Temporal Interpretation without Tense: Korean and Japanese Coordination Constructions
Matrix clauses are tensed in Korean and Japanese, but both languages have coordination constructions where any non-final conjunct may or, in the case of Japanese, must be untensed. Building on analyses of the temporal interpretation of tenseless languages such as Yucatec Maya (Mayan: Bohnemeyer 2002...
| Published in: | Journal of Semantics |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press
2010
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://jos.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/ffq005v1 https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/ffq005 |
| Summary: | Matrix clauses are tensed in Korean and Japanese, but both languages have coordination constructions where any non-final conjunct may or, in the case of Japanese, must be untensed. Building on analyses of the temporal interpretation of tenseless languages such as Yucatec Maya (Mayan: Bohnemeyer 2002) and Kalaallisut (Eskimo-Aleut: Bittner 2005), this article argues that a truly tenseless analysis of the temporal interpretation of these non-final conjuncts is possible once the effects of Aktionsart and the discourse context on temporal interpretation are taken into consideration (cf. Partee 1984; Dowty 1986; Hinrichs 1986). The formal semantic analysis developed here is shown to be empirically and conceptually superior to previous analyses, which claim that the temporal interpretation of tenseless non-final conjuncts is determined either by the tense of the final conjunct (e.g. Yoon 1997; Hirata 2006) or by a tense-like restriction introduced by a zero tense morpheme or the coordination marker (e.g. Nakatani 2004; Chung 2005). The proposed analysis of Korean and Japanese coordination constructions thus provides further evidence that tenseless clauses can be semantically interpreted as such, not just in tenseless languages but even in languages where matrix clauses are otherwise tensed. The article concludes by discussing implications for analyses of cross-linguistic semantic variation. |
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