Time and the Verb A Guide to Tense and Aspect

by Binnick, Robert I.

• ISBN13: 9780195062069
• ISBN10: 019506206X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1991-06-20
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This comprehensive examination of tense and grammatical aspect provides fascinating insight into how languages indicate distinctions of time. Providing an in-depth survey of the scholarship from the ancient Greeks through the 1980s, Time and the Verb explains and evaluates every major issue and theory, concentrating on familiar Classical and modern European languages. An invaluable reference tool as well as a major contribution to the history of linguistic sciences, this book will be the standard against which future work on tense and aspect is measured.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations and Symbols	p. xvii
Tense
Ancient Theories of the Simple Tenses	p. 3
The Problem of Tense	p. 3
Tense in Greek	p. 9
The Greek Verb	p. 13
The Relations of the Tenses	p. 17
The Stoic-Varronian Theory of Tense and Aspect	p. 20
Traditional Theories of the Complex Tenses	p. 27
General and Rational Grammar	p. 27
The Problem of Complex Tenses	p. 32
Theories of Relative Tense	p. 37
Aspectual and Other Theories	p. 43
Tense in Non-Indo-European Languages	p. 50
Jespersen's Structuralist Approach to Tense	p. 53
Retrospective and Prospective Tenses	p. 60
Modern Theories of the Subordinate Tenses	p. 66
Mood and Tense	p. 66
Mood in Subordinate Structures	p. 74
Tense in Subordinate Structures	p. 82
Sequence of Tense Rules	p. 86
Non-finites and Tense	p. 93
The Uses of the Perfect Tenses	p. 98
Context and Autonomy	p. 104
Multidimensional Theories: Reichenbach and Bull	p. 109
Allen on the Futurates	p. 119
Beyond Theories of Tense	p. 126
Aspect
The Problem of Aspect	p. 135
Slavic Aspect	p. 135
Aspect and Aktionsarten	p. 139
Opposition and Markedness	p. 149
The Analysis of Greek	p. 158
Explanation in Aspectology	p. 170
Aristotelian Aspect	p. 170
The Ontology of Situations	p. 179
States	p. 183
Activities and Events	p. 188
Telicness and Performances	p. 194
Phase	p. 197
Phase and the Aktionsarten	p. 202
Defining Aspect	p. 207
Formal Semantics of Tense and Aspect	p. 215
Theories of Semantics	p. 215
Referential Semantics	p. 217
Formal, Truth-Conditional Semantics	p. 224
Montague Semantics	p. 231
Semantic Interpretation	p. 236
The Formal Semantics of the Priorian Tense Operators	p. 241
The Present and the Future	p. 247
Semantic Interpretation of the Tense Operators	p. 253
Complex Tenses and Compositionality	p. 257
The Perfect	p. 264
Translation and Interpretation of the Perfect	p. 266
The Compositionality of the Perfect	p. 268
The Futurate Perfect	p. 277
The Progressive	p. 281
Formal Semantics of the Progressive	p. 290
Imperfective and Perfective	p. 295
Temporal Adverbials	p. 300
Time Adverbials and the Adverbial Scope Paradox	p. 310
Multidimensional Indexing	p. 313
Events and Aktionsarten	p. 319
A Formal Semantic Theory with Events	p. 326
Situation Semantics	p. 330
Beyond the Semantics of Tense and Aspect	p. 339
Pragmatics and Sequence of Tense Phenomena	p. 339
The R-point Solution and Its Failure	p. 342
Syntactic Theories of SOT and Their Failure	p. 353
Semantic Problems for the Syntactic Solution	p. 365
Pragmatic Theories of Tense and Aspect: Use and Meaning	p. 371
Aspect, Foregrounding, and Backgrounding	p. 378
Salience and Relevance	p. 381
Shift of Past to Present: The Perfect	p. 383
Modal Functions of the Perfect	p. 387
Shift of Past to Present: The Historical Tenses	p. 388
Shift of Future to Present: The Futurates	p. 389
Shift of Present and Future to Past	p. 390
Toward a Formal Theory of Discourse Tense: Events and Discourses	p. 393
The Pragmatics of Discourse Tense	p. 405
Perspective	p. 415
Orientation	p. 426
Localization	p. 431
Tenseless Languages: The Problem of the Semitic Verb	p. 434
The Problem of Waw and the Pragmatics of the Semitic Verb	p. 439
"Tenseless" Languages	p. 444
Beyond Tense and Aspect	p. 447
Summary	p. 452
Tense	p. 452
Topical Summary	p. 455
Aspect	p. 456
The Formal Semantics of Tense and Aspect	p. 458
Pragmatics	p. 460
Envoi	p. 462
Notes	p. 463
References	p. 507
Index	p. 525
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