Past Tense Morphology in Tense and Modality

在典型的情况下，过去时的形态仅仅表明动词或谓语所表达的事件位于话语时间之前。但情况并非总是如此。例如，在(1)过去时的嵌入子句中，在其突出的阅读中，嵌入子句表达了在约翰做梦时拥有汽车的情况。在这种时态顺序的情况下，过去时的贡献显得空洞。约翰梦见他有一辆汽车。在其他情况下，过去时似乎表达了与过去不同的东西。在像(2)a这样的反事实条件句中，先行词中的过去式传达了她现在没有车，而(2)b对于她是否拥有车是中性的。如果她现在有一辆车，她就可以开车去学校了。如果她现在有一辆车，她可以开车去学校。有时，过去式可以用来指称未来的时间，如(3)。在某些语言中，祈使句可以使用过去时态，尽管祈使句是表现性的，通常需要现在或将来的解释(4)。最后，过去时形态有时可以表达特定的言语行为，如(5)所示。(3)我们今晚7点见面，对吗？（晚上7点前说的话）(4)有过这样的经历吗？（你最好早一点做那件事。）请给我一杯啤酒。（对服务员说）b；你叫什么名字？尽管这些现象都是相互独立分析的，但它们从来没有在一个角度下进行分析。到目前为止，还没有一种理论可以解释所有这些意义方面。此外，由于过去时形态学意义的跨语言差异尚未得到系统的研究，所以这五种现象是否具有跨语言相关性尚不清楚。然而，如果它们在类型学上是相关的，这就需要一个更完整的过去时形态学理论。因此，我们需要的是对过去时的所有用法有一个全面的认识。这个项目提供了这种视角。简而言之，我们的目标是实现以下目标：1 .基于对25种不相关且传播良好的语言样本的跨语言调查以及对特定语言的少量深入研究，描述上述现象之间潜在的类型学相关性及其表现方式；2。系统地描述和理解上述现象的跨语言变异范围；3。对过去形态学的语法、语义、语用和类型学有一个总体的观点和理解，这样就可以很自然地捕捉到所讨论现象的共现性，以及它们的类型学相关性和跨语言变化范围。

In typical cases, past tense morphology simply marks that the event expressed by the verb or predicate is located prior to the time of utterance. But this is not always the case. For example, in the embedded clause of (1) past tense conveys, in its prominent reading, that the embedded clause expresses that the car owning holds at the time of Johns dream. In such Sequence-of-Tense cases, the contribution of past tense appears vacuous.(1) John dreamed he had a car.In other cases, past tense seems to express something different than reference to the past. In counterfactual conditionals like (2)a, the past tense in the antecedent conveys that she does not own a car right now, as opposed to (2)b which is neutral with respect to whether or not she owns a car.(2) a. If she had a car now, she could drive to school.b. If she has a car now, she can drive to school.Sometimes, past tense is compatible with reference to times in the future, as in (3). In some languages, past tense morphology may be used in imperatives, even though imperatives, being performative, generally require a present or future interpretation (4). And finally, past tense morphology can sometimes convey particular speech acts, as shown in (5).(3) We were meeting up tonight at 7pm, right? (Uttered before 7pm)(4) Had dat eerder gedaan! (Dutch)Had that earlier done(You better had done that earlier.)(5) a. I had a beer, please. (uttered to a waiter)b. What was your name?Even though these phenomena all have been analysed independently from each other, they have never been analysed under one perspective. There is no theory, yet, of past tense morphology that explains all these meaning aspects. Also, as the cross-linguistic variation with respect to the meaning of past tense morphology has not been systematically investigated, it is unknown yet whether these five addressed phenomena are cross-linguistically correlated or not. However, if they are typologically related, this calls for a more integrated theory of past tense morphology. Hence what is needed is an overarching perspective on past tense morphology that covers all its usages. This project provides this perspective. In short, we aim to achieve the following goals: I. A description of the potential typological correlations between the phenomena discussed above and the way they are manifested on the basis of a cross-linguistic investigation of language sample consisting of 25 unrelated and well-spread languages and on the basis of a smaller number of in-depth studies of particular languages; II. A systematic description and understanding of the range of cross-linguistic variation of the phenomena outlined above; III. An overarching perspective and understanding of the syntax, semantics, pragmatics and typology of past morphology, such that the co-occurrence of the discussed phenomena, as well as their typological correlations and their ranges of cross-linguistic variation can be naturally captured.