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Identifying and computing

temporal locating adverbials

with a particular focus on

Portuguese and English

______________

Telmo Móia

Lisboa, 2000 (February)

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The author of this dissertation received a grant from the Fundação para a Ciência e

Tecnologia (BOLSA PRAXIS XXI / BD / 9607 / 96), which financially supported his stay

at the Institut für Maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung, of the University of Stuttgart, Germany,

from October 1996 to September 1997, in November 1998 and from April to June 1999.

On various occasions, this work was also supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e

Tecnologia through the research project PCSH/C/LIN/936/95. The reproduction of this text

was subsidised by the same foundation.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... ix

Abstract ........................................................................................................................... xi

Resumo ......................................................................................................................... xiii

Foreword ...................................................................................................................... xvii

PART I: Introduction ...................................................................................................

Chapter 1 Time in natural languages: general basic aspects .............................................................

1.1. Representing time and temporal relations in natural languages: instants, intervals and events....................................................................................

1.2. Temporal domains of natural language (and the focus of this dissertation) ............ 1.2.1. Temporal relations: location, frequency, number and duration ..................... 1.2.1.1. Temporal location............................................................................. 1.2.1.2. Frequency ......................................................................................... 1.2.1.3. Number .......................................................................................... 1.2.1.4. Time measurement (duration) ........................................................ 1.2.2. Temporal reference ..................................................................................... 1.2.3. Temporal structure of complex entities ......................................................

1.3. Temporal subsystems of natural language (and the focus of this dissertation)...... 1.3.1. Markers of aktionsart values........................................................................ 1.3.2. Markers of temporal reference..................................................................... 1.3.3. Markers of temporal location....................................................................... 1.3.3.1. Temporal location expressed by adverbial means .......................... 1.3.3.2. Temporal location expressed by tense............................................ 1.3.3.3. Temporal location associated with (morphologically unmarked) discourse relations ........................... 1.3.4. Markers of frequency, number and duration................................................

Chapter 2 Aktionsart and tense: two fundamental subsystems for the analysis of adverbial temporal location .....................................................................

2.1. Aktionsart .............................................................................................................. 2.1.1. Introduction.................................................................................................. 2.1.2. Some basic questions about aktionsart ........................................................ 2.1.2.1. On the criteria to define aktionsart categories ................................ 2.1.2.2. Aktionsart shift ...............................................................................

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Chapter 5 The dividing line between temporal locating adverbials and temporal measure adverbials ............................................................................................... 135

5.1. The categorisation of adverbials containing predicates of amounts of time ........ 5.1.1. A two-class typology: (strict) temporal measure adverbials vs. temporal locating adverbials...................................................................... 5.1.2. Temporal locating adverbials and inferred duration of eventualities ........ 5.1.3. Advantages of the two-class typology .......................................................

5.2. Ambiguous temporal measure / temporal locating adverbials .............................

5.3. Conclusion ........................................................................................................

Chapter 6 The dividing line between temporal locating adverbials and time-denoting expressions ..........................................................................................

6.1. Apparently ambivalent time-denoting / temporal locating expressions............... 6.1.1. Introduction................................................................................................ 6.1.2 Subtypes of apparently ambivalent time-denoting / temporal locating expressions ..........................................

6.2. The categorisation of antes / before and depois / after phrases ........................... 6.2.1. Alternative analyses of before and after phrases ...................................... 6.2.2. A uniform analysis (as mere time-denoting expressions) of before and after phrases in different syntactic configurations................... 6.2.3. Further motivation for an analysis of before and after phrases as mere time-denoting expressions in adverbial contexts.......................... 6.2.3.1. Association of a time discourse referent with before and after phrases in adverbial contexts ............................. 6.2.3.2. The presence of an empty locating operator in sentences with before and after phrases in adverbial contexts ............................. 6.2.4. On some asymmetries between before and afte r........................................ 6.2.5. Some observations on the semantic diversity of the temporal operators before and after : before and after in combination with predicates of amounts of time.................................................................... 6.2.5.1. Temporal location of intervals involving before and after phrases................................................................ 6.2.5.2. Before and after modified by predicates of amounts of time ....... 6.2.6. Conclusions................................................................................................

6.3. The categorisation of adverbials with entre / between , of adverbials with quando / when , and of adverbials that measure and count from anchor points ...

6.4. Conclusions ......................................................................................................

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Acknowledgements

This work began approximately five years ago. In the past three, I was exempted from my teaching duties at the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, where I have been working for almost eleven years, and could therefore dedicate myself full-time to this dissertation. During this five-year course, and in the preceding time, many people supported me, whom I would like to thank. First and foremost, my supervisor, João Andrade Peres, to whom I owe most of what I know about Semantics (and much of what I know about Linguistics). He has been, ever since the beginning of my career at the University of Lisbon, the most dedicated advisor and friend, and has permanently tried to stimulate my interest and make me improve. In general, I owe a lot to his fondness for doubt and rigour; in particular, I owe a lot to his careful reading of many previous versions of this text and his countless suggestions of improvement. I would also like to thank very specially Professors Hans Kamp and Rainer Bäuerle, of the University of Stuttgart (where I spent fifteen months of the preparation of this dissertation), who have patiently and kindly read my work, given me the opportunity to discuss it with them (for many hours!), and made numerous insightful suggestions. As will be seen, this thesis owes much to the linguistic work of Hans Kamp, which has always been of the utmost intellectual inspiration to me. During my stay at the Institut für Maschinelle Sprachverarbeitung, of the University of Stuttgart, many people helped me in some way or other, or encouraged me with a friendly word. Among them, Antje Roßdeutscher, Franz Beil, Peter Krause, Dorit Abusch, Tim Fernando, Agnes Bende-Farkas, Daniel Rossi, Mariana Damova, Andreas Mengel, Jonas Kuhn and Wolfram Hinzen. A special word is owed to Graham Katz, Steve Berman and Ben Shaer, who were always willing to give me their native-speaker judgements, despite my torturing examples. I also have to thank my flatmates in Germany − Thommy and Steffi − who put up a lot with me, and made my stay in Stuttgart be one of the most pleasant periods of my life. In Lisbon, I have to thank the friendly support of my colleagues Ana Teresa Alves and Rui Marques, who make the best atmosphere in the semantics group. For the discussions in the meetings of this group, I also thank Fátima Oliveira and Ana Cristina Lopes. For their grammaticality judgements, or a word of encouragement at some time or other, I am also indebted to my colleagues Anabela Gonçalves, Francine Arroyo, León Acosta, Madalena Colaço, Maria João Freitas, Matilde Miguel, Silvana Rivoir and Sónia Frota. Before starting this dissertation, my research was predominantly oriented for syntax (the area of my Master’s thesis in 1992), a fact which has certainly influenced my way of looking at language. I am particularly indebted to Inês Duarte, for her advise during this period. Before that, as an undergraduate student, in 1986, my interest in Linguistics was decisively marked by the influence of Graça Vicente, whom I also thank here.

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Abstract

This dissertation deals with the semantics of temporal locating adverbials, comprising two main topics: first, the identification of this class of expressions, by distinguishing between it and other classes – namely temporal measure adverbials and time-denoting expressions – whose semantic proximity raises important categorisation issues; second, the semantic computation of temporal locating adverbials in the formal framework of Discourse Representation Theory, taking the presentation of Kamp and Reyle (1993) as the basic reference. The second topic necessarily leads to the analysis of the interaction between adverbial temporal location and other semantic domains that significantly affect the relations expressed by locating adverbials, among which aktionsart, causality and quantification stand out. The semantic-syntactic identification of temporal locating adverbials, as opposed to the two mentioned “bordering” categories of temporal measure adverbials and time- denoting expressions, required choices concerning their internal structure and their semantic function. Thus, temporal locating adverbials are analysed as containing a (basic or derived) time-denoting expression as immediate constituent, and as having a double semantic role – on one side, defining a frame for temporal location out of the interval expressed by their time-denoting complement and, on the other, defining a (location) relation between that (location) frame and the located entities. As a consequence, the apparently ambivalent measure/locating adverbials – like for the last three hours , or from nine to five – are considered as mere temporal locating adverbials, and the apparently ambivalent locating/time-denoting expressions – like yesterday , last week , or before 1980 – are regarded as mere time-denoting expressions. The outcome of this categorisation is, I argue, a manifestly simple, structured and well-defined system (of adverbial temporal location), with an evident generalisation power. With respect to the semantic computation topic, I propose a general DRS-construction mechanism (i.e. a set of rules) based on Kamp and Reyle’s (1993) but departing from it in some significant aspects. The changes I suggest are essentially motivated by the analysis of structures that were not examined in that work. Within the subtopic of the interaction between locating adverbials and other semantic domains, I study the impact of aktionsart values, causality and quantification on adverbial temporal location, and conclude that a more fine-grained typology of location relations than the one normally used in the literature is linguistically pertinent. With regard to this issue, particular emphasis is laid on a location mode that I term “full-scanning inclusive location”, which, to my knowledge, has not been given in the semantic literature the distinguished status it, in my opinion, rightfully deserves.

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linguisticamente pertinente. Neste domínio, dou ênfase especial a um modo de localização temporal que designo como “full-scanning inclusive location” (“localização inclusiva totalizante”), à qual não foi conferido na literatura semântica, tanto quanto sei, o estatuto especial que em minha opinião verdadeiramente merece.

Do ponto de vista estrutural, esta dissertação organiza-se em três partes do modo a seguir descrito. A Parte I, introdutória, integra três capítulos que têm como objectivos principais: situar e limitar o tópico da dissertação no âmbito das questões sobre tempo − Capítulo 1 (“O tempo nas línguas naturais: aspectos gerais básicos”); fazer uma breve descrição dos subsistemas da “aktionsart” e do tempo verbal, atendendo à sua especial importância para a análise da localização temporal adverbial − Capítulo 2 (“ Aktionsart e tempo verbal: dois subsistemas fundamentais para a análise da localização temporal adverbial”); apresentar de forma sucinta a Teoria da Representação do Discurso, o quadro formal usado nesta dissertação, em especial no que respeita ao seu tratamento das questões temporais − Capítulo 3 (“Teoria da Representação do Discurso: um quadro formal de análise”). É de salientar ainda que, no âmbito do segundo capítulo, são apresentados de forma esquemática os sistemas temporais verbais (do modo indicativo) do português e do inglês, segundo a descrição de Peres (1993) e Kamp & Reyle (1993), respectivamente. A Parte II centra-se na definição do conceito de “expressão adverbial de localização temporal”. O seu primeiro capítulo é introdutório e tem dois propósitos essenciais: apresentar taxinomias divergentes que surgem na literatura e evidenciam a pertinência de se discutir o tema da categorização − Subcapítulo 4.1 (“Algumas classificações divergentes de expressões adverbiais de tempo”); apresentar o mecanismo geral de construção de representações discursivas directamente relacionado com as expressões adverbiais de localização temporal a que acima se fez referência − Subcapítulo 4.2 (“Algumas noções básicas e pressupostos sobre localização temporal, medição temporal e denotação de tempo”). Os dois capítulos seguintes ocupam-se dos já mencionados problemas de categorização, que resultam da existência de expressões aparentemente ambivalentes − Capítulo 5 (“A linha divisória entre as expressões adverbiais de localização temporal e as expressões adverbiais de medição temporal”) e Capítulo 6 (“A linha divisória entre as expressões adverbiais de localização temporal e as expressões denotadoras de intervalos”). A segunda parte da dissertação contém ainda um capítulo, relativamente marginal em relação ao tópico categorial, em que é descrito e formalmente analisado um conjunto de expressões (denotadoras de intervalos) que envolvem, de forma algo imbricada, os domínios da denotação de tempo, da medição temporal, da quantificação sobre entidades ordenadas no eixo do tempo e da localização temporal − Capítulo 7 (“Medir, contar e localizar: observações sobre uma subclasse de expressões denotadoras de intervalos”). Por último, a Parte III desta dissertação explora − de forma relativamente limitada − a diversidade de modos de localização temporal. O seu primeiro capítulo apresenta uma classificação das relações de localização temporal que resulta de se considerar o contributo de diversos elementos da frase, tais como o operador de localização temporal (tipicamente uma preposição), os valores de “aktionsart” das entidades (situações ou intervalos) a

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localizar, valores de causalidade eventualmente associados ao uso de complementos situacionais na expressão adverbial e valores de quantificação sobre as entidades localizadas (associados a diferentes componentes da frase) − Capítulo 8 (“Modos de localização temporal: visão geral”). No que respeita a este capítulo, é de salientar a apresentação de uma construção que, tanto quanto sei, ainda não foi notada na literatura na forma exacta que esta reveste. Esta construção, onde, defensavelmente, o localizador temporal funciona como um comutador aspectual, consiste na combinação − associada a valores de causalidade − entre uma descrição de um evento pontual e uma expressão adverbial não-pontual (com desde ), como na frase o Paulo deixou fumar desde que soube que tinha problemas nos pulmões. O segundo e último capítulo da terceira parte centra-se na “localização inclusiva totalizante”, um modo que proponho seja distinguido da “localização inclusiva simples” e que, tanto quanto sei, não foi identificado como autónomo na literatura − Capítulo 9 (“Interacção entre a quantificação e a localização temporal (adverbial)”). A localização inclusiva totalizante envolve a localização temporal de entidades não-atómicas (somas de situações ou de intervalos), com um requisito de maximidade relativamente ao intervalo de localização. Por exemplo, a frase o Paulo escreveu três livros desde 1980 requer que a totalidade dos livros escritos pelo Paulo no intervalo relevante seja tido em consideração, ao contrário da frase o Paulo escreveu este livro em 1980 , que não apresenta tal requisito. Com esta dissertação pretendi dar um contributo para o estudo dos sistemas de localização temporal adverbial de línguas como o inglês e, principalmente, o português. É, no entanto, minha convicção e esperança que este contributo possa ter um alcance mais alargado, lançando alguma luz sobre a temática da expressão temporal adverbial noutras línguas ou famílias de línguas.

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Foreword

1. This thesis is written in English. I have always been an enthusiast about this language, first at high school, and later as an undergraduate student at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (where I got a degree in Portuguese-English Language and Literature). However, not being an English native speaker, nor having ever lived in an English speaking country, it is likely that the reader may come across (hopefully not too many) grammar mistakes. I have to thank many corrections in previous versions, specially to João Peres, Hans Kamp and Rainer Bäuerle. I apologise for the remaining mistakes.
2. Although I focus on two specific languages, Portuguese and English, this dissertation also belongs in the domain of general theoretical linguistics. I trust that the conclusions I arrive at are of relevance for linguistic systems in general and not only for the two prevailing object-languages taken into account. My primary focus is on Portuguese, the only language in which I can scrutinise with some degree of confidence the subtle variations and intricacies of natural language sentences (a constant source of surprise and marvel to me!). My secondary focus is on English, which simply cannot be ignored, given its importance in the semantic literature. Besides Portuguese and English, other languages may episodically be examined (German, for instance, is particularly focused in chapter 5). Throughout this dissertation there will be language-specific assertions, others applying just to the languages considered, and still others assumed to have a more general import. I trust that the different scopes are perspicuously expressed at the relevant places.
3. A word about notation. As a rule, I present illustrative examples in pairs Portuguese / English. The English sequences may have three different “statuses” though, which I signal differently: quotes mark mere glosses (where a literal correspondence is given only for the expressions under analysis); brackets mark translations (these are in principle grammatical, and correspond approximately to the attached Portuguese expressions, but are not under discussion); finally, absence of punctuation marks signals that the English sequence is (also) under discussion. The Portuguese expressions are normally placed above the English ones (in numbered examples), or before them separated by a slash (in body text). In well indicated cases, a comment applies to English / Portuguese counterparts, but for simplification I use just the English form in the body text (this occurring frequently in chapter 6, for instance, where I often just mention before or after , even though their Portuguese counterparts − antes and depois − have mostly identical properties).
4. The formal framework I use for meaning translation is the Discourse Representation Theory, in the version of Kamp and Reyle (1993). Although I make a brief presentation of this theory, particularly in what concerns its treatment of time in natural language, familiarity with many of its aspects is presupposed.

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