The only obligatory temporal expression in English is tense, yet Hans Reichenbach (1947) has argued convincingly that the simplest sentence is understood in terms of three temporal notions. Additional possibilities for a simple sentence are limited: English sentences have one time adverbial each. It is not immediately clear how to resolve these matters, that is, how (if at all) Reichenbach's account can be reconciled with the facts of English. This paper attempts to show that they can be reconciled, and presents (...) an analysis of temporal specification that is based directly on Reichenbach's account.Part I is devoted to a study of the way the three times—speech time, reference time, event time—are realized and interpreted. The relevant syntactic structures and their interaction and interpretation are examined in detail. Part II discusses how a grammar should deal with time specification, and proposes a set of interpretive rules. The study offers an analysis of simple sentences, sentences with complements, and habitual sentences. It is shown that tense and adverbials function differently, depending on the structure in which they appear. The temporal system is relational: the orientation and values of temporal expressions are not fixed, but their relational values are consistent. This consistency allows the statement of principles of interpretation. (shrink)

In this short article I discuss the variae lectiones in Il. 8.408 and 8.422. All manuscripts have ὅττι νοήσω (408) and ὅττι νοήσῃ (422), but many editors have preferred to print Aristarkhos’ corrections ὅττί κεν εἴπω and ὅττί κεν εἴπῃ respectively. By comparing the instances in which ὅττί κεν εἴπω/ῃς/ῃ and ὅττι νοήσω/ῃς/ῃ are used and by delving deeper into the use of the modal particle (MP) in epic Greek, I argue that the transmitted readings ὅττι νοήσω (408) and ὅττι (...) νοήσῃ (422) should have preference, because they have no MP and refer to repeated actions, whereas the construction ὅττί κεν εἴπω/ῃς/ῃ, which has an MP, refers to a more specific instance (which is why it has an MP in the first place). (shrink)

Early Vedic possesses a chameleon-like verb form called the injunctive, whose uses partly overlap with, and alternate with, those of the subjunctive, optative and imperative moods, and with the past and present tenses. Being morphologically tenseless and moodless, the injunctive has attracted interest from a comparative Indo-European perspective because it appears to be an archaic layer of the finite verb morphology. Its place and function in the verb system, however, remains disputed. In Kiparsky 1968 I argued that it is tenseless (...) and moodless not only morphologically but also functionally, and that injunctive forms acquire modal and temporal interpretations only contextually. The injunctive’s only intrinsic grammatical features are aspect, voice and person/number. This paper provides new evidence for that view (section 1), and goes on to argue that such underspecified forms in paradigms support morpheme-based theories of morphology over realizational theories such as Paradigm Function Morphology (section 2), and that the rise and loss of the injunctive is connected to other changes in the pre- and post-Vedic aspect, tense, and mood system (section 3). (shrink)

Paradigms that combine synthetic (one-word) and periphrastic forms in complementary distribution have loomed large in discussions of morphological blocking (McCloskey and Hale 1983, Poser 1986, Andrews 1990). Such composite paradigms potentially challenge the lexicalist claim that words and sentences are organized by distinct subsystems of grammar. They are of course grist for the mill of Distributed Morphology, a theory which revels in every kind of interpenetration of morphology and syntax. But they have prompted even Paradigm Function Morphologists to introduce syntactic (...) constructions into their morphology. I shall argue, instead, for a lexicalist treatment, which is based on the idea that blocking is a filtering device that applies to the output of the generative system, rather than operating directly on its derivations (Wunderlich 1996). I present this approach to blocking in section 1, and show in section 2 how it deals with the intricate composite verb paradigm of Latin, where the periphrastic perfect passive supplies the missing pieces of an otherwise synthetic inflectional system. This part of Latin verb morphology has recently been treated from the perspective of Distributed Morphology and Paradigm Function Morphology. I compare my solution to these treatments and argue that it is superior in two respects: it predicts the complementarity of the synthetic and periphrastic formations and yet allows their respective morphological and syntactic properties to be captured, and it readily covers some basic data that the other analyses get wrong. (shrink)