Some Semantic Ambiguities Related to ‘Tense Category’

Abstract

Understanding a sentence is but knowing when that sentence is to be asserted. Indeed, if I am given only a grammar of English and a list of English words (without their translation into another language I know), I can correctly construct an English sentence like

• (1) the book is on the table

but I am not able to make any assertion by means of this sentence because I am not aware of the conditions under which I could do it. We are allowed to consider that knowing these ‘conditions’ is equal to knowing that (1) is to be asserted if and only if:

• (a) there is exactly one object which, in a language like French is called livre;

• (b) there is exactly one object, which in the same language is called table;

• (c) between the two objects a definite spatial relation holds: they are contiguous, the first object occupies the place which is over the second one, and this spatial relation is indefinitely extended in time.