Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vsgnj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T15:19:14.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Present Tense

from Part IV - Locating and Inferring

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2022

By
Corien Bary
Edited by
Daniel Altshuler
Daniel Altshuler
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Get access

Summary

Tenses are one of the main devices for encoding time in language. Philosophers’ interest in tense goes back at least to Aristotle who discusses in his De Interpretatione whether or not sentences about the future have a truth value. While philosophers were originally mainly interested in the future tense, work in semantics has shown in the last decades that the present tense poses many challenges as well, challenges that are interesting for linguists and philosophers alike. This paper discusses two particularly complex present tense phenomena: the present tense in complements of indirect speech and attitude reports, and the historical present. It argues that a holistic understanding of the present tense would require collaboration between formal semantics and other fields of language study, such as psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics, philosophy of language, mind and fiction, literature study and narratology.

Keywords

present tensetense semanticsdouble accesshistorical presentlinguistic experimentsnarratology
Type
Chapter
Information
Linguistics Meets Philosophy , pp. 217 - 242
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abusch, D. (1994). Sequence of tense revisited: Two semantic accounts of tense in intensional contexts. In Kamp, H. (Ed.), Ellipsis, Tense and Questions (pp. 87–139). Dyana-2 Esprit Basic research Project 6852, Deliverable R2.2.B.Google Scholar
Abusch, D. (1997). Sequence of tense and temporal de re. Linguistics and Philosophy, 20, 1–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Altshuler, D., Hacquard, V., Roberts, T., & White, A.. (2015). On double access, cessation and parentheticality. In D’Antonio, S., Moroney, M., & Little, C. R. (Eds.), Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT), Vol. 25 (pp. 18–37).Google Scholar
Anand, P., & Toosarvandani, M. (2016). Unifying the canonical, historical, and play-by-play present. Sinn und Bedeutung, 21, 19–34.Google Scholar
Anand, P., & Toosarvandani, M. (2018a). No explanation for the historical present: Temporal sequencing and discourse. Sinn und Bedeutung, 22, 73–90.Google Scholar
Anand, P., & Toosarvandani, M. (2018b). Unifying the canonical, historical and play-by-play present. Sinn und Bedeutung 21, 19–34.Google Scholar
Banfield, A. (1982). Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language of Fiction. London: Routledge & Kegan Pau.Google Scholar
Bary, C. (2012). Tense in Ancient Greek reports. Journal of Greek Linguistics, 12, 29–50.Google Scholar
Bary, C. (2016). Why the Historical Present Is Not the Mirror Image of Free Indirect Discourse. Talk at the Perspectivization Workshop at the 39th GLOW.Google Scholar
Bary, C., Altshuler, D., Syrett, K., & de Swart, P. (2018). Factors licensing embedded present in speech reports. Sinn und Bedeutung, 22, 127–142.Google Scholar
Bühler, K. (1934/1990). The Presentational Function of Language. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Translation of Sprachtheorie: Die Darstellungsfunktion der Sprache. Jena: Gustav Fischer.Google Scholar
Caenepeel, M. (1989). Aspect, Temporal Ordering and Perspective in Fiction. Dissertation, University of Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Costa, R. (1972). Sequence of tenses in that-clauses. In Peranteau, P., Levi, J., & Phares, G. (Eds.), Papers from the Eighth Regional Meeting (pp. 41–51). Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Cresswell, M. J., & von Stechow, A. (1982). De re belief generalized. Linguistics and Philosophy, 5, 503–535.Google Scholar
Doron, E. (1991). Point of view as a factor of content. In Moore, S. & Wyner, A. Z. (Eds.), Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT), Vol. 1 (pp. 51–64).Google Scholar
Dowty, D. R. (1986). The effects of aspectual class on the temporal structure of discourse: semantics or pragmatics? Linguistics and Philosophy, 9, 37–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckardt, R. (2015). The Semantics of Free Indirect Discourse: How Texts Allow Us to Mind-Read and Eavesdrop. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Enç, M. (1987). Anchoring conditions for tense. Linguistic Inquiry, 18, 633–657.Google Scholar
Heim, I. (1994). Comments on Abusch’s theory of tense. In Kamp, H. (Ed.), Ellipsis, Tense and Questions (pp. 143–170). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Kamp, H. (1971). Formal properties of ‘now’. Theoria, 37, 227–273.Google Scholar
Kamp, H. (2012). Double Access Readings and Conversation (Speaking about the Present and Temporal Perspective Shift). Talk at LENLS 9.Google Scholar
Kaplan, D. (1989). Demonstratives: An essay on the semantics, logic, metaphysics and epistemology of demonstratives and other indexicals. In Almog, J., Perry, , & Wettstein, H. (Eds.), Themes from Kaplan (pp. 481–563). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Klecha, P. (2015). Double Access. Unpublished manuscript, University of Connecticut.Google Scholar
Klecha, P. (2018). A formal pragmatic account of double access. Sinn und Bedeutung, 22, 19–36.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1979a). Attitudes de dicto and de se. The Philosophical Review, 88, 513–543.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1979b). Attitudes de dicto and de se. The Philosophical Review, 88, 513–543.Google Scholar
MacFarlane, J. (2003). Future contingents and relative truth. The Philosophical Quarterly, 53, 321–336.Google Scholar
Maier, E. (2015). Quotation and unquotation in Free Indirect Discourse. Mind & Language, 30, 345–373.Google Scholar
McGilvray, J. A. (1974). A proposal for the semantics of tenses in English. Montreal Working Papers in Linguistics, 1, 29–44.Google Scholar
Nijk, A. A. (2019). Tense Switching in Classical Greek: A Cognitive Approach. Dissertation, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Ogihara, T. (1995). Double-access sentences and reference to states. Natural Language Semantics, 3, 177–210.Google Scholar
Ogihara, T., & Sharvit, Y. (2012). Embedded tenses. In Binnick, R. I. (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Tense and Aspect (pp. 638–668). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Partee, B. H. (2011). Formal semantics: Origins, issues, early impact. In Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication Vol. 6 (pp. 1–52). Manhattan, Kansas New Prairie Press.Google Scholar
Perry, J. (1977). Frege on demonstratives. The Philosophical Review, 86(4), 474–497.Google Scholar
Prior, A. N. (1955). Diodoran modalities. Philosophical Quarterly, 5, 205–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quine, W.V. O. (1956). Quantifiers and propositional attitudes. The Journal of Philosophy, 53, 177–187.Google Scholar
Schaden, G. (2013). Formalizing current relevance. Sinn und Bedeutung, 17, 491–508.Google Scholar
Schlenker, P. (2004). Context of thought and context of utterance: A note on Free Indirect Discourse and the historical present. Mind & Language, 19, 279–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sharvit, Y. (2008). The puzzle of free indirect discourse. Linguistics and Philosophy, 31, 353–395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, C. (1978). The syntax and interpretation of temporal expressions in English. Linguistics and Philosophy, 2, 43–99.Google Scholar
Sweetser, E., & Fauconnier, G. (1996). Cognitive links and domains: Basic aspects of Mental Space Theory. In Fauconnier, G. & Sweetser, E. (Eds.), Spaces, Worlds and Grammar (pp. 1–28). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
van Krieken, K., Sanders, J., & Hoeken, H. (2016). Blended viewpoints, mediated witnesses: A cognitive linguistic approach to news narratives. In Dancygier, B., Lu, W.-L., & Verhagen, A. (Eds.), Viewpoint and the Fabric of Meaning: Form and Use of Viewpoint Tools across Languages and Modalities (pp. 145–168). Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
von Stechow, A. (1995). On the proper treatment of tense. In Simons, M. & Galloway, T. (Eds.), Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT), Vol. 5 (pp. 362–386).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Present Tense
  • Edited by Daniel Altshuler, University of Oxford
  • Book: Linguistics Meets Philosophy
  • Online publication: 06 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108766401.012
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Present Tense
  • Edited by Daniel Altshuler, University of Oxford
  • Book: Linguistics Meets Philosophy
  • Online publication: 06 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108766401.012
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Present Tense
  • Edited by Daniel Altshuler, University of Oxford
  • Book: Linguistics Meets Philosophy
  • Online publication: 06 October 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108766401.012
Available formats
×