The structure of the Japanese language

In the early seventies, Barbara Partee suggested that tenses in natural languages mi ght not be operators , but pronouns  Like pronouns , they have indexical , anaphoric, and bound variable uses In this short presentation, I wil l discuss one more parallel between tenses and pronouns S ometimes, tense features are not interpreted at all , a phenomenon traditionally cal led ' sequence of tense '  Here are some illustrations:

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More Structural Analogies Between Pronouns and Tenses

Acknowledgements 1. Introduction 2. The semantics of predicational adverbs 3. The scopal basis of adverb licensing 4. Arguments for right-adjunction 5. Noncanonical orders and the structure of VP 6. Event-internal adjuncts 7. Adjunct licensing in the auxrange 8. Adjuncts in clause-initial projections 9. Conclusions and prospects Notes References Indexes.

/pdf/the-syntax-of-adjuncts-11n580ciqp.pdf

The Syntax of Adjuncts

The logic of decision and action

任何一种描写语法都是以某种描写框架为基础的,不管这种框架如何不够完善,但它总是反映了描写的目标和作者的理论倾向.在《当代英语语法》(A Grammar of Contemporary English,以下简称GCE)中,Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech和Jan Svartvik等四位作者的目标是试图系统地、综合性地描写英语的表层结构,分析结构的语义及其在情境里的用法.通读全书后我们感到,这个目标并不依傍于任何一种语言理论,因为迄今为止每

谈谈A Grammar of Contemporary English对于分句与句子问题的若干处理

List of abbreviations. Preface. 1. Introduction. 2. Tense and temporal adverbials in simple sentences. 3. Previous analyses of tenses in embedded clauses. 4. Sequence-of-tense phenomena in complement clauses. 5. Sequence-of-tense phenomena in adjunct clauses. 6. Tense and de re attitudes. Appendix: The syntax and semantics of tenses in English and Japanese. References. Index.

https://www.sfs.uni-tuebingen.de/~astechow/Lehre/WS08_9/Ogihara-tense_book.pdf

Tense, attitudes, and scope

Temporal reference in English and Japanese

This article presents a formal semantic account of the ambiguity associated with the -te iru construction in Japanese. This construction is known to receive at least two distinct interpretations: on-going process interpretations analogous to the English progressive and so-called resultative interpretations. The latter are sub-classified by some researchers into concrete result state readings and experiential state readings. Based upon the distributional properties of adverbials, we suggest that progressive interpretations of DURATIVE VERBS and concrete result state interpretations of INTANTANEOUS VERBS should be grouped together, as opposed to experiential readings of DURATIVE or INTANTANEOUS VERBS. To account for the distinction between these two types of interpretation, the proposed system analyzes the -te iru form into the morpheme -te, which is claimed to bear a perfect feature, and the aspectual auxiliary iru. Our proposal for the aspectual auxiliary iru is an extension of Landman's (1992) proposal and offers a unified account of the multiple interpretations of -te iru on the basis of a new analysis of INTANTANEOUS VERBS.

The Ambiguity of the -te iru form in Japanese

L'A. propose une interpretation du phenomene des sequences de temps du type John said that Mary was sick qui considere le temps passe de la proposition complement comme etant semantiquement vide. Cette proposition est developpee sous forme d'une regle de suppression des temps en syntaxe et d'une analyse de se des attitudes en semantique

The semantics of tense in embedded clauses

This article deals with the semantics of “double-access” sentences. They are defined as English sentences which have a past tense morpheme in the matrix clause and a present tense morpheme in a subordinate clause in the immediate scope of the matrix past tense. They receive a very peculiar interpretation, which we will refer to as a “double-access interpretation.” The episode described in the embedded clause makes reference to two times: the time referred to by the matrix predicate and the utterance time of the whole sentence. Previous studies on this construction are largely descriptive and do not attempt to analyze it formally, with one important exception. Abusch (1991) addresses the problems connected with the construction and proposes that double-access interpretations involvede re attitudes about intervals. Her proposal contains an important insight and provides one possible account of the double-access construction. My proposal was independently developed at approximately the same time as Abusch's and offers an alternative explanation for the phenomena. I consider a series of hypotheses and conclude that double-access readings involvede re attitude reports about state individuals. This account is couched in an eventuality-based framework and employs the techniques proposed by Cresswell and von Stechow (1982). In order to yield the desired reading, the tense must first adjoin to the complement S, then to the matrix S, leaving two traces in the process.

Toshiyuki Ogihara

Papers

Tense, attitudes, and scope

Temporal reference in English and Japanese

The Ambiguity of the -te iru form in Japanese

The semantics of tense in embedded clauses

Double-access sentences and reference to states