Aspect matters in sentential temporal interpretation

Aspect matters in sentential temporal interpretation

Dr María J. ArcheUniversity of Greenwich, UK

[email protected] & 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 depressedBill’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)

TPZP RT T’(PRO) T VP

ZP(EvT) TP

RT T’

T VP

ZP(EvT)

• 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).

• 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)

TPZP RT T’(PRO) T VP

ZP(EvT) TP

RT T’

T VP

(PAST/∅)

ZP(EvT)

•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.

•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’

(6) Juan dijo que Marta estaba construyendo una casaJuan said that Marta be-impf-3ps building a house‘Juan said that Marta was building a house’

• BSR• SR

(7) Juan dijo que Marta estuvo enferma Juan say-pf-3ps Marta be-pf-ill

‘Juan said Marta was ill’

(8) Juan dijo que Marta estuvo construyendo una casaJuan said that Marta be-pf-3ps building a house‘J said that Marta was building a house’

BSR# SR

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 T’(PRO) T AspP

TT Asp’

Asp VP

EvT 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.

Ordering Predicate Tense Aspect

Within Present Imperfect

After Past Perfect

Before Future Prospective

TP T’ RT(=UTT) T AspP (after) TTi AsP’

AsP VP (after) EvT CP/TP’

RTi T’

T AspP(after) TTj Asp’

Asp VP (within)

ET

• 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).

depressed ----------|-----------------------say----------UT

(9) Juan said last week that Marta was depressed last month, but she got well quickly.

depressed ----------------------------------------------------------say----------UTT-----(10) Juan said last week that Marta was depressed. It all

started last month and she continues feeling that way.

BSR

SR

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 & Uribe-Etxebarria 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

• Statives: tend to obtain beyond the interval specified by the tense morpheme; thus, they overlap with other intervals mentioned in the discourse.

Properties of statives (Moens & Steedman 1988)

• 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.

Superinterval Property

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 PASTb. 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 AspP (after) TTi AsP’

AsP VP (after) EvT CP/TP’

RTi T’

T AspP(within) TTj Asp’

Asp VP (within)

ET

• Main TT binds subordinate RT• Subordinate RT co-refers 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.

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

(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

See Cable 2008 for English

TP T’ RT(=UTT) AspP (within) TTi AsP’

AsP VP (after) EvT CP/TP

RTi T’

T AspP(after) TTj Asp’

Asp VP (within)

ET

Ha dicho‘Has said’

Imperfect Past under present perfect

estabaBe-impf

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 deprimidaJuan 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 AspP (after) TTi AsP’

AsP VP (after) EvT CP/TP’

RTi T’

T AspP(within) TTj Asp’

Asp VP (within)

ET

• DAR is borne out also with present perfect.

Present perfect under past

References• Abusch, D. 1997. Sequence of Tense and Temporal de re.

Linguistics and Philosophy 20: 1-50.• Arche, M.J. 2006. Individuals in Time. Tense, Aspect and the

individual/stage distinction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. • Bertinetto 2001. On a frequent misunderstanding in the

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.

• Boogaart, R. 1999. Aspect and Temporal Ordering. A Contrastive Analysis of Dutchand English. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics.

• Cable, S. 2008. Topic Times, Binding and Sequence of Tense in English. Ms, Umass, Amherst.

• Cipria, A. and C. Roberts. 2000. Spanish Imperfecto and Pretérito: Truth Conditions and Aktionsart Effects in a Situation Semantics. Natural Language Semantics 8, 4: 297-347.

• Cresswell, M. and A. Stechow. 1982. De Re Belief Generalized. Linguistics and Philosophy 5: 503-535.

• Demirdache, H and M. Uribe-Etxebarría. 2000. The primitives of temporal relations. In Step by Step: Essays on Minimalist Syntax in Honor of Howard Lasnik, R. Martin, D. Michaels, and J. Uriagereka (eds.), 157–186. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

• Demirdache, H. and M. Uribe-Etxebarría. 2004. The syntax of time adverbs. In The Syntax of Time, J, Guéron and J. Lecarme (eds.), 143–179. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

• Enç, M. 1987. Anchoring conditions for tense. Linguistic Inquiry 18:633–657.

• Gennari, S. 2003. Tense meanings and temporal interpretation. Journal of Semantics 20: 35-71.

• Kusumoto, K. 2005. The Quantification Over Times in Natural Language. Natural Language Semantics 13:317–357

• Ladusaw, W. 1977. Some problems with tense in PTQ. Texas Linguistic Forum 6:89–102.

• Ogihara, T. 1995. Double-Access Sentences and Reference to States. Natural Language Semantics 3: 177-210.

• Ogihara, T. 2007. Tense and aspect in truth-conditional semantics. Lingua 117: 392–418.

• Stowell, T. 1993. Syntax of Tense. Ms, UCLA.• Stowell, T. 2007. The syntactic expression of tense. Lingua 117: 437–463.• Zagona, K. 1990. Times as temporal argument structure. Ms., University

of Washington, Seattle.