... situation-template denoted by walk .The
denotation of such a complex predicate constituent is determined in the first
instance by the meanings of the verb and of the other components of the predi-
cate constituent ... as consisting of a subject NP and a predicate
constituent. The latter consists of the verb phrase (VP) and the optional adverbial(s), if any....
... though the expression of grammaticalized
habituality is restricted to verb forms involving one of the auxiliaries will,
would or used to.
1.51.3 The third system of the verb phrase introduced in part ... However, apart from the fact that the
nature of the subject NP may affect the interpretation of the actualization of a
situation as homogeneous or not, i...
... may either coincide or overlap: one situation may have started at,
before or after the beginning of the other situation, and either of them may have
ended at, before or after the end of the other ... length of the
corresponding full situation. Thus in Meg watched the elephant from six to eight, the
temporal adverbial locates the situation time (the time of the pre...
... the situation time in the post-present. As noted in 2.13, the situation time
is the time of the actualization of the predicated situation, not the time of anticipa-
tion of that actualization.)
2.36 ... as
consisting of two time-spheres. The dotted line in the middle of the time line
is meant to represent the fact that there is felt to be a break between the...
... past domain. The semantics of the absolute past tense is: The situation
time is located in the past time-sphere (defined relative to t
0
)’; the semantics of
160 2. Towards a theory of tense and ... it relates
the situation time of the bike having loads of gears to the situation time of Meg’s
buying a bike. Specifically, it locates the having simultaneous to the...
... unclear whether the judge-
ment implicit in the adverb is attributable to the subject referent or to the speaker.
3.10.1
Constraint 1: Since the basic meaning of the present tense is location
of a ... this time of the day / etc.}?’)
In most of these examples the reference is to a regular pattern which results
from a timetable repeating itself. The same is true of...
... time of
the predicated situation, the time of the full situ-
ation and the time of the pre-present time zone.
In section 5.6 we then provide an interim sum-
mary of the core meaning of the present ... it.
212 5. The absolute use of the present perfect
I. The semantics of the present perfect
The present perfect locates the situation time in the pre-pre...
... on the up-to-now reading of the perfect 259
subsituations in the pre-present’, which allows the hypersituation to involve
gaps in between the actualizations of the subsituations or to consist of ... constitution
reading is that the speaker expresses the result of scanning the entire pre-pres-
ent for situations actualizing within that period. Whether the result of...
... of
a period requires considering it from beginning to end. The situation of a
286 5. The absolute use of the present perfect
As noted in 5.21.3, the temporal interpretation of the clause in the ... illustrate the following:
(a) In spite of the fact that there is a situation of watching in process at t
0
,
the present tense cannot be used in Standard English (wh...
... clear
from the use of the definite object NP that poem); the speaker is not concerned
here with NOW but with an aspect of the actualization of the situation that
happened THEN, viz., in these cases, ... he uses a sentence involving a verb of cre-
ation he is not concerned with the fact that the referent has come into existence
and is now part of the structure of...
... seen that if the speaker of a when-
question is asking about the time of actualization of a bygone situation, the
fact of actualization of the situation is taken for granted, and it is the past
tense ... when-questions in the present perfect can be used to challenge an explicit
or implicit assumption on the part of the addressee or someone else (including
the s...
... In English, future tense forms are
not built by means of a special suffix but by means of the present tense of one
of the auxiliaries will or shall (the latter in the first person only) or of the ... are other expres-
sions referring to the possible actualization of a situation in the post-present.
However, they differ from the future tense in that, even in the a...
... agentive verb phrases, be going to can be used to express the
idea that the agent has the present intention of doing something in the post-
present. The agent is as a rule the referent of the subject ... emphasis
on the present (see 7.3.2). This concern with the present may be of various
kinds, but all of them can be subsumed under the heading of ‘concern with...
... a domain of its own (the one in the past, the other in the post-
present), neither of which is further expanded.
8.12 Two past tenses: the absolute preterite vs the
relative preterite
English ... put on the
time line when we represent the semantics of a tense (i. e. the tense structure)
by means of a tense diagram.
8.16 The temporal nature of the domain
The...
... pragmatically
acceptable if the temporal order of the situations is either irrelevant or recover-
able in some other way, e. g. from the use of time adverbials, from the order in
which the situations are ... in
another zone. The use of the present tense with post-present reference (e. g.
They’re leaving soon) is a typical illustration of such a shift of perspective: t...