HIGGINBOTHAM lundi 12/11

[Bridget Copley]

Le programme "Temporalité: Typologie et Acquisition" (temptypac) de la
Fédération "Typologie et Universaux Linguistiques" du CNRS a le plaisir
d'annoncer un exposé:

James Higginbotham, University of Southern California

"Tense Parameters"

Date : lundi 12 novembre 2007
Heure : 10h-12h
Lieu : CNRS Pouchet, 59 rue Pouchet 75017 Paris, salle 159
Métro : Guy Môquet ou Brochant




Résumé :

   I begin by rehearsing the account of English Tense, from Higginbotham 
(2002) and (2006):

(∅)	The actual time of utterance is default in root clauses.

(I)	Tenses are binary, expressing one of the three relations ≈,<,or > 
between (the
              actual times of) events or situations, where '≈' is the 
relation between e and e' that
              holds when the time τ(e) of e surrounds the time τ(e') of e'.

(II)	Anaphoric +Past is ambiguous (in English) between (a) facilitating
	anaphora, but having a –Past interpretation (B-past), and (b) expressing <
	(A-Past).  The antecedent of a B-Past must be +Past, and the clause itself
	must be Stative.

(III)	-Past in situ cannot be anaphoric to +Past.

(IV)	Tenses in the C position of a complement clause are always anaphoric;
	movement of one copy of INFL to C is obligatory in these cases.

The theory applies both to the simple inflectional and paraphrastic 
tenses and to extensions to the English Perfect and the Progressive.  It 
follows from (IV) that Sequence of Tense is obligatory in complement 
clauses, but not in relative clauses.  The phenomena of English “double 
access” likewise fall out, as a joint consequence of (III) and (IV).

   There are a number of languages in which the forced double access 
interpretation, as in the well-known example (1), does not occur:

(1)  John said that Mary is pregnant.

That is to say, in these languages the analogue of (1) means (and must 
mean) merely that John said that there was such a thing as Mary’s being 
pregnant at the time of his, John's, speaking.  Moreover, in some of 
these languages (e.g., Korean, Romanian) the complement +Past can be 
only a true Past; i.e., an A-Past in the sense of (II) above.  Sharvit 
(2003) gives examples from Modern Greek as showing that, however common, 
this pattern is not forced: expressed in terms of my outline above, it 
may be that (III) fails whereas (II) holds, as it does in English.  She 
fails to note, however, the requirement of stativity for the A-Past as 
in (II), a point that will form part of my theme here.

   Double access appears in Italian and French with Imperfect 
complements, not manifestly represented in English.  I shall assume for 
purposes of this discussion that an analogue of (III) is at work in 
these languages.

   Tense is an indexical, but not a demonstrative, feature: the 
interpretation of an utterance using a Tense depends, as a strict matter 
of linguistic form, upon a contextual parameter, namely the time of 
utterance.  In contrast to other temporal indexicals (e.g., now, a year 
ago), however,  embedded Tenses sometimes do not, and sometimes cannot, 
behave as they would in isolation, in root clauses.  The reason, as 
suggested by the above outline, is not that they are in any way 
exceptions to the thesis that indexicals cannot shift their 
interpretations when embedded, but rather than they participate in 
anaphoric interclausal relations.  The same, I conjecture, should be 
said for other cases where context-dependent elements shift their 
interpretations when embedded.  I will illustrate with reference to 
(what I am told in Byun (2007) about) Korean cikum, which appears to be 
interpreted as now in root clauses, but then in some complements.

   Sharvit (2003) asks the important question whether the condition (II) 
(permitting at least some occurrences of the B-Past) and condition (III) 
(forcing double access) can vary independently.  She proposes to rule 
out languages in which (III) holds as in English, but the complement 
Past is never a B-Past.  I will argue that her proposal is defective, 
for several reasons.  In any case, the very thing that she proposes not 
to permit actually occurs in English, with non-Stative Past in the 
complement of a Past, as in (2):

(2)  John said that Mary left the room.

The complement Past in (2) is only a A-Past, so there is no ambiguity. 
The reason this is so cannot be that the English Present of an 
achievement predicate is only "habitual," since (as noted in Giorgi and 
Pianesi (1997)) the same happens in Italian, where the simple Present 
can in fact be a report of what is presently occurring.  A good test 
case for English is (3):

(3)  John said that Mary remained in her room.

The V remain is about as non-active an "Activity" V as one can get: one 
can certainly say (4) in response to the question, "Where is Mary?"

(4)  Mary remains in her room.

(not surprisingly, given the historical, and the obvious semantic, link 
between remain, become, and be).  However, (3) can only be interpreted 
as a report of an alleged past, Past-Tense, utterance by John. 
Inversely, (5) shows double access, as expected:

(5)  John said that Mary remains in her room.

The coexistence of forced double access with absence of a B-Past is thus 
attested, and therefore possible in general.

   However, the generalization I offered above, that a B-Past must be 
stative, is wrong, as the B-Past is available with the Perfect, as in (6):

(6)  John said that Mary had left.

The relevant interpretation is as in (7):

(7)  (∃e<u) Say(John,e,^(∃e'≈e)(∃e'': e' is Resultant of e'') 
leave(Mary,e''))

which may truly report a past utterance of Mary has left by John.  The 
correct  generalization appears to be that the B-Past is available in 
English only for +Past attaching, not to the V, but to an auxiliary 
element, as had, would, was, could, or might.  I shall speculate on why 
this might be so.

   Finally, I shall endeavor to clarify some points with respect to 
indexicality and the double access interpretation, and particularly (i) 
to observe, that the embedded Present (or -Past) is by no means always 
interpreted with respect to utterance time; and (ii) to note that the 
occasional references in the literature to "optional double access" 
unfortunately neglect to note that the notion of one event surrounding 
another leaves the intended period of surrounding entirely open, so 
that, for instance, examples like (8) tell us nothing about it:

(8)  John will divulge next week that Mary is pregnant.

Sequence of Tense is obligatory in (8); at the same time, the speaker of 
(8) may intend to be understood as believing that what John will divulge 
is true even as she speaks.

References

Byun, H. (2007).  "Sequence of Tense in Korean."  ms., University of 
Southern California.

Giorgi, A. and Pianesi, F. (1997).  Tense and Aspect: From Semantics to 
Morphosyntax.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Higginbotham, J. (2002).  "Why is Sequence of Tense Obligatory?" 
Gerhard Preyer and Georg Peter (eds.), Logical Form and Language. 
Oxford: Clarendon Press.  pp. 207-227.

Higginbotham, J. (2006).  "The Anaphoric Theory of Tense."  Proceedings 
SALT 16, Tokyo, Japan.

Sharvit, Y. (2003).  "Embedded Tense and Universal Grammar."  Linguistic 
Inquiry 34.  pp. 669-681.
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