Semantics of tense and aspect

We will discuss some central issues in the semantics of tense and aspect and how it can be treated in formal semantics. Phenomena we will look at include:

• progressive tense
• perfect tense
• aspectual classes of verbs
• non-tensed constructions

We will focus on the following issues:

• the role of time points and intervals
• the role of events and a string theory of events
• tense operators vs reference to time and/or events

Graduate students will be able to receive credit for the course if they take part in the classes and write an acceptable term paper. Consult with me first about the topic of the paper.

There is a Google group associated with this course. To join go to http://groups.google.com/group/tensesemanticsht10?hl=en.

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