Uber Zeitkeferenz und Tempus

On time reference and tense. The problems of time reference and tense in natural languages are discussed in their syntactic and ee::antic aspects. The syntactic description is based on the principles of the genera-tive transformational grammar. Since tense is a deictic category, the semantics language must be a pragmatically extended system. Furthermore, it seems that the use of tense and time adverbials in languages of highly civilized cultures can be adequately described in terms of an extensional language. (In all these cultures , conflicts concerning time reference are solved by consulting an extensional clock and calendar system.) The semantic description is based on work done by the logicians Mcntague and Kamp from UCLA. In addition to the theoretical treatment of problems of time reference, the possible applications of the proposed system will be sketched. ~h~ syntactic s_ystem. Tense is considered not as a constituent of a base-phrase-marker, but as a syntactic feature as condition for inflexional rules. These features are attached to sentence constituents.-They are to be understood as binary relations [e rel s~ between reference indices which can receive a definite semantic interpretation; with rel = ~before(vor), after(nach) overlapping(Sbl)} ; one index is called the index of event time e, the other the index of utterance time s. Unlike the tense, time adverbials are introduced as constituents of a base-phrase-marker. They are subcategorized into features similar to the tense features. It is discriminated between ad-verbi~ls which are related to context (Advb-~ Ce rel e]) and K those which are related to the time of utterance (Advb ~ [e rel sJ) B Since the latter imply corresponding tenses they are treated as alternatives to the tenses. For the rules cf. p. 5/b. The semantic_s[s~em. The semantic system is a system of predicate logic with the following descriptive extension :-a set of variables over time intervals t, a primitive ordering relation "before" , together with some axioms defining the properties of "before". Each variable might be understood as a possible argument of sentences in the ordinary predicate logic.-Several models for the time system are specified : the time intervals are represented as elements of the power set of the real numbers, or the time intervals are represented as real numbers with neighbourhcods (stating a topology over the set of real numbers). Sometimes an approximation of the minimal time intervals to time points is used, too. In this case time intervals simply …