Abstract
An investigation into the behavior of sentence-final then suggests the need to distinguish between two uses:
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1.
As a temporal anaphor referring back to a previously established explicit temporal referent (ETR).
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2.
As a way of expressing relations between states/events, where no ETR is required.
A means of making this distinction in Discourse Representation Theory (DRT) (Kamp and Reyle (forthcoming)) is proposed. This involves restricting the introduction of temporal referents into the universe of discourse to cases where certain types of temporal adverbials are present. In other cases, event or state referents but not temporal referents may be introduced. This contrasts with previous DRT accounts of temporal phenomena, which employ no such distinction.
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The research reported here was supported by an SERC studentship, no. 90311302. This work owes a great deal to many discussions with Robin Cooper, whom I thank for a wealth of ideas, suggestions, detailed comments and encouragement. I would also like to thank Alan Black, Max Cresswell, Robert Dale, Elisabet Engdahl, Alex Lascarides, Ian Lewin, Martin Mellor, Marc Moens, Jon Oberlander, Graeme Ritchie and Carl Vogel for much valuable comment, advice and practical help. I am grateful too for the comments of the editors and an anonymous reviewer for Natural Language Semantics. Any remaining mistakes are, of course, my own.
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Glasbey, S.R. Distinguishing between events and times: Some evidence from the semantics of then . Nat Lang Seman 1, 285–312 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00263546
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00263546