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CTL5403  SEMANTICS and DISCOURSE

Haihua PAN (Dr.), CTL, CityU., HK

Office: Rm B7610; Phone: 2788 8795; Email:  cthpan@cityu.edu.hk

Tense, Aspect, and Evidentiality

1.  Tense and Aspect (Chapter 5 in Saeed 1997, Chapter 9 in Jiang & Pan 1998)

1.1 Tense

• Three times: ET (event time), RT (reference time), and ST (speech time) (Reichenbach 1947)
• Tense: past tense (ET < ST, RT = ET), future tense (ST < ET, RT = ET), present tense (ET = ST, RT = ET)

                    pluperfect (or past perfect) like "had seen": ET < RT, RT < ST

                    future perfect "will have seen": ET < RT, ST < RT

                    present perfect "have seen": ET < RT, RT = ST

• Past tense: P(A) = 1 iff there exists a time t < ST, and A is true at t, where A is a proposition.
• Future tense: F(A) = 1 iff there exists a time t > ST, and A is true at t.
• Past perfect: PP(A) = 1 iff there exists a time t < ST, and P(A) is true at t.
• Future perfect: FP(A) = 1 iff there exists a time t > ST, and P(A) is true at t.

Questions: What is PF(A)? and FF(A)?  How can one represent "would eat" and "would have eaten" using only F and P?

• Relative tenses: The tenses F and P defined above are absolute tenses. The relative ones F' and P' are defined below:

Relative past tense:  P'(A) = 1 iff there exists a time t' < t, and A is true at t'.

Relative future tense: F'(A) = 1 iff there exists a time t' > t, and A is true at t'.

        When t = ST, we have the absolute tenses.

• Tense paradox:  (i) John will graduate this semester.

                                  (ii) John will not graduate this semester.

1.2 Aspect

• Perfective vs. imperfective (progressive vs. imperfective). Typically, in Chinese people take -le (-guo) as perfective markers, zai, progressive, and -zhe, imperfective.

Perfective: Perf(A) = 1 at time interval t iff [A = 1 at t & there exists a t' and t'' such that t' = First (t) & t'' = Last(t) & t' and t'' are part of t]

Progressive: Prog(A) = 1 at interval t iff there exists an interval t' such that A = 1 at interval t'.

To accommodate the situation type activity which does not have a natural final endpoint, we need to revise the semantics of the perfective operator as follows:

Perfective: Perf(A) = 1 at time interval t iff [A = 1 at t & there exists a t' such that t' = First (t) & and t' is part of t & if there exists a t'' & t'' = Last(t), then t'' is part of t]

• The imperfective paradox: Prog(A) = 1 at interval t ---> there exists an interval t' such that Perf(A) = 1 at t'.

However, this reasoning is not necessarily true, as we can see from the following sentences:

        (i) John was writing a paper, but he did not finish it.

        (ii) John was crossing the street, but he never made it (because he was hit by a car).

2.  Modality and Evidentiality

• Modality is a semantic cover term for devices that allow the speaker to express varying degrees of commitment to, or belief in, a proposition (the factuality of statements).
• Modal verbs like must, could, needn't, etc.

2.1 Types of modality

• Epistemic modality: the speaker signals degrees of knowledge, and his/her judgement about the way the real world is.
• Deontic modality: speaker's attitude to social factors of obligation, responsibility, and permission, and about how people should behave in the world. So this modality is tied in with all sorts of social knowledge: speaker's belief systems about morality and legality, and his/her estimations of power and authority.

        You can drive this car

        (i) It is possible that you drive this car. (epistemic modality)

        (ii) You have my permission to drive this car. (deontic modality)

• Realis vs. irrealis modality (reality vs. unreality distinction)

2.2 Mood

• When different modalities are marked on the verbs by verb conjugations, we call the relevant grammatical category mood.
• There are indicative mood and subjunctive mood. In some languages the subjunctive mood corresponds to the irrealis modality, while the indicative mood is used to describe real or factual situations.

2.3 Evidentiality

• Under the epistemic modality, we can look at ways in which the speaker can mark different attitudes towards the factuality of a proposition.
• The related category is evidentiality which allows the speaker to communicate her/his attitude to the source of her/his information.
• Direct experience, inference from physical evidence, auditory source, quotative source, etc.
• In English, we use adverbials or parathetic phrases to express the relevant information. We also use indirect speech to express quotative information.

References

Dowty, David (1979) Word Meaning and Montague Grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Jiang, Yan and Haihua Pan (1998) Introduction to Formal Semantics, China Social Sciences Publishing House, Beijing, China.

Saeed, John (1997) Semantics. Blackwell.

Smith, Carlota (1997) The Parameter of Aspect. 2nd edition, Kluwer Academic Publishers.