The 'Time Category' in Natural Languages and its Semantic Interpretation

~. The api~roach out1~ed below is to be understood as a component of a more general method of semantic interpretation of natural languages, Roughly spea~.ing th~s method (develor~.e6 in my forthcoming Elements of a Sem~.ntic Theor~r of }T~tur~J Lan6u~es) might be characterized , as fol].ows: I °. A semantic ~ystcm S in a very generP.] form (like that of Carn~p's 'Language A' or 'L~n:~e~ b ,-o-~'-c~._ Carn~p, Introduction to S~.bolic Logic and Its A~,]ic,~t~ons, 1958) is constr~cted: this system contains :-A ]ex~con (si, eeifying t~e ~ig~z u~.ed)-~]es of c~esi~nz, tion (el. C~-~ocp, ~ea~ing an~ Neces ~, ~96o, ~. 4)-Truth conc]itions ~-T~ans f~rmation rules. 2 o. Rules of trans].ation from a n~.tur~.l ].~.n~age, I~, into ' such c. seme.ntic system ~.re established. 3 °. System S~is required to fulfil ~o~e cx- ,-lic~t con~Stions in order to make each ]'ernel sentence from ~, transl~.tab~_e in S. 4 °. A new system, SL, is const~cted, ~-l~ch actu~,]Jy fulfi]_~ the impose d conditions on trans]ability in S. St, in its gener~.l form, becomes an extension of S; when S~ ~s i'ut into corresyon-dence ~-ith a concrete ]o~n~-~age, the 'meanin,is' (i.e. des~n~t~) assigned by these rules to different descrSptive signs of S& be-.','hhichi c _ come more definite. Under such conditions, ever~j sign from S~ a translation of a sign from L. has the s~,e ~cnotstum as the corresponding sign from ]~- .