Tense, Aspect, and The Interpretation Of Tenseless Elements In English

Abstract

An analysis of English tense and aspect is presented that specifies temporal precedence relations with a sentence. The relevant reference points for interpretation are taken to be the initial and terminal points of events in the world, as well as two "hypothetical" times: the perfect time (when a sentence contains perfect aspect) and the progressive or during time. We also describe a method for providing temporal interpretation for nontensed elements such as nouns and adjectives, whose interpretation may be temporally dependent.