Time With and Without Tense

How is temporal information conveyed in language? Do tenses code temporal information directly? Does the universality of temporal interpretations arise from a common syntactic structure necessarily including a Tense Phrase (TP)? From the study of tenseless languages and mixed-temporal languages such as Mandarin Chinese and Navajo, this article addresses fundamental questions about the grammaticalization of time. It is proposed that two simple pragmatic principles constrain direct temporal interpretation in languages with tense (English, French), and guide indirect temporal interpretation in languages without tense: (i) the default intepretation of present tense sentences as located in the present, (ii) the ‘Bounded Event Constraint’, i.e. the fact that bounded events cannot be located at Speech Time. A more general principle of Simplicity ensures that Present takes precedence over the Future (as futurity is never a ‘purely temporal’ concept). According to this view, a few very general grammatical principles account for temporal interpretation in both tensed and tenseless languages. The syntax of fully-tensed languages includes a TP, conveying direct information about temporal location. The other types of languages have an Aspect Phrase, but no TP. Aspectual information about boundedness and information about internal temporal properties (Static/Dynamic, Telic/Atelic, Durative/Punctual), coupled with the invariant pragmatic principles, suffice to derive temporal interpretation.

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