Tenseless Language Research Articles

Appropriate emotions and the metaphysics of time

Prior used our emotions to argue that tensed language cannot be translated by tenseless language. However, it is widely accepted that Mellor and MacBeath have shown that our emotions do not imply the existence of tensed facts. I criticise this orthodoxy. There is a natural and plausible view of the appropriateness of emotions which in combination with Prior’s argument implies the existence of tensed facts. The Mellor/MacBeath position does nothing to upset this natural view and therefore is not sufficient to block one drawing conclusions for the metaphysics of time from the nature of our emotions.

Past interpretation and graded tense in Medumba

This paper provides a formal semantic analysis of past interpretation in Medumba (Grassfields Bantu), a graded tense language. Based on original fieldwork, the study explores the empirical behavior and meaning contribution of graded past morphemes in Medumba and relates these to the account of the phenomenon proposed in Cable (Nat Lang Semant 21:219–276, 2013) for Gĩkũyũ. Investigation reveals that the behavior of Medumba gradedness markers differs from that of their Gĩkũyũ counterparts in meaningful ways and, more broadly, discourages an analysis as presuppositional eventuality or reference time modifiers. Instead, the Medumba markers are most appropriately analyzed as quantificational tenses. It also turns out that Medumba, though belonging to the typological class of graded tense languages, shows intriguing similarities to genuinely tenseless languages in allowing for temporally unmarked sentences and exploiting aspectual and pragmatic cues for reference time resolution. The more general cross-linguistic implication of the study is that the set of languages often subsumed under the label “graded tense” does not in fact form a natural class and that more case-by-case research is needed to refine this category.

A comparative account of the interpretation of temporal relations in narrative in Vietnamese and English

This paper provides a comparative account of the interpretation of temporal relations in Vietnamese and English narrative, using a bi-directional corpus of 3,082 clauses of narrative passages originally written in Vietnamese and their English translations and 3,124 clauses of narrative passages originally written in English and their Vietnamese translations. It is shown that the principles for the interpretation of temporal relations between situations in narrative are similar for both English and Vietnamese despite the fact that English has a well-developed tense system, while Vietnamese is a widely-known tenseless language. The principles are based on the temporal properties of situation aspect and the discourse relations between the clauses, which are elicited from pragmatic inferences.

Cross-Linguistic Temporal Reference

Tense, the grammaticalized marking of location in time, has played a central role in analyses of temporal reference even since before the inception of the formal study of meaning. However, research on a wide range of typologically diverse languages over the past 40 years has revealed that many languages do not have tenses and that there are a variety of other means, both linguistic and contextual, that affect temporal reference besides tense. These empirical findings refute the universality of tense and have significant implications for the role of tense in theoretical analyses of temporal reference. This review catalogues the means that affect temporal reference across tensed and tenseless languages, and offers a theoretical perspective on temporal reference that deemphasizes the centrality of tense.

Expanding the the notion of a tenseless language: Data from Anii

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There has been debate in recent years regarding the analysis of ‘tenseless languages’ (languages without overt tense marking). Some scholars (cf. Matthewson 2006) argue that such languages contain phonologically null tense marking to express temporal relations, while others (cf. Bittner 2005, Tonhauser 2011) claim that temporal interpretation in such cases comes from sources other than tense marking (e.g. context, aspectual marking, and/or Aktionsarten).</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;" lang="en-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> This presentation will contribute to this debate by providing and analyzing data on temporal and aspectual reference in the under-documented Kwa language Anii. This data will show that Anii is a tenseless language, though in a different way from many languages that have previously been so described. </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> An overview of Anii will show that the only potential tensed clauses in the language are those with future temporal reference and those marked with the far-past marker /bʊ̀ŋ</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">à</span></span></span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">/. I argue that the apparent future/non-future distinction is actually a realis/irrealis contrast and that the far-past marker is not a tense marker, but a Temporal Remoteness Marker.<br /></span></span></span></span></p>

Thai motion verbs paj and maa

Temporality in Thai and other Southeast Asian languages has traditionally been analyzed as based on pre-established European notions of tense and aspect, thus yielding problematic analyses. This paper offers an alternative way of analyzing and explaining temporality in Thai in its own terms. It focuses on the basic motion verbs paj and maa and shows that they can specify states of affairs in different domains, such as space, time, and attributes. Their usage relies on the close association of linguistic and pragmatic contexts. In the domain of time, Thai paj and maa display characteristics of both tense and aspect, showing that tense/aspect systems are substantially more diverse than has traditionally been assumed. The concept of reference plays an important role even in a tenseless language such as Thai.

Temporal interpretation in Hausa

This paper provides a formal analysis of the grammatical encoding of temporal information in Hausa (Chadic, Afro-Asiatic), thereby contributing to the recent debate on temporality in languages without overt tense morphology. By testing the hypothesis of covert tense against recently obtained empirical data, the study yields the result that Hausa is tenseless and that temporal reference is pragmatically inferred from aspectual, modal and contextual information. The second part of the paper addresses the coding of future in particular. It is shown that future time reference in Hausa is realized as a combination of a modal operator and a Prospective aspect marker, involving the modal meaning components of intention and prediction as well as event time shifting. The discussion relates directly to recent approaches to other seemingly tenseless languages such as St’at’imcets (Matthewson, Linguist Philos 29:673–713, 2006) or Paraguayan Guarani (Tonhauser, Linguist Philos 34:257–303, 2011b) and provides further evidence for the suggested analyses of the future markers in these languages.

Enduring moments: The extended present in Chinese speakers’ orientation to event time

Expectations and judgments about the flow of time appear to be cognitively and culturally malleable. Here we explored the possibility that this malleability is responsive to relevant linguistic influences. Specifically, we hypothesized that an extended present time frame, which compresses imminent and completed events into the present, is the default for speakers of tenseless languages. We examined descriptions and judgments of pictured actions by speakers of Chinese, a tenseless language, and of English, a tensed language. Experiment 1 elicited verbal descriptions of imminent, ongoing, and completed actions. Overall, Chinese descriptions adhered less closely to the implicit tri-phasic temporal framing than English ones (64% vs. 88%), instead showing a strong tendency to describe most events as ongoing. Although this tendency among Chinese speakers was easily adjusted when the tri-phasic temporal framework was imposed through instructions (Experiment 2), nonlinguistic tasks yielded data consistent with the extended present view. In Experiment 3, Chinese speakers produced a narrower time window (distance between the imminent and completion time points) than English speakers when they were asked to mark on a time line the points of occurrence for imminent, ongoing, and completed actions. Conversely, Experiment 4 showed that Chinese speakers produced a wider, extended time window than English speakers when they were asked to mark the actual durations of actions. Taken together, the results indicate that, in the domain of simple episodic actions, the absence of tense in Chinese leads speakers to focus by default on temporal continuity as opposed to temporal segmentation.

Temporal reference in a genuinely tenseless language: The case of Hausa

<p class="p1">In this paper, we provide an analysis of temporality in Hausa (Chadic, <span style="font-size: 10px;">Afro-Asiatic). By testing the hypothesis of covert tense (Matthewson 2006) against </span><span style="font-size: 10px;">empirical data, we show that Hausa is genuinely tenseless in the sense that the </span><span style="font-size: 10px;">grammar does not restrict the relation between reference time and utterance time. </span><span style="font-size: 10px;">Rather, temporal reference is pragmatically inferred from aspectual and contextual </span><span style="font-size: 10px;">information. We also argue that future time reference in Hausa is realized as a </span><span style="font-size: 10px;">combination of a modal operator and a prospective aspect, thus involving the modal </span><span style="font-size: 10px;">meaning components of intention and prediction as well as event time shifting.</span></p>

Processing temporal agreement in a tenseless language: An ERP study of Mandarin Chinese

Human languages are equipped with an impressive repertoire of time-encoding devices which vary significantly across different cultures. Previous research on temporal processing has focused on morphosyntactic processes in Indo-European languages. This study investigated the neural correlates of temporal processing in Mandarin Chinese, a language that is not morphologically marked for tense. In a sentence acceptability judgment task, we manipulated the agreement between semantically enriched temporal adverbs or a highly grammaticalized aspectual particle (-guo) and temporal noun phrases. Disagreement of both the temporal adverbs and the aspectual particle elicited a centro-parietal P600 effect in event-related potentials (ERPs) whereas only disagreeing temporal adverbs evoked an additional broadly distributed N400 effect. Moreover, a sustained negativity effect was observed on both the words following the critical ones and the last words in sentences with temporal disagreement. These results reveal both commonalities and differences between Chinese and Indo-European languages in temporal agreement processing. In particular, we demonstrate that temporal reference in Chinese relies on both lexical semantics and morphosyntactic processes and that the level of grammaticalization of linguistic devices representing similar temporal information is reflected in differential ERP responses.

Temporal reference in Paraguayan Guaraní, a tenseless language

This paper contributes data from Paraguayan Guarani (Tupi-Guarani) to the discussion of how temporal reference is determined in tenseless languages. The empirical focus of this study is on finite clauses headed by verbs inflected only for person/number information, which are compatible only with non-future temporal reference in most matrix clause contexts. The paper first explores the possibility of accounting for the temporal reference of such clauses with a phonologically empty non-future tense morpheme, along the lines of Matthewson’s (Linguist Philos 29:673–713, 2006) analysis of a similar phenomenon in St’at’imcets (Salish). This analysis is then contrasted with one according to which temporal reference is not constrained by tense in Paraguayan Guarani, but only by context and temporal adverbials. A comparison of the two analyses, both of which are couched in a dynamic semantic framework, suggests empirical and theoretical advantages of the tenseless analysis over the tensed one. The paper concludes with a discussion of cross-linguistic variation of temporal reference in tensed and tenseless languages.

Temporal Interpretation without Tense: Korean and Japanese Coordination Constructions

Matrix clauses are tensed in Korean and Japanese, but both languages have coordination constructions where any non-final conjunct may or, in the case of Japanese, must be untensed. Building on analyses of the temporal interpretation of tenseless languages such as Yucatec Maya (Mayan: Bohnemeyer 2002) and Kalaallisut (Eskimo-Aleut: Bittner 2005), this article argues that a truly tenseless analysis of the temporal interpretation of these non-final conjuncts is possible once the effects of Aktionsart and the discourse context on temporal interpretation are taken into consideration (cf. Partee 1984; Dowty 1986; Hinrichs 1986). The formal semantic analysis developed here is shown to be empirically and conceptually superior to previous analyses, which claim that the temporal interpretation of tenseless non-final conjuncts is determined either by the tense of the final conjunct (e.g. Yoon 1997; Hirata 2006) or by a tense-like restriction introduced by a zero tense morpheme or the coordination marker (e.g. Nakatani 2004; Chung 2005). The proposed analysis of Korean and Japanese coordination constructions thus provides further evidence that tenseless clauses can be semantically interpreted as such, not just in tenseless languages but even in languages where matrix clauses are otherwise tensed. The article concludes by discussing implications for analyses of cross-linguistic semantic variation.

Temporal semantics in a superficially tenseless language

This paper contributes to the debate about ‘tenseless languages’ by defending a tensed analysis of a superficially tenseless language. The language investigated is St’at’imcets (Lillooet Salish). I argue that although St’at’imcets lacks overt tense morphology, every finite clause in the language possesses a phonologically covert tense morpheme; this tense morpheme restricts the reference time to being non-future. Future interpretations, as well as ‘past future’ would-readings, are obtained by the combination of covert tense with an operator analogous to Abusch’s (1985) WOLL. I offer St’at’imcets-internal evidence (of a kind not previously adduced) that the WOLL-like operator is modal in nature. It follows from the analysis presented here that there are only two (probably related) differences between St’at’imcets and English in the area of tense. The first is that St’at’imcets lacks tense morphemes which are pronounced. The second is that the St’at’imcets tense morpheme is semantically underspecified compared to English ones. In each of these respects, the St’at’imcets tense morpheme displays similar properties to pronouns, which may be covert and which may fail to distinguish person, number or gender. Along the way, I point out several striking and subtle similarities in the interpretive possibilities of St’at’imcets and English. I suggest that these similarities may reveal non-accidental properties of tense systems in natural language. I conclude with discussion of the implications of the analysis for cross-linguistic variation, learnability and the possible existence of tenseless languages.

Alleged Non-Past Uses of Qatal in Classical Hebrew (review)

Hebrew Studies 45 (2004) 302 Reviews serious attempt to apply discourse-linguistic methods more systematically to well defined groups of Biblical Hebrew prose texts. However, it focuses too much on statistics and ignores the major problem of word order of each clause type as well as the correlation of word order to the choice of verbal forms in verbal clauses. The preference for a certain clause pattern in each narrative or discourse type and the choice of a certain word order are intertwined in Biblical Hebrew. In addition, the plentiful nuances of aspect, tense, and modality, expressed by all combinations of prefix and suffix conjugation verbs with or without waw are more complex than admitted in this study. New theories regarding the semantic complexity of verb forms continue to appear. One theory involves the concept of relative time, which is presented by T. Goldfajn, in Word Order and Time in Biblical Hebrew Narrative (Oxford 1998), and by G. Hatav, in The Semantics of Aspect and Modality, Evidence from English and Biblical Hebrew (Amsterdam & Philadelphia 1997, pp. 3–5). Neither the concept of relative time nor these two works are mentioned by the author. It seems that a perfect solution to the question of verbal usage in Biblical Hebrew is not yet available. Tamar Zewi University of Haifa Haifa, Israel tzewi@univ.haifa.ac.il ALLEGED NON-PAST USES OF QATAL IN CLASSICAL HEBREW. By Max Rogland. SSN 44. Pp. vii + 164. Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003. Cloth, $57.72. € 49,00. This study deals with the form qatal in Biblical Hebrew within a synchronic analysis. In the introductory chapter, the author provides a brief overview concerning the notions of tense and aspect in language. For aspect, he adopts the (im)perfective distinction. For tense, he adopts the absolute/relative distinction of Comrie. Rogland reanalyzes it within the framework of Reichenbach’s analysis, which defines tenses in terms of speech-, event-, and reference-time (cf., H. Reichenbach, Elements of Symbolic Logic [New York: Macmillan, 1947]; B. Comrie, Tense [Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1985]). The author then briefly summarizes the well-known dispute concerning the verbal forms in Biblical Hebrew. As he mentions, one main approach sees the forms as marking tenses or both tenses and aspects. The competing approach regards Biblical Hebrew as a tenseless language whose verb forms mark only aspects (and maybe moods). Rogland adopts the approach that the Hebrew Studies 45 (2004) 303 Reviews forms may mark both tense and aspect. His main aim is to analyze the fientive qatal, which he understands to be semantically marked as absolute or relative past, but aspectually unmarked. Accordingly, qatal clauses refer to events lying in the past either with respect to speech-time or another reference-time in the past or the future. For the other forms, Rogland stipulates that qotel and yiqtol are imperfective, and in opposition to qatal they are non-past. He treats the waw-prefixed forms wayyiqtol and weqataltí as syntactic variations for qatal and yiqtol, respectively. Rogland does not accept the thesis that the verb forms function differently in prose and poetry. Neither does he limit his conclusions to standard Biblical Hebrew. He therefore aims to show that in both poetry and prose throughout the Hebrew Bible, qatal clauses can be interpreted as referring to past events. The challenge he faced with his endeavor was to show that qatal refers to the past and also in those cases that appear as non-past situations, namely, the so-called “gnomic,” “performative,” and “prophetic” perfects. In chapter 2, Rogland discusses the use of qatal in gnomic statements as they appear in proverbs, claiming that this use is better to be considered as “general-truth.” He then discusses the notion of “general-truth” statements in language and shows that speakers may address a “general past” just as they may speak of a “general present.” His main point is that the appearance of qatal in proverbs does not necessarily indicate that it is a present tense because such proverbs may be interpreted as referring to past situations. In chapter 3, Rogland discusses the so-called “Prophetic Perfect,” concluding that this title is a misnomer. He shows that this is a blanket...

Mandarin Temporality Inference in Child, Maternal and Adult Speech

Previous studies on child language acquisition of temporality have focused primarily on linguistic devices such as tense and aspect markers; this study, however, adopts a different approach. By examining discourse-pragmatic resources, it investigates how implicit past reference was inferred in Mandarin child speech, maternal speech and adult speech. This approach is especially suitable for studying Mandarin Chinese, a tenseless language. The analysis shows that in three-year-old children's speech, situational context and background knowledge were the major resources for temporality inference. In maternal speech, temporal reference was inferred mainly from situational context. In adult speech, on the other hand, it was discourse context that played the major role. The results revealed three-year-old children's heavy reliance on the situational `here-and-now' to express temporal relations and their limited abilities to assess the new/old information status of temporality. In addition, maternal speech adjustments in temporality inference were also evident in the data.

Temporal reference in Mandarin Chinese

This paper discusses how Chinese, a so-called tenseless language, determines its temporal reference. For simplex sentences without time adverb or aspectual marker, I show that temporal reference is correlated with aktionsart or grammatical viewpoint. For sentences with an aspectual marker, I discuss the temporal semantics of le and guo in detail, showing how their tense/aspectual meanings contribute to temporal reference. I propose to analyze le as an event realization operator and guo as an anteriority operator. For subordinate clauses, I show that temporal reference of complement clauses of verbs is basically determined by verbal semantics of individual verbs, which may impose some temporal restriction on the temporal location of the embedded event. As for relative clauses and temporal adverbial clauses, many different factors such as lexical verbal semantics, referential properties of determiners, lifetime effect of noun phrases, semantic or pragmatics constraints on temporal connectives, inference rules and world knowledge, etc., all interact to help determine temporal reference. Many data discussed in this paper indicate that there is no evidence of (covert) tenses in Chinese. Therefore, challenging work remains for those who have claimed that Tense Phrase is projected in Chinese phrase structures.

Determinism, indeterminism and the flow of time

A set of axioms implicitly defining the standard, though not instant-based but interval-based, time topology is used as a basis to build a temporal modal logic of events. The whole apparatus contains neither past, present, and future operators nor indexicals, but only B-series relations and modal operators interpreted in the standard way. Determinism and indeterminism are then introduced into the logic of events via corresponding axioms. It is shown that, if “determinism” and “indeterminism” are understood in accordance with their “core” meaning, the way in which they are formally introduced here represents the only right way to do this, given that we restrict ourselves to one real world and make no use of the many real worlds assumption. But then the result is that the very truth conditions for sentences about indeterministic events imply the existence of tensed truths, in spite of the fact that these conditions are formulated (in the indeterministic axiom) in terms of tenseless language. The tenseless theory of time implies determinism, while indeterminism requires the flow of time assumption.

Semantics, Tense, and Time: An Essay in the Metaphysics of Natural Language (review)

Reviewed by: Semantics, tense, and time: An essay in the metaphysics of natural language by Peter Ludlow Katia Chirkova Semantics, tense, and time: An essay in the metaphysics of natural language. By Peter Ludlow. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999. Pp. 252. Peter Ludlow’s work lies at the intersection of linguistics, philosophy, and logic and will be of interest to anyone working in these fields. L argues for a close relationship between natural language and reality. His argument is supported by a detailed study of the nature of time and the semantics of tense as viewed in the so-called A- and B-theories of tense. According to B-theorists, time is a sequence of tenseless events ordered by an earlier-than/later-than relation, whereas according to A-theorists, events have genuine temporal status. In Ch. 1 L discusses the nature of language and the conception of the I-language, which is part of our biological endowment. Ch. 2 offers a brief overview of semantic theory and explains why this theory should take the form of an absolute truth-conditional semantics. In Ch. 3 L introduces a number of resources required for the development of the semantics of tense (indexicals and propositional-attitude constructions). Ch. 4 analyzes how metaphysical commitments can arise within the basic semantic framework outlined in Ch. 2. This analysis is illustrated by an overview of the metaphysical commitments imposed on us by our use of noun phrases and basic predicates. Ch. 5 provides the reader with a brief examination of semantic theories consistent with the B-theory of tense along with its basic philosophical presuppositions. L outlines the problems faced by the theory and explores its metaphysical consequences. Ch. 6 outlines the problems with B-theory semantics, most crucially, its inability to solve the problem of indexicality and to meet the demand on our metaphysics placed by semantics and psychology. Ch. 7 builds a semantics of tense consistent with the A-theory and outlines its metaphysical consequences and the standard objections it faces. Ch. 8 treats temporal anaphora within the outlined framework of the A-theory and develops a theory of so-called E-type temporal anaphora achieved by the introduction of implicit when-clauses. Ch. 9 provides psycholinguistic and linguistic evidence for favoring an A-theory conception of time and tense. In Ch. 10 L summarizes possible outcomes of the A-theory and proposes possible directions for future research. The book has two philosophical appendixes, introducing two additional philosophical issues concerning the nature of I-language and the theory of language-world isomorphism. Five technical appendixes give basic quantificational and technical A- and B-theory fragments. L argues that the A-theory should be adopted in future research on the nature of tense and time. This conclusion entails a number of far-reaching consequences [End Page 636] for our understanding of logic, self-knowledge, and memory and for our analysis of grammatical tenses which, according to L, may have to be dispensed with. Unfortunately, all examples used in the text are from tense languages, and no references to tenseless languages are made. Such languages could have provided valid additional data in the context of the work. The book has several assets. It is reader-friendly and supplied with detailed indexes, directing the reader to reference works on various issues under discussion. It is well-structured and uses formal semantic terminology and formulas sparingly, which makes it accessible even to those unacquainted with semantic theory. Katia Chirkova Leiden University Copyright © 2001 Linguistic Society of America

Is a Tenseless Language Possible?

Whether it takes the form of a translation or of giving truth‐conditions, any putative reduction of tensed language to tenseless language will be undermined if it can be shown that there could be no genuinely tenseless language. A similar problem faced traditional phenomenalism: it was far from clear that there could be a ‘language of sense‐data’. Either the imagined language was no language at all, or it was dependent upon object‐language, not the other way around. A parallel dilemma faces tenseless reductionism. In spelling out what a tenseless language would be like, one either ends up with something that no creature could have as a language, or with something that is parasitic upon tensed language ‐ not the other way around.

Mood as verbal definiteness in a tenseless language

This article argues that the mood morphemes found on punctual verbs in Mohawk are to be analyzed semantically as markers of verbal definiteness/specificity. In particular, the so-called future marker is an indefinite morpheme, indicating that the event argument of the verb undergoes Heim's (1982) rule of Quantifier Indexing. In contrast, the seeming past marker is a marker of definiteness/specificity, indicating that the event argument is immune to Quantifier Indexing. This explains many apparent peculiarities of the Mohawk verbal system, including: the use of "future" as a past habitual form, the use of mood prefixes in conditionals, free relatives, and complement clauses, and the incompatibility of "past" with negation. The relationship between indefinite mood and future events, where it exists, is explicated in terms of the branching theory of time proposed by Dowty (1979) and Kamp and Reyle (1993), which is grounded in a fundamental asymmetry in how humans conceive of the future versus the past.