Ileana Baciu 2010-2011 Verbal Categories in English

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Ileana Baciu 2010-2011 Verbal Categories in English

THE CATEGORY OF TENSE

1.Time vs. Tense

1.1. The generally accepted definition of the category of Tense, as a category delimiting the part of speech verb, explains Tense as representing ‘the chronological order of events in timeas perceived by the speaker at the moment of speaking’. The notions to be accounted for in this definition are: chronological order, Time and moment of speaking. These notions will be clarified in what follows.

1.1.1.Such notions as change or motion – the latter understood as change in location –, which, as we have seen, are important notions in the conceptual/semantic delimitation of situation/eventuality types, are possible only through and in the representation of Time. Moreover, as already mentioned, the conceptual properties of a ‘situation’ are visible only as the situation unfolds in Time.

To exemplify, ‘the presence of a thing in one place and its non-presence at the same place can be perceived by a human subject if and only if these two contradictory properties are placed sequentially, one after another, that is in ‘Time’ (Stefanescu 1988:216). What this actually means is that ‘Time ‘ (just like Space) is the form of our experience of the world. This means that (for human beings) Time is an epistemic notion not an ontological notion[1].

If Time can be viewed as being not a determination of outward phenomena, then it has to do with neither shape or form. Currently, this want is supplied by analogies and the course of Time is represented by a line progressing to infinity. This linear representation of Time preserves the sequential character (i.e. chronological order) of our perception of the world. We perceive Time in the same way we perceive Space, i.e. we cannot live in two times simultaneously as we cannot, at the same time, occupy two spatial locations. It means that when Time is measured by lived-through eventualities the measurement is unidirectional, i.e. forwards.

Time is a single unbounded dimension, conceptually analogous to Space. Just as an orientation point is needed to locate positions in space, so an orientation point is needed to locate situations in time.

As already suggested in the previous chapter, in natural languages the basic orientation point is the time of utterance (UT-T) (i.e. the moment of speaking), which is always the Present, that is to say that linguistic communication centers at the speaker. All linguistic expressions (such as: adverbs : here,there,tomorrow etc.; pronouns: I, you, this,that) that are related to the time of speech are known as deictic (i.e. pointing) expressions. The speaker’s centrality enables the identification of time and place. It also implies an organizing consciousness which provides a temporal standpoint ‘from which the speaker invites his audience to consider the event’ (Smith 1991:138).

Every sentence has a temporal standpoint(identified as AS-T), in simple cases the same as the temporal location of the situation (EV-T). Generally sentences about the Present have a present standpoint, and sentences about the Past and Future have past and future standpoints, respectively.

As already mentioned, Time is conventionally represented as a straight line stretching in both directions from Utterance Time. Such a representation is given in (1) below:

(1) Time line:------UT-T------

PastPresent Future

On the Time line, times and situations are located at moments or intervals relative to the Time of utterance. The situations may occur in order (i.e. sequentially) or they may overlap, wholly or in part.

All sentences give us temporal information which helps us locate in Time the situation talked about. This temporal information is given by Tense morphemes and time adverbials.

1.1.2Tense is a functional category, expressed by a set of verbal inflections or other verbal forms, that expresses ‘a temporal relation to an orientation point’( Smith, 1991).

Tenses have consistent relational values: anteriority, posteriority or simultaneity. Tenses may have a fixed or flexible orientation. Tenses with fixed orientation are always related to UT-T. Whenever tenses, or rather, Tense systems are oriented to the moment of speech (i.e. the speaker) we say that they are used deictically (i.e. they are interpreted as pointing expressions, just like adverbs (tomorrow, now, here, there) or pronouns (this, that, I, you)).

The traditional term for tenses that relate to UT-T is absolute tenses. Tenses that relate to an orientation time other than UT-T are known as relative tenses .

Not all temporal reference is made by Tense. In English, the Future is indicated by another type of morpheme, the modal auxiliary shall/will. It is also common to have a combination of present tense (or present tense progressive in English) and future time adverbial that indicates the future, sometimes called Futurate.

Some languages have tenses that indicate Present, Past and Future. Some others have a tense distinction between past and non-past, still others have a distinction between present and non-present. Some languages (e.g. Mandarin Chinese, Malay, Classical Hebrew) do not have the functional category of Tense. For these languages temporal location is expressed directly by adverbials and indirectly by (viewpoint) aspect.

There are also languages where tenses contribute temporal location as well as aspectual value, i.e. aspectual viewpoint may also be conveyed by Tense. The French ‘Impairfait’ and the Romanian ‘Imperfect’, for instance, may also convey a general imperfective viewpoint. In English, as we have seen, the expression of aspectual viewpoint is independent of Tense.

1.2.Temporal Adverbials

Alongside Tense, temporal adverbials help us locate in time the situations talked about. As we have seen in our discussion of Aspect, temporal adverbials also contribute to the aspectual interpretation of sentences. The classification we adopt has been standardly recognized since Bennett and Hall-Partee (1972,1978) and Smith (1978), and the list below has been borrowed from Crainiceanu (1997).

Temporal adverbials fall into the following classes: (a) locating adverbials (Smith 1978/)1991) or frame adverbials (Bennett &Hall Partee, 1972); (b) duration adverbials; (c) completive adverbials (Smith, 1991) or containers; (d) frequency adverbials.

Our discussion of temporal adverbials will consider first those under (b) and (c) above, i.e. duration adverbials and completive adverbials, respectively, because these types of adverbials also have an aspectual value, requiring compatibility with the situation type.

A. Duration adverbials include the following expressions: for three weeks/a month/a day, for a while, since the war/Christmas, at night, all the afternoon, half the afternoon, for hours, all the time,over the weekend, through August, a few days, during the war, always, permanently, all day long, throughout, from June to/till October, all day/night long, etc.

Duration adverbials have been defined as:

- indicating the duration of the described event by specifying the length of time that is asserted to take (Bennett & Hall- Partee, 1978);

- expressing measures of time that are not specifically confined to future or past (Quirk, 1985)

- contributing to the location of a situation in time (Smith, 1991)

The definitions above suggest that duration adverbials have aspectual value: they are compatible with atelic sentences and odd with telics, that is to say that duration adverbials are sensitive to the aspectual character of the eventuality description they combine with. They are restricted to homogeneous eventualities/situations (processes and states) as the examples below indicate:

(2)(i) Susan was asleep for two hours (atelic)

(ii) Andrew swam for three hours (atelic)

(iii) (?)John wrote a/the report for two hours (telic)

(iv) *The train arrived late for 2 hours

De Swart (1998) adopting current views (Vet, 1994, Moens,1987 and others) points out that duration adverbials bring in a notion of boundedness.

According to Smith (1991) the role of a single durational with atelic situation types is to locate an eventuality within the stated interval,. The interpretation of the sentences above is that the situation denoted by the predicate (the verb phrase =VP) lasts at least as long as the denotation of the durative adverbial. Whenever the situation type features and the adverbial features are compatible, the standard interpretation of the adverbial is to locate the situation within the stated interval.

Whenever telic events occur in the context of duration adverbials there is a clash between the aspectual properties of the situation type and the aspectual properties of the adverbials. Such clashes are resolved by a shift in the value of the verb constellation which receive a marked interpretation. De Swart (1998) building on ideas developed by Moens (1987) assumes that the contextual reinterpretation is made possible by the process called coercion.[2]

Instantaneous atelic eventualities (semelfactives)[3] in the scope of durative adverbials and durative telic verb constellations (accomplishments) are reinterpreted as atelic/durative in the context of durationals:

(3)(i) I read a book for a few minutes.

(ii) Jerry wrote a report for two hours.

(iii) John knocked on the door for two hours.

The event of book -reading and report-writing is coerced into a process; so is the semelfactive, which gives the sentence an iterative reading (i.e. the knocking is that of a process of the multiple- event type; actually an instantaneous atelic eventuality is interpreted as ‘durative’). The two telic events (3a,b) are not interpreted as involving natural endpoints. It is to be noticed that the direct object NPs are indefinite.

In the case of accomplishments with definite NPs in object position the sentence is interpreted as a process of the multiple-event type (i.e. an iterative reading) or as a state (i.e. iterative/habitual reading); the same interpretation is valid for achievement predicates. It is true that in the examples below the form of the adverbial crucially contributes to the habitual reading:

(4)(i)John played the sonata for 2 hours.

(ii) For years, Mary went to school in the morning.

(iii) For months, the train arrived late.

We think that a distinction should be made between the example in (4c) above and the example borrowed from Dowty (1979) and given in (4’) below. In this latter case, (as already mentioned) the entire situation is interpreted as a process (habitual of the multiple-event type) due to the uncountable NP in direct object position, i.e. the adverbial takes in its scope a process predication not an achievement predication:

(4’)All that summer, John found crabgrass in his yard

We have to stress the fact, acknowledged by linguists, that the felicity of an aspectual reinterpretation is strongly dependent on linguistic context and knowledge of the world as the example below indicates. In this case there is no possible shifted interpretation and the sentence is odd:

(5)(??)Mary reached the top for an hour

B. Completive adverbials are also known as containers (or adverbials of the interval (Smith, 1991)) and include expressions like in 2 hours, within two months, and their role is to locate a situation/eventuality at an interval during which the event is completed/culminates.

Aspectually, completive adverbials are telic. The assumption, then, is that they are compatible with telic eventualities and odd with atelics. The examples below (borrowed from Smith 1991:157) confirm this assumption:

(6)(i)John drew a circle in five seconds

(ii)Mary wrote a sonnet in ten minutes

(iii)?Bill swam laps in an hour

(iv)?Mary believed in ghosts in an hour

Since completives denote an interval within which the situation occurred/took place, the atelic situations in (6iii,iv) are difficult to interpret. If they can be understood at all, they impose an ingressive interpretation to the entire sentence, in the sense that the adverbials refer to an interval elapsed before the beginning of the situation and not to an interval during which the situation occurs. Depending on linguistic context and knowledge of the world the sentence in (6iii) above may also be reinterpreted as telic in the context of completive adverbials, i.e. the reinterpretation may ascribe a natural endpoint to the eventuality. The possible readings for (6iii) would be as in (7i,ii) below and (7iii) for (6iv):

(7)(i)Bill swam his planned number of laps (with)in an hour.

(ii)In/After an hour, Bill swam his laps.

(iii)At the end of/after an hour she began to believe in ghosts.

As far as (6iv) is concerned, the eventuality is taken as inchoative, as the paraphrase in (7iii) shows. The inchoative is an Achievement and has the ingressive interpretation that standardly occurs for achievements (and semelfactives, for that matter) with completive adverbials as in the following examples:

(8)(i) They reached the top in ten minutes.

(ii) He won the race in ten minutes.

(iii) She knocked at the door in ten minutes.

Another clash is to be noticed with the imperfective viewpoint. Telic adverbials are incompatible with the progressive aspect. According to Smith (1991:159), in general, all imperfectives in combination with completive adverbials have an ingressive reading, i.e. the eventualities occurs at the end of the time interval referred to by the adverbial. The example below has such a reading:

(9)In an hour, Bill was walking to work.

C. Frequency adverbials also give information that contributes to the temporal location of a situation (Smith 1991). Specifically they indicate the recurrent pattern of situations within the reference interval. The adverbial expression of frequency reinforces the notion of repetition, iteration:

(10)(i)Samuel cycles to work most days, every day.

(ii) We always/often went to the mountains in wintertime

As already mentioned such sentences express a series of individual events which, as a whole, make a state of the habitual type. Examples of frequency adverbials are: frequently, on Sundays, never, sometimes, often, whenever, monthly, daily, once a week, every week/month/year, usually, seldom, etc.

D. Locating Adverbials (or Frame Adverbials). This type of adverbials contribute to the specification of Situation Time or Assertion Time. Generally, sentences with one time adverbial specify Assertion Time.

As the name ‘frame’ adverbial indicates, they refer to‘ an interval of time within which the described action is asserted to have taken place’ (Bennett& Hall Partee, 1978). The situation talked about in the sentence fills all or part of the time specified by the adverbial (Smith, 1991).

Just like Tense, frame adverbials require an orientation point, and just like Tense they mirror the three possible temporal relations: simultaneity, anteriority and posteriority. Frame adverbials have the role ‘to locate situations in time by relating them to other times or to other situations (Smith, 1991). According to the time of orientation they indicate we can distinguish three classes:

(i)Deictic adverbials: which are oriented to the time of utterance. Such adverbials are represented by the following expressions: now, today, last Sunday, last week, this week/year, tomorrow, next week, the day after tomorrow, tonight, a week ago, etc. As can be noticed, all adverbials in this class refer to some specific time span which is related to some other specific time span which is UT-T, but most of them give only the ‘maximal boundaries’ of the time span(s) in question (Klein, 1992)

(ii)Anaphoric adverbials include time expressions that ‘relate to a previously established time’ (Smith, 1978) such as : until, till, in the evening, on Sunday, at night, early, before, in three days, on Christmas, at lunchtime, two years later, in March, already, etc. In this case too, we have only the ‘maximal boundary’ of the time span in question.

(iii)Referential adverbials which refer to a time established by clock or calendar (Smith, 1978), such as: at six, August 19, in 1987, etc

The time adverbials that are explicitly related to the time of utterance are known as ‘anchored’ adverbials. Deictic adverbs are ‘anchored’ adverbials. The last two classes are known as being ‘unanchored’, i.e. they are not anchored to the utterance time, their interpretation is made possible by an orientation point other than the time of utterance.

According to their form, frame adverbials can be (i)simple or (ii)complex.

(i)Simple adverbials include expressions like :now, yesterday, tomorrow

(ii) Complex adverbials exhibit two types of complexity:

(a) the complex adverbial consists of two or several concatenated adverbs: yesterday afternoon, tomorrow morning at 5. Complex time adverbials, in these cases, are taken as single units in temporal interpretation establishing the interval of time within which the described action is asserted to have taken place . For examples like the one below the complex adverbial, in conjunction with the tense morpheme, specifies AS-T:

(11)Bill visited us last Sunday afternoon.

b) the complex adverbial may consist of a preposition and a nominal, the entire group forming one constituent syntactically:

(12)Phyllis decorated the cake before last night.

In simple tense sentences (i.e. without morphological aspect) the relation between the EV-T and AS-T is taken to be simultaneous, or rather EV-T is included/within AS-T. In such cases, we may consider the adverbial, in conjunction to the Tense morpheme to specify EV-T. To conclude, with simple tense forms in root clauses the Event/Situation time is non-distinct from Assertion Time regarding their relative order to Utterance Time, hence we can assume that with simple tenses adverbials actually specify EV-T.

2.0. The syntax and interpretation of tenses in root sentences

As we have already mentioned there are three times that are required for the temporal-aspectual interpretation of sentences. The three times involved are Utterance Time (UT-T) , Assertion Time (AS-T) and Situation Time(Sit-T), also known in the literature as Event Time (EV-T)

Adopting current approaches we define Utterance Time as the time at which the event of uttering the sentence takes place and it may function as an ‘anchoring’ event for another event or time interval defined as Assertion Time. AS-T has a dual role: it is part of the system of temporal location for complex sentences, and it gives the temporal standpoint of a sentence i.e. the locus from which the situation talked about is presented.

The Assertion Time is explicitly given by the finite component of an utterance, i.e. by the tense morpheme on the verb or auxiliary and represents the ‘anchoring’ time for the interval when the situation denoted by the predicate occurs. Locating adverbials like yesterday, on Sunday etc. generally specify Assertion Time.

Event Time is the time interval at which the situation ‘occurs’ or ‘holds’. It is related to whatever is expressed by the nonfinite component of theutterance (the ‘lexical (semantic) content’ of the utterance).

Tense is defined as a relation between AS-T and UT-T, while Aspect relates EV-T to AS-T. We have also mentioned the fact that in the simple tense forms EV-T and AS-T time are non-distinct regarding their relative order to UT-T and in such cases UT-T can be taken to be the orientation/reference point for the time of the situation/event.