Events, States and Times : : An essay on narrative discourse in English / / Daniel Altshuler.

• VerfasserIn: Altshuler, Daniel,
• Place / Publishing House: Warschau/Berlin : : De Gruyter,, 2016.; ©2016
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (ix, 165 pages)

This monograph investigates the temporal interpretation of narrative discourse in two parts. The theme of the first part is narrative progression. It begins with a case study of the adverb 'now' and its interaction with the meaning of tense. The case study motivates an ontological distinction between events, states and times and proposes that 'now' seeks a prominent state that holds throughout the time described by the tense. Building on prior research, prominence is shown to be influenced by principles of discourse coherence and two coherence principles, NARRATION and RESULT, are given a formally explicit characterization. The key innovation is a new method for testing the definitional adequacy of NARRATION and RESULT, namely by an abductive argument. This contribution opens a new way of thinking about how eventive and stative descriptions contribute to the perceived narrative progression in a discourse. The theme of the second part of the monograph is the semantics and pragmatics of tense. A key innovation is that the present and past tenses are treated as scalar alternatives, a view that is motivated by adopting a particular hypothesis concerning stative predication. The proposed analysis accounts for tense in both matrix clauses and in complements of propositional attitudes, where the notorious double access reading arises. This reading is explored as part of a corpus study that provides a glimpse of how tense semantics interacts with Gricean principles and at-issueness. Several cross-linguistic predictions of the analysis are considered, including their consequences for the Sequence of Tense phenomenon and the Upper Limit Constraint. Finally, a hypothesis is provided about how tense meanings compose with temporal adverbs and verb phrases. Two influential analysis of viewpoint aspect are then compared in light of the hypothesis. The monograph is directed at graduate students and researchers in semantics, pragmatics an.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments; Part I: Narrative progression: From discourse connectivity to event partitivity; 1 Preliminary thoughts: Narrative discourse; 2 Prominence: A look at 'now'; 2.1 Challenges to Kamp's principle; 2.2 Time prominence account of 'now'; 2.2.1 Coherence and temporal anaphora; 2.2.2 Beyond the time prominence account of 'now'; 2.3 'Now' seeks prominent final states; 2.4 Two consequences of the proposal; 2.4.1 Is `now' a pure indexical?; 2.4.2 Times versus states; 3 Coherence: A look at narration and result; 3.1 Delimiting the task; 3.2 narration and result. 3.2.1 Hobbs1985 on occasion3.2.2 The definition of narration; 3.2.3 The definition of result; 3.2.4 A minimal ontology; 3.2.5 The relationship between narration and result; 3.3 Abducing structural constraints on EDUs; 3.3.1 Structural laws; 3.3.2 Possibilities for EDUs; Appendices; A Narrative progression with statives?; B Derivations; B.1 Deriving ; B.2 Absurd consequences; Part II: Semantics and pragmatics of tense: The nuts and bolts; 4 Cessation and double access; 4.1 Temporal implicatures and temporal profile of statives; 4.2 Semantics of tense: First pass; 4.3 Double access. 4.3.1 Cessation and parentheticality4.3.2 Two complications; 4.3.3 Abusch's account of double access Heim-style; 4.3.4 The meaning of the present tense revisited; 4.4 Calculating cessation in embedded contexts; 5 Sequence of tense; 5.1 Relative present; 5.2 Simultaneous readings and tense shifting; 5.3 Alleged simultaneity with the progressive; 5.4 Final words on tense shifting: Evidence for and against; 5.5 ULC and beyond; 6 Concluding thoughts: Ways of composing with viewpoint aspect; 6.1 Towards a compositional semantics; 6.2 Viewpoint aspect. 6.2.1 The neo-Kleinian and Bach/Krifka analyses6.2.2 Comparing the two analyses; Bibliography.