The semantics of tense, orientation, and aspect in English

Abstract A strict separation is drawn between semantics and pragmatics in order to define tense, orientation, and aspect as three semantic notions of the verb governed by external speaker viewpoint on real world phenomena. Invariants of grammatical meaning are posited for English simple, progressive, and perfect forms, and it is shown that all forms must be defined by a feature of each semantic notion. Argumentation is given to support the one form/one meaning interpretation of abstract semantic structure, and evidence is provided to suggest that this characterization of semantics allows for a more disciplined approach to the consideration of universal principles in systematic semantics.