The Expressive Power of the English Temporal Preposition System

In this report, we present an account of the semantics of the English temporal prepositions. The approach taken here stresses the limited range of expressive possibilities afforded by these words, and pays particular attention to the irregular interactions they exhibit with verb-tense and -aspect. A framework is developed within which the semantics of English temporal expressions can be couched, allowing the temporal prepositions to be grouped according to their ‘temporal function’. A key finding of the report is that the eighteen temporal prepositions considered here express, between them, at most six distinct temporal functions. ∗Copyright 1992. All rights reserved. Reproduction of all or part of this work is permitted for educational or research purposes on condition that (1) this copyright notice is included, (2) proper attribution to the author or authors is made and (3) no commercial gain is involved. Technical Reports issued by the Department of Computer Science, Manchester University, are available by anonymous ftp from m1.cs.man.ac.uk (130.88.13.4) in the directory /pub/TR. The files are stored as PostScript, in compressed form, with the report number as filename. Alternatively, reports are available by post from The Computer Library, Department of Computer Science, The University, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, U.K.