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Other Ling Newsletters
« Voces Feminae Performances December 12 and 13 | Main | End-of-Semester Lunch This Friday»
Seth Cable in the S-Group Today
As we announced last week, Seth Cable is speaking in the joint semantics and syntax reading group meeting today (December 11), 4:30 pm, in the department lounge. The title of the talk is 'Sequence of Tense as Abstraction over Topic Time'; here's the abstract.
[Thanks Annahita!]
Abstract
The ability for sentences like (1a) to receive the so-called 'simultaneous reading' in (1b) has long been a puzzle for theories of the syntax and semantics of tense.
(1) a. Dave thought that Mary was dancing.
b. Dave thought the following: "Mary is dancing."
One common approach to these facts has been to propose that the subordinate past tense in (1a) is in some sense 'not semantically interpreted', and is perhaps some form of pure 'concord' or 'agreement' with the (semantically interpreted) matrix past tense (Stowell 1995, Kusumoto 2005).
In this talk, I will present an alternative to this general line of thought. I will present an analysis of the 'simultaneous reading' wherein the subordinate past-tense is still semantically interpreted. Specifically, I will show that a classic Reichenbachian theory of tense can actually capture the possibility of the simultaneous reading, if one simply allows that subordinate topic times can be abstracted over (i.e. bound by lambda operators).
I will go on to show how the proposed account can capture (i) the absence of the 'simultaneous reading' when the subordinate verb is perfective (2c), and (ii) the absence of 'later than matrix' readings of the subordinate clause (3b).
(2) a. Dave thought that Mary danced.
b. Dave thought the following: "Mary danced"
c. * Dave thought the following: "Mary is dancing."
(3) a. Dave thought that Mary was dancing.
b. * Dave thought (last week) that Mary would dance (yesterday).
Finally, I will sketch how the account nevertheless correctly permits 'later than matrix' readings of relative clauses.
(4) a. Dave met a girl who became famous.
b. Dave met a girl (in 1959) who would (later) become famous (in 1979).