Abstract
Validity of dynamic temporal reasoning is semantically characterized for Englishand Dutch aspectual adverbs in Discourse Representation Theory. This dynamicperspective determines how the content needs to be revised and what informationis preserved across updates, when the order of premises is considered relevant.Resetting contextual parameters relies on modelling the basic aspectual polaritytransitions and temporal reasoning extensionally. For intensional aspectual adverbialsthe speaker's attitudes regarding past alternatives to and possible continuations of thecurrent state come into play. Additional considerations are offered for generalizing thissystem to the full logical space for linguistic universals, lexicalized quite differently inDutch and English.
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Smessaert, H., Ter Meulen, A.G.B. Temporal Reasoning with Aspectual Adverbs. Linguistics and Philosophy 27, 209–261 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:LING.0000016467.50422.63
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:LING.0000016467.50422.63