Academic literature on the topic 'Tenseless content'

Many so-called ‘zero tense’-marked (which we define as morphologically reduced and underspecified inflections) or untensed verb forms found in tenseless languages, have been characterized as context dependent for their temporal and aspectual interpretation, with the verb’s aspectual content (either as event structure or viewpoint properties) being given more or less prominent roles in their temporal anchoring. In this paper, we focus on a morpho-phonologically reduced inflectional verbal paradigm in Anindilyakwa (Groote Eylandt archipelago, NT, Australia), which is both temporally and aspectually underspecified, and constitutes an instance of zero tense as defined above. On the basis of a quantitative study of an annotated corpus of zero-inflected utterances, we establish that in the absence of independent overt or covert temporal information, the temporal anchoring of this ‘zero tense’ exhibits complex patterns of sensitivity to event structural parameters. Notably we establish that while dynamicity/stativity and telicity/atelicity are to some extent valuable predictors for the temporal interpretation of zero tense in Anindilyakwa, only atomicity (i.e., event punctuality) and boundedness categorically impose a past temporal anchoring—this confirms insights found in previous works, both on Anindilyakwa and on other languages, while also differing from other generalisations contained in these works. Our analysis also shows that unlike several zero tenses identified in various languages (especially in Pidgins and Creoles), Anindilyakwa zero tense-marked dynamic utterances do not correlate with a past temporal reading. Rather, we show that Anindilyakwa seems to come closest to languages possessing zero tensed-verbs (or tenseless verbs) where boundedness monotonically enforces a past temporal anchoring, such as Navajo and Mandarin Chinese. We also show that aspect-independent temporal information appears to determine the temporal anchoring of all zero tense-marked unbounded atelic utterances (both stative and dynamic) in Anindilyakwa—a fact at once conflicting with some claims made in previous works on zero tenses, while confirming results from past studies of Indigenous languages of the Americas (especially Yucatec Maya), concerning the role of temporal anaphora in the temporal interpretation of ‘tenseless’ verb forms.

Languages without overt marking of tense have been commonly analyzedas having covert tense, either in the form of a phonologically null tense morpheme ora post-LF semantic rule. We argue that the notion of (neo-Reichenbachian) tense isnot only unnecessary for the analysis of Cantonese, but also falls short of accountingfor temporal reference in this language. Following Pancheva & Zubizarreta (2020,2021) on Paraguayan Guarani, we propose an analysis of Cantonese that manipulatesthe temporal parameter of the evaluation context in lieu of tense. A more generalcontribution of this line of work is the proposal that tense is not a semantic universal.

This paper discusses tense in Arabic based on three varieties of the language: Classical Arabic (CA), Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), and the Taif dialect (TD). We argue against previous analyses that suggest that Arabic is a tenseless language, which assume that tense information is derived from the context. We also argue against the suggestion that Arabic is tensed, but that its tense is relative, rather than absolute. We propose here that CA, MSA, and TD have closely related verb forms, and that these are tensed verbs. Tense in Arabic is absolute in a neutral context and verb forms take the perfective and imperfective aspect. Similar to other languages including English, verb forms in Arabic may take reference from the context instead of the present moment. In this case, we argue that this does not mean that tense in Arabic is relative, because this would also imply that tense in many languages, including English, is relative. Further, we argue that the perfective form indicates only the past tense and the imperfective form, only the present; all other interpretations are derived by implicature.

The paper is concerned with tenselessness of the past tense morpheme in counterfactuals. The question is twofold. One is why is it the past tense that marks counterfactuality (Iatridou 2000, Ogihara 2000), which indicates anteriority. Another question is why the past tense is tenseless (or “fake tense”) in the counterfactuals. The previous theories (past tense as modal and past tense as exclusive operator) have not offered answers to these questions. In this paper, I argue that the conditional clauses originate in temporal adverbial clauses, and therefore it is only natural for the conditionals to be represented by temporal abstracts (Stump 1985). Second, I argue that the temporal abstracts are intensionalized in conditionals and causatives. This assumption not only provides a compositional analysis for the conditional, causal, and temporal adverbial clauses but also explains the reason why a proposition in the past tense can denote anteriority in the extensional context but counterfactuality (a temporal interval in the possible world) in the intensional context. I support my proposal by presenting data of counterfactuals from Old Japanese. The previous studies show the past tense morpheme is essential to counterfactual interpretation cross-linguistically (Karawani 2014) but I show that it is not a necessity, as counterfactual interpretation originates in the temporal abstract represented by the temporal adverbial clauses. I present four types of temporal clauses from which the counterfactual can be formed: at the time when, whenever (always when), in the circumstance/event that, and and then. All these temporal clauses can be intensionalized to be conditional or causal clauses under a modal operator.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There has been debate in recent years regarding the analysis of ‘tenseless languages’ (languages without overt tense marking). Some scholars (cf. Matthewson 2006) argue that such languages contain phonologically null tense marking to express temporal relations, while others (cf. Bittner 2005, Tonhauser 2011) claim that temporal interpretation in such cases comes from sources other than tense marking (e.g. context, aspectual marking, and/or Aktionsarten).</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;" lang="en-US"><span style="font-size: medium;"> This presentation will contribute to this debate by providing and analyzing data on temporal and aspectual reference in the under-documented Kwa language Anii. This data will show that Anii is a tenseless language, though in a different way from many languages that have previously been so described. </span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> An overview of Anii will show that the only potential tensed clauses in the language are those with future temporal reference and those marked with the far-past marker /bʊ̀ŋ</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman,serif;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">à</span></span></span></span><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">/. I argue that the apparent future/non-future distinction is actually a realis/irrealis contrast and that the far-past marker is not a tense marker, but a Temporal Remoteness Marker.<br /></span></span></span></span></p>

We are able to perceive temporally structured events, like change, motion and persistence. These events do have temporal properties like duration, temporal order and simultaneity. In addition, many philosophers hold that, contrary to space, these temporal properties do not exhaust our temporal experience. Time itself, they hold, is felt as enjoying a transient character over and above these relations. Our awareness of temporal properties and the alleged flowing character of time are the object of analysis of this dissertation. Many philosophical problems and issues arise in this respect, among which the Paradox of Temporal Experience, the requirement of accommodating temporal transparency and the troubles for the B-Theory because of the so-called "Argument from Phenomenology". In addressing all of them, I will propose a full-blown tenseless account of temporal perception, implemented via retentionalism. It is a completely new proposal, since the received view runs against this very hypothesis, especially if the latter is accompanied by a naive realist conception of experience. In other words, I will show that no reference to any temporal location is within our perceptual contents. Moreover, In respect of the idea of a perceived flow, I will propose that this relies on a mistake. There is nothing like the perception of time passage. Finally, It is worth to point out that, within the overall field of philosophy of perception, our ability to perceive time is an unicum. While it is often said that our acts of perception do not share the properties of the perceived objects, it is still the case that temporal perception occurs in time. This is very interesting because temporal properties of perception come to have a role at explaining our ability to be acquainted with temporal properties in the environment. Finally, temporal perception has a lot of connections with other inquiries such metaphysics and cognitive science which will be explored in various extent.