The grammar of the english verb phrase part 101 doc

On the other hand, we will argue that arrived is a relative past tense form in John wanted to leave before Bill arrived.. In other words, in John wanted to leave before Bill arrived, the

This shows that the use of an absolute tense in abefore-clause is not a priori

impossible

As usual, the claim that abefore-clauses can in principle use either a relative

or an absolute tense form is difficult to corroborate when the verb form is in

the past tense, because there is no formal difference between an absolute and

a relative preterite form In sections 14.4.2⫺5 we will review some evidence

and apply it to the following example:

John left before Bill arrived

We will argue that in examples like this both the head clause and the

before-clause use an absolute tense form, i e thatJohn left before Bill arrived has the

temporal structure shown in Figure 14.4, which is determined both by the

tenses and by the semantics of before On the other hand, we will argue that

arrived is a relative past tense form in John wanted to leave before Bill arrived.

Figure 14.4 The temporal structure of John left before Bill arrived.

14.4.2 In a sentence likeJohn left before Bill arrived not only the head clause

situation but also the before-clause situation is represented (and interpreted)

as ‘factual at t0’ (or ‘t0-factual’), i e as a situation which did actualize in

the past In this respect this sentence differs fromJohn wanted to leave before

Bill arrived, in which the before-clause situation is not represented as a past

fact but as part of a past expectation which may or may not have been fulfilled

before t0 In other words, in John wanted to leave before Bill arrived, the

before-clause forms part of the opaque (intensional) context created by

want.3John’s leaving is therefore not represented as t0-factual but as something

3 As noted in 10.4.6, an opaque context (or ‘intensional context’) is one in which the

reference is not to the real world but to an alternative (e g imaginary) world Such a

context is created by (amongst other things) ‘intensional verbs’ (‘verbs of propositional

attitude’) likewant, expect, believe, think, imagine, etc Clauses that form part of an

intensional context receive an ‘opaque’ (‘de dicto’) interpretation, i e their truth is not

evaluated in relation to the real world but in relation to the alternative world referred to.

Clauses belonging to a nonintensional context receive a ‘transparent’ (‘de re’)

inter-pretation, i e their truth is evaluated in relation to the real world It is typical of such

an interpretation that the truth value of the clause is not affected when a referring

expression in the clause is replaced by an ‘identical’ expression (i e by an expression

which John wanted to happen later Whether it did actually happen or not is not expressed by this sentence The same is true of thebefore-clause situation

(Bill’s arrival), which is represented (by before) as posterior to John’s leaving.

Because of this posteriority relation, Bill’s arrival is interpreted as ‘ not-yet-factual at the binding time’, i e as not yet a fact at the time of the situation time of the head clause (⫽ the time of John’s leaving) Note that we are not using the term ‘not-yet-factual’ in the sense of ‘counterfactual’ (which is the opposite of ‘t0-factual’ and means ‘running counter to what is factual at t0’) Thus,John wanted to leave before Bill arrived does not imply that Bill did not

arrive; it just fails to imply that he did In what follows we will simplify ‘not-yet-factual at the binding time’ to ‘not-yet-factual at t’ or simply ‘

not-yet-factual’.

Since it is inherent in the structure ‘A before B’ that B is not yet a fact at the time of A, one might expect that all sentences consisting of a head clause and abefore-clause represent the situation time of the before-clause as

not-yet-factual, and therefore (a fortiori) as not t0-factual However, it is clear from

John left before Bill arrived that not all before-clauses are not interpreted as

t0-factual This means that there is something in John left before Bill arrived

that supplements the natural not-yet-factual interpretation of thebefore-clause

with a t0-factual (⫽ factual at t0) interpretation: ‘Bill had not yet arrived when John left, but he did arrive later.’ Since the sentence is used out of context, the only element that can be responsible for this t0-factual interpretation is the fact that arrived is an absolute tense form If a clause uses an absolute past tense

form, it T-relates its situation to t0, not to the situation time of the head clause (nor to any other orientation time that is related to the situation time of the head clause) The use of the absolute preterite places the situation time of the

before-clause on the time line, so that, in the absence of any indication to the

contrary, it is interpreted as a past fact, i e as t0-factual

In this context, it is useful to compare the following:

(2a) John wanted to leave before Gordon arrived

(2b) John left before Gordon arrived.

(2c) Mary {said / imagined / believed} that John had left before Gordon arrived (2d) Mary {said / imagined / believed} that John left before Gordon arrived

with the same referent) Thus, since in the real world the capital of France and Paris

have the same referent, we can replace the former by the latter inThe capital of France has ten million inhabitants without altering the truth value of the sentence.

In sentences that receive an opaque interpretation, the replacement of a term by an

‘identical’ expression may affect the truth value: the sentenceBill thinks that Paris is the capital of Spain may be true even if Bill thinks that the capital of France is the capital

of Spain is not true.

In (2a), thebefore-clause forms part of the intensional domain (world) created

by wanted and represents the time of its situation (Gordon’s expected arrival)

as T-simultaneous with the Anchor time that is implicit in before (⫽ ‘before

the time at which’) In this way thebefore-clause situation is not directly related

to t0 Arrived is therefore a relative preterite form This, and the fact that the

clause forms part of an intensional domain, entails that the

before-clause situation (Gordon’s arrival) is not represented as a past fact Instead it

is represented as a situation which, at the time of the head clause situation,

was expected to actualize later In sum, in (2a) arrived is a relative preterite,

whose situation is not interpreted as a past fact

When (2b) is used out of context, the before-clause does not form part of

an intensional domain and is interpreted as t0-factual This is in keeping with

the claim that arrived is now an absolute preterite form, which means that it

relates its situation time directly to t0

Example (2c) is like (2a) in that both the before-clause and its head clause

form part of the intensional domain created by the first clause (i e the matrix)

and are therefore interpreted as not-yet-factual at t0 The fact that the situation

time of the head clause is now represented as T-anterior to the central TO of

the temporal domain does not alter this

Sentence (2d) differs from (2c) only in that the speaker does not incorporate

the situation times of the head clause and the before-clause into the temporal

domain established by the matrix clause but has these two clauses shift the

domain: bothleft and arrived are absolute tense forms However, this does not

produce a t0-factual (nonintensional, transparent) interpretation of these forms,

because the head clause and the before-clause are anyhow not interpreted as

t0-factual (⫽ factual at t0) because the head clause is syntactically dependent

on the intensional verb of the matrix clause.4

We can draw the following conclusions from the above examples:

(a) When it is within the scope of an intensional verb, a head clause is not

interpreted as t0-factual (i e as being a past fact), irrespective of whether

it uses a relative tense, such ashad left in (2c), or an absolute tense, such

asleft in (2d).

4 In other words, in this sentence bothJohn left and Bill arrived shift the domain (i e use

the absolute past tense) But the t0-factual interpretation that is normally induced by the

use of the absolute preterite is overridden by the fact that thethat-clause depends on an

intensional verb which refers to a world that is different from the speaker’s t0-world.

The not-yet-factual-at-t0 reading thus persists in spite of the fact that the tense does not

locate John’s leaving and Bill’s arrival in the temporal domain created by the intensional

verb In other words, the syntactic relation between the matrix and thethat-clause

any-how imposes an intensional reading on the that-clause, even though the tense of the

head clause does not.

(b) If the head clause is not interpreted as t0-factual, neither is the

before-clause depending on it

(c) When not used in an intensional context, a head clause and abefore-clause

in the past tense are interpreted as t0-factual This is the case in (2b) A t0 -factual interpretation implies that the situation referred to is T-related to the speaker’s t0 This means that the past tense forms in (2b) are absolute preterites

(d) A preterite in abefore-clause can in principle be either a relative preterite

or an absolute one In the former case the tense form itself does not trigger

a t0-factual interpretation,5 whereas in the latter case it does, unless that interpretation is ruled out by the fact that the matrix clause creates an intensional domain, as in (2d)

14.4.3 It is not easy to find further direct evidence supporting the hypothesis that abefore-clause in English can in principle use either a relative or an

abso-lute preterite, because there is no formal difference between these tense forms However, indirect evidence can be derived from a cognate language, viz Dutch

In Dutch, the two meanings that we assign to the preterite forms in English (viz t0-factual and not-yet-factual-at-t) can be distinguished on the basis of the fact that one of them can be expressed in an alternative way Consider: (3a) Jan vertrok voordat Billtoekwam (‘John left before Bill arrived’)

(3b) Jan wou vertrekken voordat Billtoekwam (‘John wanted to leave before Bill

arrived’) (3c) Jan wou vertrekken voordat Billzou toekomen (‘John wanted to leave before

Bill would arrive’) Sentence (3a) is the exact Dutch equivalent ofJohn left before Bill arrived, and

(3b) is the exact equivalent of John wanted to leave before Bill arrived

How-ever, the latter sentence can also be translated as (3c) The reason is that Dutch allows a form of indirect binding which is ungrammatical in English: the tense structure of a Dutch sentence with abefore-clause may be such that the

situa-tion time of the before-clause is directly related to the situation time of the

head clause (in terms of T-posteriority) Whereas in (3b) the preterite form

toekwam represents the situation time of the before-clause as T-simultaneous

with the implicit Anchor time, the conditional tense formzou toekomen in (3c)

represents the situation time of thebefore-clause as T-posterior to the situation

5 Note, however, that a relative tense form is not incompatible with a factual interpreta-tion which is triggered by the linguistic or extralinguistic context For example: [“Did he write that letter when he was going to commit suicide?”] ⫺ “No, he wrote

it long before he was going to commit suicide.”

Thebefore-clause in the reply sentence ‘inherits’ the factual interpretation of the

when-clause in the question.

time of the head clause (⫽ indirect binding) In neither case is the before-clause

situation interpreted as t0-factual

The Dutch data lend support to the claim that the past tense form arrived

inJohn wanted to leave before Bill arrived is a relative tense form Since

indi-rect binding is an alternative to diindi-rect binding in Dutch, the fact that the past

tense form toekwam in (3b) alternates with the conditional tense form zou

toekomen in (3c) corroborates the view that the former is an instance of direct

binding, i e a relative tense form The claim that toekwam is not a relative

past tense form in (3a) is then corroborated by the fact that the substitution of

the relative tense form zou toekomen for toekwam is ungrammatical in this

sentence: *Jan vertrok voordat Bill zou toekomen (‘John left before Bill

would arrive’)

In sum, the data from Dutch are consonant with the claim that an absolute

preterite represents a before-clause situation as t0-factual, whereas a relative

tense form (irrespective of whether it is a preterite or a conditional tense form)

locates the before-clause situation in the temporal (and intensional) domain

established by the head clause or the matrix clause, and in so doing fails to

represent it as t0-factual

14.4.4 The similarity between Dutch and English is actually stronger than

has been suggested so far Although, unlike Dutch, present-day English does

not allow the use of the conditional tense in before-clauses that are

not-yet-factual-at-t but not t0-factual, more or less archaic English does allow the use

ofshould in such before-clauses This use of should represents a form of

indi-rect binding:

[I was railfanning in Lima this afternoon and took this shot of the signal bridge that

guards the NS(NKP) diamond at Ford Park I’m not sure how far back it dates, but

I know it was there at least in the early ’70’s from photo’s I’ve seen.] I wanted to take

a picture before itshould suddenly disappear like some other things recently (www)

[It was all of 8 o’clock by now and I told of my plan.] I wanted to go to the cemetery

before weshould leave for the other half of our pilgrimage (www) (written in 1971,

but quite possibly a bit pseudo-archaic)

[When we came to understand what the gentleman meant we told him that we

were very glad, for] we wanted to wake him up before he should die with such a

misunderstanding of God’s terms (www)

[I now gained on him, so much so that when I first saw the ocean he was but one

day’s journey in advance, and] I hoped to intercept him beforehe should reach the

beach (www)(from Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’)

[… knowing in what good hands I left the cause, I came away on Monday,] trusting

that many posts would not pass before Ishould be followed by such very letters as

these (www)(from Jane Austen’s ‘Mansfield Park’)

[Where is it to end? Suppose the Bowl were increased to even 125,000,] how many

years would it be before weshould have 150,000 seats demanded? (www)

14.4.5 Further evidence, again from Dutch, can be derived from what we have called the ‘Dutch test’ (see 8.32) This test relies on the observation that Dutch can sometimes use the present perfect where English has to use an abso-lute preterite, but cannot normally use the present perfect where English uses

a relative preterite If we apply this test toJohn left before Bill arrived, we see

that it can be translated not only as (3a) but also as follows:6

Janis vertrokken voordat ik ben aangekomen (‘John has left before I have arrived’)

Since the Dutch present perfect cannot normally be used as a relative tense, we must conclude that the present perfect in thebefore-clause is an absolute tense

form, i e a form which shifts the domain Given the strong similarity between the English and Dutch tense systems (especially the fact that neither language uses the present perfect to express a relation in a past or pre-present domain), this corroborates our claim that the preterite in the English counterpart of the above example should also be analysed as an absolute tense form

14.4.6 The above conclusion is also supported by the ‘represented speech test’ ⫺ see 8.25 Consider the following scrap of conversation:

A John is a doctor And I think Bill is a doctor too

B Yes As a matter of fact Billwas a doctor before John was one.

B’s reply can be reported as

Mary said that Billhad been a doctor before John had been one.

The fact that both preterites of (B) can be ‘backshifted’ in represented speech proves that both preterites are absolute tense forms⫺ see 8.25 (Note that had been

cannot be an instance of indirect binding⫺ see 9.29 Before-clauses do not allow

indirect binding by means of a past perfect, because, unlikewhen, before rules out

the possibility that, if both clauses use the past perfect, thebefore-clause situation

is interpreted as W-simultaneous with the head clause situation.)

14.4.7 In sum, there appears to be sufficient evidence that a preterite form in

a before-clause can be an absolute tense form, in which case the situation it

refers to is represented as a past fact

situation-time adverbial

As noted in 14.2.2, adverbialbefore-clauses are nearly always used as

situation-time adverbials An investigation of the possible tense combinations in the head

6 This does not mean that the two Dutch translations are interchangeable in any context The two are subject to slightly different conditions of use, but this is irrelevant to the argument that is presented here.

clause and thebefore-clause is necessary because different tense patterns often

entail different meanings (which have to do with different degrees and kinds

of factuality) As will be made clear, adverbial before-clauses functioning as

situation-time adverbials can appear in four major tense configurations (apart

from some others mentioned further on) They are exemplified by the following

sentences, all of which can be used to describe the same state of affairs, but all

of which are interpreted differently:

Jim arrived before the others left

Jim arrived before the others had left

Jim had arrived before the others had left

Jim had arrived before the others left

The first sentence (with an absolute tense in both clauses) will be discussed in

14.5 The second (with an absolute tense in the head clause and a relative one

in thebefore-clause) will be examined in 14.6 The third sentence (with a

rela-tive tense in both clauses) will be discussed in 14.7 The fourth example (with

a relative tense in the head clause and an absolute one in the before-clause)

will be investigated in 14.8 In all four sections, related tense patterns will be

investigated too

14.5 Absolute tense forms in both before-clause and

head clause

14.5.1 It is possible for both the head clause and thebefore-clause to use the

absolute past tense In 14.4.2⫺6 we have adduced evidence that this tense

structure is realized in sentences likeJohn left before Bill arrived This type of

sentence is typically used when the speaker wants to express no more than that

two situations actualized in a particular order (‘A before B’) in the past The

claim that both tense forms are absolute tense forms is in keeping with the fact

that both situations are interpreted as t0-factual The temporal structure of

John left before Bill arrived is represented by Figure 14.4 in section 14.4.1.

14.5.2 As we have seen, it is not normally possible for abefore-clause to use

an ‘Absolute Future System form’ (see 10.1) establishing a post-present domain:

Bill will leave before the pub {closes / *will close}.

However, there are a few exceptions to this rule These constitute further cases

in which an absolute tense form is used in both the before-clause and the

head clause

(a) Firstly, there are situations involving a head clause and a before-clause in

which the temporal relation between the two situations seems to be less