 1985: 9, 14)

    b. “Tense refers to the grammatical expression of the time of the situation described in the proposition, relative to some other time.” (Bybee 1992: 144)

    An important feature of these definitions is that they are restricted to “grammatical(ized) expressions” of location in time. Every language has a variety of content words which can be used to specify the time of an event. These may include NPs (last year, that week, the next day), PPs (in the morning, after the election), temporal adverbs (soon, later, then), adverbial clauses (While Hitler was in Vienna, …), etc. But not all languages have tense markers. The traditional use of the term tense in linguistics has been restricted to grammatical morphemes: inflectional affixes, auxiliary verbs, particles, etc.

    One way to represent the “location” of a situation in time is to define logical operators (e.g. past and future) which will add tense information to a basic proposition. These tense operators can be defined as existential quantifiers over times, as suggested in (3).1 This definition says that past(p) will be true at the time of speaking just in case there was some time prior to the time of speaking when p was true; and similarly for future(p). (The letter t stands for ‘time’, and “<” in this context means ‘prior to’. TU represents the time of speaking; this is typically the time for which the truth value of a statement is evaluated.)

    (3)    past(p) is true at TU iff ∃t[t < TU ∧ (p is true at time t)]
            future(p) is true at TU iff ∃t[TU < t ∧ (p is true at time t)]

    This system works fairly well in many cases, but Partee (1973) points out that it leads to problems with examples like (4):

    (4)    Wife to husband, as they drive away from their house: “I didn’t turn off the stove.”

    If the positive statement I turned off the stove is interpreted as shown in (5a), there are two possible ways of interpreting the corresponding negative statement, depending on the scope of negation, as shown in (5b). The first reading means that the speaker has never in her life turned off the stove, while the second reading means that there was at least one moment in her life when the speaker was not turning off the stove. Clearly neither of these captures the intended meaning.

    (5)    a. I turned off the stove.
                ∃t [t < TU ∧ (TURN_OFF(speaker, stove) is true at t)]

    b. I didn’t turn off the stove.
        ¬∃t [t < TU ∧ (TURN_OFF(speaker, stove) is true at t)]
    or: ∃t [t < TU ∧ (¬TURN_OFF(speaker, stove) is true at t)]

    In Chapter 20 we introduced Klein’s analysis of tense, which crucially defines tense as indicating the location of Topic Time rather than the location in time of the situation itself. Under Klein’s analysis, the past tense in (4) I didn’t turn off the stove indicates that Topic Time is prior to the Time of Utterance. The Topic Time is determined by the context; in this situation, it would be the time immediately before leaving the house. The speaker is asserting that at that particular time, she didn’t turn off the stove. No assertion is made about other times. This analysis provides the correct interpretation.

    To review, Klein defines tense and aspect as shown in (6), where TT = Topic Time (the time period about which the speaker is making a claim); TU = Time of Utterance (i.e., time of speaking); and TSit = the time of the event or situation which is being described.

    (6)    a. Tense indicates a temporal relation between TT and TU;

            b. Aspect indicates a temporal relation between TT and TSit.

    So, for example, past tense can be defined as a grammatical marker which indicates that TT is prior to TU. Future tense can be defined as indicating that TU is prior to TT. Present tense might be defined as indicating that TU is contained within TT.

    Klein’s framework is based on the very influential work of Reichenbach (1947). Reichenbach defined tense categories in terms of three cardinal points in time: speech time (S), the time of the utterance; event time (E), the time of the event or situation which is being described; and reference time (R). S and E correspond to Klein’s TU and TSit, respectively. Reichenbach’s “reference time” can be seen as analogous to Klein’s TT, although there is some disagreement as to what Reichenbach actually meant by this term. In the discussion that follows we will use Klein’s terminology, but Reichenbach’s terms (E, S, and R) are also widely used, and it will be helpful to be aware of these as well.

    Because tense is (normally) marked relative to the time of the speech event, tense markers are considered to be deictic elements. It is helpful to remember that tense markers normally do not fully specify the location of the topic time; rather, they impose constraints on that location, such as TT < TU (for past tense). More specific time reference can be achieved by using temporal adverbs, adverbial clauses, etc.

    Klein’s definition of tense as marking a temporal relation between TT and TU provides us with a foundation for analyzing the semantic content of specific tense markers. However, as Comrie (1985: 26–29, 54–55) points out, tense markers can be associated with other kinds of meaning as well, including presuppositions, implicatures, idiomatic uses, and polysemous senses. These factors often combine to create a complex range of possible uses even for tense markers whose basic semantic content is relatively simple. We can illustrate some of the challenges involved in analyzing tense systems by looking at the simple present tense in English.


    1 A. N. Prior (1957); Arthur N. Prior (1967).


    21.2: Tense relates Topic Time to the Time of Utterance is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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