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The Construal of Embedded Tenses in Romanian| old_uid | 6280 |
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| title | The Construal of Embedded Tenses in Romanian |
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| start_date | 2009/02/16 |
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| schedule | 14h30-16h30 |
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| online | no |
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| summary | In this talk, I discuss the status of Romanian tenses with respect to the cross-linguistic typology, which distinguishes between Sequence of Tense, (SOT) and non-SOT languages. The major difference between SOT languages (English) and non-SOT languages Japanese/Russian) is that, in the former, past under past yields a
simultaneous reading whereas, in the latter, present under past yields a simultaneous construal. On traditional tense analyses, simultaneous construals in SOT languages arise via a “null” (past) tense, while in non-SOT languages, simultaneous construals arise via either a “null” tense (Japanese) or a “shifted indexical” present tense (Russian). I examine the distribution of Romanian past and present in complement and relative clauses and show that in Romanian (i) past always expresses anteriority and (ii) present may be indexical under past and the realization of a “null” tense under a matrix future. I also discuss cases where present in complement clauses (embedded under a matrix past) yields a simultaneous construal in the light of two major theories of shifting indexicals (Schlenker, 2003; Anand & Nevins, 2004), and show that neither gives a neat account of the Romanian data. I suggest instead an alternative explanation according to which the denotation of the present depends on the presuppositions associated to the content of the embedded clause. Present under past can be construed as
simultaneous only when the speaker is not committed to the truth of the subordinate clause. Otherwise, present is only indexical. |
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| responsibles | Copley |
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