IULC Publications

A Formal Semantics of Tense, Aspect, and Aktionsarten

By Werner Saurer

This thesis offers a theory of tense, aspect, temporal adverbials and Aktionsarten (or 'action types') in English, using the formal apparatus of a Montague grammar. Tensed sentences are treated as complex constructions consisting of a tenseless 'nucleus' and tense; nuclei serve as operands for various syntactic operations, and denote sets of properties of individual events. It is argued that the proper conception of tense crucially involves the notion of time frame; tenses are held to determine the relation between the time of utterance of a sentence and its time frame, not between the former and the time of the event. Finally, the English perfect and progressive are seen as a binary opposition along the axis of perfective / imperfective, and the relation between these and various temporal adverbials is explored.

113 pages
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