Institut Jean Nicod

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June 11 : Dan Zeman (IJN) "Temporalism in an Extensional Framework"

Mardi 11 juin 2013 de 16h30 à 18h30 -
Institut Jean-Nicod, ENS, 29, rue d’Ulm 75005 paris, Salle de réunion, RDC.

CANCELLED


Dan Zeman (Institut Jean-Nicod)

"Temporalism in an Extensional Framework"
 

Abstract : In this talk I introduce and develop an approach to tenses that occupies a middle ground between eternalism (the view that all sentences express contents that contain some reference to time and whose truth is thus not relative to time) and temporalism (the view that some sentences express contents that don’t contain any reference to time and whose truth is therefore relative to time). In contrast to the most widespread positions on the market, the view proposed treats tenses neither as circumstance-shifting sentential operators (as standard versions of temporalism would have it), nor as quantifiers binding temporal variables that verbs come attached with (as standard versions of eternalism would have it), but as adjuncts modifying the verb. The idea of adjunctivity is spelled out using the framework of variadic functions proposed by François Recanati. After laying out the basic framework, I sketch how it could be applied to a series of linguistic phenomena (temporal interpretation of nominals, “sequence of tense”, interaction between tenses and temporal adverbials, deictic uses of tense, etc.).


CNRS EHESS ENS ENS