Empirical Validation of Reichenbach's Tense Framework

There exist formal accounts of tense and aspect, such as that detailed by Reichenbach (1947). Temporal semantics for corpus annotation are also available, such as TimeML. This paper describes a technique for linking the two, in order to perform a corpus-based empirical validation of Reichenbach’s tense framework. It is found, via use of Freksa’s semi-interval temporal algebra, that tense appropriately constrains the types of temporal relations that can hold between pairs of events described by verbs. Further, Reichenbach’s framework of tense and aspect is supported by corpus evidence, leading to the first validation of the framework. Results suggest that the linking technique proposed here can be used to make advances in the difficult area of automatic temporal relation typing and other current problems regarding reasoning about time in language.