Abstract
This paper provides an analysis of the temporal location adverb now. The core data comes from free indirect discourse, where now often co-occurs with the past tense and has an affinity for stative sentences. Building on Kamp & Reyle’s (1993) analysis, I propose that now is a perspective setting anaphor: it requires an eventuality described by an aspectual phrase to hold throughout a salient event that serves as a the ‘current perspective.’ The proposed meaning is compatible with both the past and present tenses and it has the same semantic type and uses the same ingredients as other temporal location adverbs.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Kamp, H., Rohrer, C.: Tense in texts. In: Bäuerle, R., et al. (eds.) Meaning, Use and Interpretation of Language, pp. 250–269. De Gruyter, Berlin (1983)
Doron, E.: Point of view as a factor of content. In: Moore, S.M., Wyner, A.Z. (eds.) Proceedings of SALT, vol. I, pp. 51–64. Cornell University Press, Ithaca (1991)
Moore, A., Knott, A.: I prefer my husband now he’s a woman. In: Chesnutt, J. (ed.) Woman’s Day magazine. Hachette Filipacchi Médias (2008)
Lee, E.: Discourse properties of ‘now’. Presented at the 84th annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Baltimore, Maryland, January 7-10 (2010)
Moens, M., Steedman, M.: Temporal Ontology and Temporal Reference. Computational Linguistics 14, 15–28 (1988)
Webber, B.: Tense as discourse anaphor. Computational Linguistics 14, 61–73 (1988)
Kamp, H., Reyle, U.: From Discourse to Logic: Introduction to Model theoretic Semantics of Natural Language, Formal Logic and Discourse Representation Theory. Kluwer, Dordrecht (1993)
Kafka, F.: The Metamorphosis. Waking Lion Press (2006)
Altshuler, D.: Temporal interpretation in narrative discourse and event internal reference. PhD dissertation, Rutgers (in prep.)
Mel’chuk, I.: Semanticheskie ètjudy i. ‘sejchas’ i ‘teper’ v russkom jazyke. Russian Linguistics 9, 257–279 (1985)
Lee, E., Choi, J.: Two nows in Korean. Journal of Semantics 26, 87–107 (2009)
Katz, G.: Event arguments, adverb selection, and the Stative Adverb Gap. In: Lang, E., Maienborn, C., Fabricius-Hanses, C. (eds.) Modifying Adjuncts, pp. 455–474. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin (2003)
The Complete Review, http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/weissp/fluchtp.htm
Kamp, H.: Formal Properties of Now. Theoria 37, 227–273 (1971)
Schlenker, P.: Propositional attitudes and indexicality. PhD dissertation, MIT (1999)
Sharvit, Y.: The puzzle of free indirect discourse. Linguistics & Philosophy 31, 353–395 (2008)
Schlenker, P.: Context of thought and context of utterance (a note on Free Indirect Discourse and the Historical Present). Mind & Language 19, 279–304 (2004)
Kamp, H.: Events, instants and temporal reference. In: Bäuerle, R., Egli, U., von Stechow, A. (eds.) Semantics from Different Points of View, pp. 376–471. De Gruyter, Berlin (1979)
Hinrichs, E.: Temporale Anaphora im Englischen. Manuscript, University of Tübingen (1981)
Partee, B.: Nominal and Temporal Anaphora. Linguistics and Philosophy 7, 243–286 (1984)
Altshuler, D.: Aspect in English and Russian flashback discourses. Oslo Studies in Language 2 (to appear)
Altshuler, D.: A birelational analysis of the Russian imperfective. In: Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 14 (to appear)
Nelken, R., Francez, R.: Splitting the Reference Time: The Analogy between Nominal and Temporal Anaphora Revisited. Journal of Semantics 14, 369–416 (1997)
Partee, B.: Some Structural Analogies between Tenses and pronouns in English. Journal of Philosophy 18, 601–609 (1973)
Smith, C.: The vagueness of sentences in isolation. In: Beach, W.E. (ed.) Proceedings of the Chicago Linguistic Society, pp. 568–577. University of Chicago Press, Chicago (1977)
Smith, C.: The syntax and interpretation of temporal expressions in English. Linguistics and Philosophy 2, 43–99 (1978)
Bäuerle, R.: Temporale Deixis – Temporale Frage. Tübingen, Narr (1979)
Shiffrin, D.: Anaphoric then: aspectual, textual and epistemic meaning. Linguistics 30, 753–792 (1992)
Banfield, A.: Unspeakable Sentences. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London (1982)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Altshuler, D. (2010). Meaning of ‘Now’ and Other Temporal Location Adverbs. In: Aloni, M., Bastiaanse, H., de Jager, T., Schulz, K. (eds) Logic, Language and Meaning. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 6042. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14287-1_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14287-1_19
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-14286-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-14287-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)