Recent advances in the syntax and semantics of tense, aspect and modality

Viac o knihe

Tense, aspect, and modality are central to contemporary research in syntax and semantics, impacting various linguistic disciplines. These elements play a crucial role in sentence structure, influencing how we represent time and eventuality. This volume serves as a significant contribution to the study of temporality in language, focusing on syntax and semantics while also touching on pragmatics and natural language understanding. Featuring 15 carefully selected papers from the 6th Chronos colloquium, the collection investigates tenses, aspect, and modality across a range of languages, both Indo-European and non-Indo-European. It explores previously underexamined phenomena, such as modal subordination in Japanese, epistemic modals in Dutch and English within Free Indirect Speech, aspectual interpretations of idioms, adverb-licensing in the German perfect, and the comparison of French imperfective past with English progressive past. Other topics include infinitival perfect in English, Adult Root Infinitives, constraints on temporal subordinations, future modality, present tense interpretations in embedded clauses, and the concept of time without tenses in Mandarin and Navajo. This book is valuable for scholars and advanced students in linguistics, philosophy, and logic.