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Semantics and Pragmatics

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Doctoral Dissertations

Theses/Dissertations

Tense

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Tense In Conditionals: Ins And Outs, Zahra Mirrazi Oct 2022

Tense In Conditionals: Ins And Outs, Zahra Mirrazi

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is concerned with the role of tense in bringing about the semantic and pragmatic differences in conditionals. Investigating the contribution
of tense and aspect in Farsi conditionals, this dissertation expands the typology of
temporal morphology in antecedents of conditionals.
First, I make a novel observation that Farsi morphologically distinguishes between hypothetical and factual conditionals. Conditionals with zero tense in their
antecedent require the truth of their antecedent to be unsettled in the context, and
they yield hypothetical interpretation. Conditionals with present tense in their
antecedent require the truth of their antecedent to be settled in the projected context …


The Emptiness Of The Present: Fronting Constructions As A Window To The Semantics Of Tense, Petr Kusliy Dec 2020

The Emptiness Of The Present: Fronting Constructions As A Window To The Semantics Of Tense, Petr Kusliy

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is devoted to the temporal interpretation of fronting constructions in English and the phenomenon of the Sequence of Tense. It provides and analyzes previously unobserved data from verb phrase fronting constructions in which the simultaneous interpretation of a present tense embedded under a matrix past tense is available. These data are theoretically unexpected and challenging because most theories of English tense disallow this interpretation for Present-under-Past configurations. An account that captures the new data is proposed. It establishes a connection between the simultaneous interpretation of Present-under-Past and the mode of semantic composition between a verb and its complement. …