Proposition and Tense

Lecture 2 : Time , tense , and tense - logic ∗

Annotating "tense" in a Tense-less Language

In the context of Natural Language Processing, annotation is about recovering implicit information that is useful for natural language applications. In this paper we describe a “tense” annotation task for Chinese, a language that does not have grammatical tense, that is designed to infer the temporal location of a situation in relation to the temporal deixis, the moment of speech. If successful...

Tense and Indeterminateness

Is tense real and objective? Can the fact that something is past, say, be wholly objective, consistent with modern physics? I believe that it can. But some hold that for tense to be real, then a certain ontological doctrine must also hold. There must be a fact of the matter as to what really, truly, exists at each time. For example, it is held that only what is now really exists. This is the do...

Tense, Mood, and Centering

I propose that tense and mood paradigms are grammatical centering systems. Specifically, English tenses form a temporal centering system, which monitors and updates topic times, whereas Kalaallisut moods form a modal centering system, which monitors and updates modal discourse referents. Nevertheless, English and Kalaallisut translation equivalents converge on the same truth conditions, due to ...

Tense and Relativity

Those inclined to positions in the philosophy of time that take tense seriously have typically assumed that not all regions of space-time are equal: one special region of space-time corresponds to what is presently happening. When combined with assumptions from modern physics this has the unsettling consequence that the shape of this favored region distinguishes people in certain places or peop...