The syntax of time

Any analysis of the syntax of time is based on a paradox: it must include a syntax-based theory of both tense construal and event construal. Yet while time is undimensional, events have a complex spatiotemporal structure that reflects their human participants. How can an event be flattened to fit in...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Guéron, Jacqueline
Corporate Author: International Round Table on the Syntax of Tense and Aspect (2000, Université de Paris)
Other Authors: Lecarme, Jacqueline
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press 2004
Series:Current studies in linguistics series
Subjects:
Online Access:
Collection: MIT Press eBook Archive - Collection details see MPG.ReNa
Description
Summary:Any analysis of the syntax of time is based on a paradox: it must include a syntax-based theory of both tense construal and event construal. Yet while time is undimensional, events have a complex spatiotemporal structure that reflects their human participants. How can an event be flattened to fit into the linear time axis? Chomsky's The Minimalist Program, published in 1995, offers a way to address this problem. The studies collected in The Syntax of Time investigate whether problems concerning the construal of tense and aspect can be reduced to syntactic problems for which the basic mechanism and principles of generative grammar already provide solutions. These studies, recent work by leading international scholars in the field, offer varied perspectives on the syntax of tense and the temporal construal of events: models of tense interpretation, construal of verbal forms, temporal aspect versus lexical aspect, the relation between the event and its argument structure, and the interaction of case with aktionsart or tense construal. Advances in the theory of temporal interpretation in the sentence are also applied to the temporal interpretation of nominals
Item Description:"Updated versions of talks first presented at the International Round Table on the Syntax of Tense and Aspect in November 2000 at the Université Paris 7"--Preface
Physical Description:x, 662 pages illustrations
ISBN:0262274493
9780262274494