Human Imprints of Real Time: from Semantics to Metaphysics

Investigation into the reality of time can be pursued within the ontological domain or it can also span human thought and natural language. I propose to approach time by correlating three domains of inquiry: metaphysical time (M), the human concept of time (E), and temporal reference in natural language (L), entertaining the possibility of what I call a ‘horizontal reduction’ (L > E > M) and ‘vertical reduction’. I present a view of temporalityL/E as epistemic modality, drawing on evidence from the L domain and its correlates in the E and M domains. On this view, the human concept of time is a complex, ‘molecular’ concept and can be broken down into primitive concepts that are modal in nature, featuring as degrees of epistemic commitment to representations of states of affairs. I present evidence from tensed and tenseless languages (endorsing the L > E path) and point out its compatibility with the view of real time as metaphysical modality (endorsing the E > M path).

Encoding counterfactuality in Chinese, syntactically

In this article, I demonstrate how past time-reference, modality, negation, conditional, and the causal relationship between the protasis and the apodosis work together to generate counterfactuality in Chinese, syntactically. I study two syntactic means that can help construe counterfactuality in Chinese. First, I study the case of the specialized complementizer yaobushi ‘if not for’ based on Ippolito and Su (2009) by arguing that the causal clausal relationship and the overt or covert modality are obligatory in yaobushi counterfactual; in particular, I resort to the inherent negative entailment of the modal adverb cai ‘not until’ that satisfies the exhaustive operator to account for the needed negation in cai apodosis. Second, I propose that a hypothetical conditional clause with a past time-reference guarantees past counterfactuality in Chinese. I extend the morphological past-tense exclusion operator for counterfactuality (Iatridou 2000) to a more general and more pragmatic past time-reference to include tenseless languages like Chinese. I also show the special typological status of past tense and past counterfactual.

Contradictory (forward) lifetime effects and the non-future tense in Mandarin Chinese

Lifetime effects refer to the inferences about the life/death of the individual in sentences with individual-level predicates like ‘Mary is/was blue-eyed’. In English, contradictory lifetime inferences arise when the subject denotes one living and one dead individual (e.g. Saussuredead and Chomskyliving #are/??were both linguists.), but no such inferences arises in Mandarin Chinese, a language that has been considered “tenseless” due to the lack of past tense morphemes. This paper investigates the online processing of contradictory lifetime effects and presents additional empirical observations about “forward lifetime effects”, which suggest that both covert past tense and tenseless accounts of Chinese are inadequate for capturing temporal interpretations in this language; instead, finite clauses in Chinese display a Future/Non-Future distinction and are likely to possess a tense node. We discuss our findings in relation to the typology of tense as well as implications for other superficially tenseless languages.

Processing Tenses for the Living and the Dead: A Psycholinguistic Investigation of Lifetime Effects in Tensed and “Tenseless” Languages

Lifetime effects refer to the inferences about the life/death of the individual in sentences like ‘Mary is/was blue-eyed’. In English, contradictory lifetime inferences arise when the subject denotes one living and one dead individual, as neither tense is appropriate for the English copular, whereas no such intuition arises in Mandarin Chinese, a language that has been considered “tenseless” due to the lack of grammaticalised tense morphemes. In this thesis, I argue, with psycholinguistic evidence from online processing of contradictory lifetime inferences as well as empirical observations about "forward lifetime effects", that both covert past tense and tenseless accounts of Chinese are inadequate for capturing the temporal interpretations in this language: (1) Chinese speakers encountered reading time disruption for sentences with contradictory lifetime inferences, even though such sentences are judged as acceptable in an offline task; (2) Chinese bare predicates cannot be used when the subject involves one living and one yet-to-be-born individual. Taken together, these pieces of evidence suggest that the Chinese bare predicates are likely to possess a tense node with a Future/Non-Future distinction. I further suggest that Tense is a universal functional category that possesses a binary feature distinction, with a split between either Past/Non-Past or Future/Non-Future: all languages have a Tense Phrase in their hierarchical structure, although some languages lack overt marking of tense on nominals or verbs (or both). A new theory of tense is needed to account for the cross-linguistic variation on the surface form and the underlying homogeneity of temporal reference in language. (This is a revised version of my thesis.)

Expanding the the notion of a tenseless language: Data from Anii

<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>