Abstract
In Chapter 3, I discussed the previous literature that deals with tenses in embedded clauses. Based upon that discussion, I will propose in Chapters 4 and 5 my own account of the SOT phenomena in English and the lack thereof in Japanese. In this chapter, I will concentrate upon complement clauses and will turn to adjunct clauses in Chapter 5. My account starts with a discussion of the semantics of indirect discourse verbs and so-called propositional attitude verbs. Let us recapitulate the discussion of the SOT phenomena by traditional grammarians and modern descriptive grammarians. As mentioned in Chapter 3, they generally describe the SOT phenomena either in terms of the direct speech vs. indirect speech correlation or in terms of structural relations between the trigger and the target. It is usually not clear how they would interpret those sentences in which the SOT phenomena occur. As far as syntax is concerned, I will follow Curme in saying that the rule (or the phenomenon) is defined in terms of structural properties of tenses alone. On the other hand, I will adopt the view that when was in (1) is used for a simultaneous interpretation, it is not the right tense form for semantic interpretation.
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Notes
The judgment is Ross’s. He considers (3a) to be bad probably because he does not consider the possibility that it is uttered while the state in question still obtains.
This is not the only possibility. In (12) I hypothesize that the trigger of the SOT rule serves as the deictic center for the temporal interpretation of the target tense. If we extend the hypothesis to non-local tenses, it is possible to claim that the null tense is interpreted relative to the time of John’s saying. This appears to give us an empirically correct interpretation. However, I believe that the SOT rule should be defined in terms of a local domain and, therefore, will not pursue this possibility. Although (9a) appears to have an interpretation in which the time of Mary’s being sick is simultaneous with the time of John’s saying, I do not believe that this is a distinct reading. This is merely a special case of a possible reading of the sentence where the lowest past tense is understood as a “real past tense” and is interpreted in relation to the future tense.
I is also important to note that (11) only has a simultaneous reading. Unlike presentunder-past sentences in English, it does not appear to receive a double-access interpretation. Perhaps, it can receive a double-access reading, but it is not as conspicuous as in the case of English because the putative double-access reading always entails the simultaneous reading. See Chapter 6 for some discussion on this topic.
Replacing if with iff would be too strong in view of the proposal for infinitives given in Section 4.3.2.
It can also receive a reading in which the present tense in the relative clause is interpreted independently of the past tense in the matrix clause.
Later in this chapter and in Chapter 5, I will discuss in formal semantic terms what it means for a tense morpheme to be “in the scope” of another tense.
Ladusaw presents some examples that involve would. See the relevant discussion in Chapter 3.
I leave out reference times symbolized as tg, etc. when no confusion arises from this.
Kratzer (1989) assumes that predicates can be distinguished in terms of whether they have a temporal-spatial argument place. For example, so-called individual-level predicates lack such an argument place. If she is right, even if we assume a system in which times are referred to in the object language, this does not mean that every predicate has an argument place for times. However, I will not adopt Kratzer’s proposal and, hence, will simply assume that every predicate has a temporal argument position and (in principle) has a time-sensitive extension.
Q^Xt2[be-pregnant’(t2, m)]Y1,w t $ is the function h such that for any world w’ and time t’, h (w)(t) = 1 iff [be-pregnant (t2, m)] M ,„, t , g t 2 /t’ = 1.
In general, we will assume that any two set-theoretic objects h and k that satisfy either of the following conditions have the same 12 The phrase “as i f ” is needed because this allows for the possibility that the agent lies or utters a sentence without intending to convey anything to anyone. “cognitive status” and carry the same semantic content:
(i) h e CA xB (h is a function from A xB into C) and k e (C 1 ) A (k is a function from A into [fl f is a function from B into C}), where A, B, C are any sets, such that for any x e A and y E B, h((x,y)) equals [k (x)](y). (ii) h e CA xB (h is a function from A xB into C) and k e (CA) B (k is a function from B into Ulf f is a function from A into C}, where A, B, C are any sets, such that for any x e A and y e B, h((x,y)) equals [k (y)](x).
I ignore the semantic difference between think and believe here.
For any type a, D a is the set of possible denotations of expressions of type a.
Lewis (1979) adopts the view that properties are simply world-individual pairs. This is because Lewis assumes that individuals inhabit only one world-time slice. I will assume that my proposal is a notational variant of Lewis’s.
This proposal about the lexical meaning of say’has a clear bearing on the truth definition for matrix sentences. See p. 62 and p. 250.
I simplify here the treatment of pronouns he and his by substituting a name (i.e., j) for a pronoun or by incorporating his into a predicate (i.e., say-to-his-mother’).
x decides p roughly means that x believes he has control over whether p holds and moreover believes that p does hold.
To the best of my knowledge, Japanese has no adjective that takes a complement sentence as well as a subject NP as its arguments. All English adjectives that take sentential complements translate into Japanese as verbs.
I assume that sentential subjects in English are CPs. See below for the relevant discussion.
This simple formulation of the tense deletion rule must be replaced by a more involved one when we consider SOT cases triggered by nouns and the perfect. However, such complications are independent of the point made here.
Although SOT phenomena observed in noun complements are discussed in my earlier work (Ogihara 1989), examples like (64b) are not presented there. An anonymous reviewer points out that the SOT phenomena that involve noun complements occur without overt temporal adjectives, and this point has been incorporated here.
Japanese noun complements are of the form S- to iu,which literally means `says that S’. So it appears that they are VPs, rather than CPs. But I will not pursue this possibility and simply label Japanese noun complements as CPs in this book.
The features [-fut] and [-pres] will not be employed in the proposal.
A c-commands B if A does not dominate B and B does not dominate A and the first branching node that dominates A also dominates B.
It is possible to rewrite the SOT rule in (67) in terms of the notion of government, etc. But I prefer not to complicate the syntactic terminology here and define the applicability of the SOT rule in terms of a disjunctive statement.
I use the symbol “tR” for the reference time that appears within the IL translation of a verb that takes infinitival complements.
As mentioned earlier, TAdj is ignored in the translation. Its feature, however, must match that of N. Thus, it is either licensed or ruled out syntactically. -
Temporal arguments are not explicitly represented in the IL formulas given in (90)(92).
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© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Ogihara, T. (1996). Sequence-of-Tense Phenomena in Complement Clauses. In: Tense, Attitudes, and Scope. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 58. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8609-2_4
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