Semantic Interactions Between Modality and Tense

摘要本研究着眼于英语语篇理解中情态成分与时间成分之间的相互作用，探讨如何在形式语义理论中对这些成分进行建模。最初的观察涉及两种现象。第一种是情态从属；似乎为了在涉及这一现象的话语中捕捉到语气-参考时间的交互作用，我们必须将模型中的瞬间和间隔视为非原始的，根据事件(它们本身被认为是部分可能世界)来定义的。二是话语的语义学，既涉及时间指称，又涉及情态，包括条件句和反事实条件句。这些例子表明了对时间现象建模的进一步限制，包括对现在概念跨世界地位的新见解，反映在言语时间概念中，这是赖兴巴契方法中解释时态的核心，也反映在NOW和其他时间索引的词汇语义中。本研究的主要目的是考虑如何将英语情态成分和时间成分的语义中的各种限制因素与其他考虑因素结合起来。这项研究还涉及一些悬而未决的问题，如事件和体类的语义学，语义建模中偏好的使用，以及语境在解释中的作用。

ABSTRACTS This research focuses on the interaction between modality and temporal elements in the interpretation of English discourses, investigating what restrictions should be put on the modeling of these elements in a formal semantic theory. The initial observations involve two kinds of phenomena. The first is modal subordination; it appears that in order to capture the mood- Reference Time interaction in discourses involving this phenomenon, we must treat instants and intervals in a model as non-primitive, defined in terms of events (themselves conceived as partial possible worlds). The second is the semantics of utterances which involve reference to times as well as modality, including conditionals and counterfactual conditionals. Such examples suggest further restrictions on the modeling of temporal phenomena, including new insights into the cross-world status of the notion of present, reflected in the notion of Speech Time, which is central to the interpretation of tense in a Reichenbachian approach, and in the lexical semantics of now and other temporal indexicals. The main goal of the research is to consider how to articulate the various restrictions with other considerations in the semantics of modal and temporal elements in English. The research bears as well on several open questions regarding the semantics of events and aspectual classes, the use of partiality in semantic modeling, and the role of context in interpretation.