International Congress of Linguists, Geneva, 21-27 July 2013

Temporal Reference in Discourse: A Modality-Based Asymmetric Account?

Kasia M. Jaszczolt

University of Cambridgehttp://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/kmj21

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Outline

The modal supervenience of time

The semantic representation of temporality: ACC operator on merger representations

Quantitative differences in ACC for representing qualitative distinctions P, N, F:

The Direct-Quantitative View The Modal-Contextualist View

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What is expressed overtly in one language may be left to pragmatic inference or default

interpretation in another.

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‘Tenseless’ languages

St’àt’imcets (Lillooet Salish), British Columbia:Táyt-kan kelhHungry-1sg.subj WOLL

‘I will be hungry.’ (Matthewson 2006)

Paraguayan Guaraní:A-jahú-ta1sg-bathe- PROSP (prospective aspect/modal)‘I am going to bathe.’ (Tonhauser 2011)

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Thai: Pragmatic inference and defaults for temporality

f3on t1okrain fall (Srioutai 2006)

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From time to epistemic detachment

‘Why do we believe that events are to be distinguished as past, present, and future? I conceive that the belief arises from distinctions in our own experience.

At any moment I have certain perceptions, I have also the memory of certain other perceptions, and the anticipation of others again.’

McTaggart (1908: 127)

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Time as Modality

supervenience of the concept of time on the concept of epistemic detachment (temporal properties on modal properties in semantics)

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Supervenience

A set of properties T supervenes on a set of properties M iff no two things can differ with respect to T properties without also differing with respect to M properties.

‘There cannot be a T-difference without an M-difference.’

adapted from McLaughlin & Bennett 2005

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Merger Representations for the Past

Lidia went to a concert yesterday.(regular past)

This is what happened yesterday. Lidia goes to a concert, meets her school friend and tells her…(past of narration)

Lidia would have gone to a concert (then).(epistemic necessity past)

Lidia must have gone to a concert (yesterday). (epistemic necessity past)

Lidia may have gone to a concert (yesterday).(epistemic possibility past)

Lidia might have gone to a concert (yesterday).(epistemic possibility past)

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Fig. 1: Degree of epistemic commitment for selected expressions with past-time reference

rp, pn enp epp

1 0

Acc ├ p ‘it is acceptable that it is the case that p’

(Grice 2001)

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ACCΔ Σ ├

‘it is acceptable to the degree Δ that Σ is true’

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Fig. 2: Σ for ‘Lidia went to a concert yesterday.’ (regular past)

Σ

‘Temporality and Epistemic Commitment: An Unresolved Question’

in: K. M. Jaszczolt & L. de Saussure, eds (2013). Time: Language, Cognition and Reality. Oxford Studies of Time in Language and Thought vol. 1, Oxford University Press.

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Unresolved Question

qualitative differences between P, N, F

quantitative modal differences( in ACC)

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UQ:

If The concept of time is underlyingly modal and supervenes on the degrees of epistemic commitment to (or detachment from) the narrated eventuality associated with the speech act by the speaker, then What is the exact correlation between the value of that represents this degree of commitment in DS and the type of temporal reference: P, N or F?

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quantitative concept (ACC ) qualitative concepts (P, N, F)

(i) correlationor(ii) P, N, F as quantitative differences

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Two possible solutions:

• Direct-Quantitative View(DQ)

• Modal-Contextualist View(MC)

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A and B theory

McTaggart (1908)

A theory: reality is tensed; time flows; (P), N, (F) are real. = psychological time

B theory: reality is tenseless; there is no P, N, F out there and time does not flow. Events are real, and so is their ordering, but they don’t have pastness, futurity, or present actuality. = metaphysical time

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?How exactly, if at all, does the value associated with the degree of epistemic commitment/epistemic detachment identify the ‘direction’ of detachment, into the past and into the future?

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Quantifying time

This relative status of F and P is well conveyed in natural languages (hierarchies of epistemic modals and hierarchies of evidentials, Faller 2002).

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Quantifying time

This relative status of F and P is well conveyed in natural languages (hierarchies of epistemic modals and hierarchies of evidentials, Faller 2002).

The speaker’s choice of a construction with a stronger or weaker degree of trust in the truth of the embedded proposition, or an indicator of the kind of evidence (in itself weak or strong) can be taken as an indicator of the degree of commitment.

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?Time as explanans: ‘may’ and ‘might’

λPλwλtw [wMB(w,t) & AT([t, _), wP)]

There is a world w that belongs to the set of worlds of the speaker’s epistemic state such that the given property is instantiated in this world at a certain interval.

(Condoravdi 2002: 71, after Kratzer 1981/2012)

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?Time as explanans: ‘may’ and ‘might’

λPλwλtw [wMB(w,t) & AT([t, _), wP)]

There is a world w that belongs to the set of worlds of the speaker’s epistemic state such that the given property is instantiated in this world at a certain interval.

(Condoravdi 2002: 71, after Kratzer 1981/2012)

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Graded modality explained as an ordering of the worlds (Kratzer 1981/2012).

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The modal base (MB): a function from world-time pairs to sets of possible worlds that represents the epistemic state of the speaker.

MB(w,t) = the set of worlds compatible with what the speaker knows at time t; P = property; [t,_) = an interval from t to infinity.

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Time as explanandum

ACC as a base:

ACCΔ=1 Σ├

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?temporality is composed of diversified modal atomic concepts e.g. mayn>mayn+1>mayn+2...

‘>’ = the ordering of the strength of expressed commitment

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?temporality is composed of diversified modal atomic concepts e.g. mayn>mayn+1>mayn+2...

‘>’ = the ordering of the strength of expressed commitment

(i) different degrees of detachment (values for n, n+1, n+2)or (ii) different types of detachment

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(i) = the direct-quantitative view (DQ), the direct reliance on values of n, n+1, n+2...

(ii) = the modal-contextualist view (MC), shifting the (arguably) qualitative differences between P, N and F to (arguably) qualitative differences between modal expressions on their occasions of use

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DQ and tenseless time (B-theory)

B-theory (Oaklander 2002: 74; cf. Oaklander & White 2007; Le Poidevin 2007, 2011)

If all there is is duration and precedence (B-theory), then DQ is preferred: events occupy certain metaphysical and conceptual space in a way that allows the thinking agent to form an attitude to them – an attitude that includes the degree of certainty.

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DQ and tenseless time (B-theory)

graded attachment translates into

graded belief that a certain state of affairs is (tenselessly) realproduces the illusion (‘time in the mind’) of ‘was/is/will be real’

(cf. Tallant 2013)

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DQ and tenseless time (B-theory)

• At some level of atomic concepts, time passing is not only not real but P, N and F are not even in the mind at all.

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DQ and tenseless time (B-theory)

• At some level of atomic concepts, time passing is not only not real but P, N and F are not even in the mind at all.

• Instead there are degrees to which states of affairs are accepted by the agent.

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MC?

MC is only possible (modal supervenience is preserved) if we can peg the qualitative differences in detachment pertaining to P, N, and F on linguistic semantic and conceptual distinctions.

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MC?

‘There is no temporal difference without a modal difference’, but modal differences themselves are more than the lexicon and syntax reveal.

radical contextualist approach to meaning: Default Semantics (Jaszczolt 2005, 2009, 2010), Interactive Semantics (Jaszczolt, in progress)

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MC = a result of pragmatic processing (inference + defaults)

•post-Gricean principles of rational conversational behaviour

•reliance on CPI (conscious pragmatic inference), or SCWD (social, cultural or world-knowledge defaults) of Default Semantics

Supported by cross-linguistic empirical evidence (grammaticalisation of English will, default sense of Thai d1ay1

II, pragmatic inference for ‘may’)

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MC and A-theory: An ‘asymmetry’ version

• P and N are real and F unreal: ‘now’ is the edge of real time, and F simply keeps growing.

• arguments from causation (Tooley 1997, 1999)

• arguments from relational concepts (‘x (past) is real as of y (present)’, Button 2006, 2007)

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Reduction of MC + A-theory to DQ + B-theory

•Accepting causation presupposes accepting a tensed world

(Tooley’s asymmetric A-theory). But:

•Tensed concepts can be broken down to and analysed in terms of tenseless ones.

•Supervenience is ensured by relational properties: what facts are actual depends on the time at which they are assessed.

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Reduction of MC + A-theory to DQ + B-theory

If the concept is underlyingly modal (remembering), then the DQ solution applies and we can have different values for different eventualities.

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value of in ACC Σ ├ >>

Tom remembers PRO saying that time doesn’t flow.

Tom remembers his saying that time doesn’t flow.

Tom remembers that he had said that time didn’t flow.

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P/F asymmetry and the laws of physics

Events are ordered in a unidirectional sequence.

The second law of thermodynamics: disorder of a closed system (its entropy) increases with time (physical processes are irreversible).

Real time does not flow: the past and the future have no objective sense.

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Psychological time (the human concept of time)

Just as entropy is unidirectional, so is memory: memory of an agent increases and produces the illusion of the flow of time.

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Psychological time (the human concept of time)

Just as entropy is unidirectional, so is memory: memory of an agent increases and produces the illusion of the flow of time.

conceptual, epistemic reduction naturalistic reductionism

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“The labels ‘past’ and ‘future’ may legitimately be applied to temporal directions, just as ‘up’ and ‘down’ may be applied to spatial directions, but talk of the past and the future is as meaningless as referring to the up and the down.”

Davies (2012: 11)

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Conclusions

• Cross-linguistic differences in expressing time can be explained by a universal semantics in terms of the underlying concept of epistemic modality ACCΔ Σ ├ .

• Temporality is not a primitive concept. It supervenes on the concept of epistemic detachment (ACCΔ Σ’)├ from the truth of the merged proposition (Σ’).

• The differences between P, N, and F are either (i) underlyingly quantitative rather than qualitative (DQ view) or (ii) the differences are qualitative and the value of is contextually established (MC view).

• MC is reducible to DQ.46

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