Abstract
This article deals with the semantics of “double-access” sentences. They are defined as English sentences which have a past tense morpheme in the matrix clause and a present tense morpheme in a subordinate clause in the immediate scope of the matrix past tense. They receive a very peculiar interpretation, which we will refer to as a “double-access interpretation.” The episode described in the embedded clause makes reference to two times: the time referred to by the matrix predicate and the utterance time of the whole sentence. Previous studies on this construction are largely descriptive and do not attempt to analyze it formally, with one important exception. Abusch (1991) addresses the problems connected with the construction and proposes that double-access interpretations involvede re attitudes about intervals. Her proposal contains an important insight and provides one possible account of the double-access construction. My proposal was independently developed at approximately the same time as Abusch's and offers an alternative explanation for the phenomena. I consider a series of hypotheses and conclude that double-access readings involvede re attitude reports about state individuals. This account is couched in an eventuality-based framework and employs the techniques proposed by Cresswell and von Stechow (1982). In order to yield the desired reading, the tense must first adjoin to the complement S, then to the matrix S, leaving two traces in the process.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abusch, Dorit: 1988, ‘Sequence of Tense, Intensionality and Scope’,WCCFL 7, 1–14, Stanford Linguistics Association, Stanford University.
Abusch, Dorit: 1991, ‘The Present under Past asDe Re Interpretation’,WCCFL 10, 1–12, CSLI, Stanford University.
Bach, Emmon: 1986, ‘The Algebra of Events’,Linguistics and Philosophy 9, 5–16.
Bennett, Michael and Barbara Partee: 1972,Toward the Logic of Tense and Aspect in English, Indiana University Linguistics Club, Bloomington.
Chomsky, Noam and Howard Lasnik: 1977, ‘Filters and Control’,Linguistic Inquiry 8, 425–504.
Comrie, Bernard: 1985,Tense, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Costa, Rachel: 1972, ‘Sequence of Tenses in That-Clauses’,CLS 8, 41–51.
Cresswell, Maxwell J. and Arnim von Stechow: 1982, ‘De Re Belief Generalized’,Linguistics and Philosophy 5, 503–535.
Davidson, Donald: 1967, ‘The Logical Form of Action Sentences’, in N. Rescher et al. (eds.),The Logic of Decision and Action, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, pp. 81–95.
Dowty, David: 1979,Word Meaning and Montague Grammar: The Semantics of Verbs and Times in Generative Semantics and in Montague's PTO, Reidel, Dordrecht.
Enç, Mürvet: 1986, ‘Towards a Referential Analysis of Temporal Expressions’,Linguistics and Philosophy 9, 405–426.
Enç, Mürvet: 1987, ‘Anchoring Conditions for Tense’,Linguistic Inquiry 18, 633–657.
Kaplan, David: 1977, ‘Demonstratives: An Essay on the Semantics, Logic, Metaphysics, and Epistemology of Demonstratives and Other Indexicals’, ms.; published in J. Almog et al. (eds.), 1989,Themes from Kaplan, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 481–614.
Lewis, David: 1973,Counterfactuals, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Lewis, David: 1979, ‘AttitudesDe Dicto andDe Se’,The Philosophical Review 88, 513–543.
May, Robert: 1977,The Grammar of Quantification, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.
Montague, Richard: 1973, ‘The Proper Treatment of Quantification in Ordinary English’, in J. Hintikka, J. Moravcsik, and P. Suppose (eds.),Approaches to Natural Language, Reidel, Dordrecht, pp. 221–242.
Needham, Paul: 1975,Temporal Perspective, Philosophical Studies 25, The Philosophical Society and the Department of Philosophy, University of Uppsala, Sweden.
Ogihara, Toshiyuki: 1989,Temporal Reference in English and Japanese, Ph.D. thesis, University of Texas at Austin, distributed by Indiana University Linguistics Club.
Ogihara, Toshiyuki: 1993, ‘The Semantics of Tense in Embedded Clauses’, ms., University of Washington; to appear inLinguistic Inquiry.
Partee, Barbara Hall and Mats Rooth: 1983, ‘Generalized Conjunction and Type Ambiguity’, in R. Bäuerle et al. (eds.),Meaning, Use and Interpretation of Language, de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 361–383.
Perry, John: 1977, ‘Frege on Demonstratives’,Philosophical Review 86, 474–497.
Quine, W. V.: 1956, ‘Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes’,Journal of Philosophy 53, 177–187.
Smith, Carlota: 1978, ‘The Syntax and Interpretation of Temporal Expressions in English’,Linguistics and Philosophy 2, 43–99.
von Stechow, Arnim: 1984, ‘Structured Propositions and Essential Indexicals’, in F. Landman and F. Veltman (eds.),Varieties of Formal Semantics, Groningen-Amsterdam Studies in Semantics3, Foris, Dordrecht, pp. 385–403.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ogihara, T. Double-access sentences and reference to states. Nat Lang Seman 3, 177–210 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01249837
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01249837