On the Semantics of Temporal Operators Expressing Anteriority and Posteriority

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the categorial-denotational status of before and after phrases, trying to assess whether they are better classified as temporal locating expressions, timedenoting expressions or both. The conclusions to be drawn possibly apply to the counterparts of these expressions in other languages as well. I will concentrate on the occurrences of before and after in structures where they are not modified by predicates of amounts of time − e.g. in sequences like John got married before Christmas, but not John got married two weeks before Christmas. Unless otherwise stated, references to before and after and the claims to be made will concern only this type of occurrence. The structures where before and after combine with predicates of amounts of time – which pose specific problems − will be briefly discussed in section 3. The formal framework for analysis is the Discourse Representation Theory, as presented in Kamp and Reyle (1993).