ABSTRACT IDEAS: THE RELATION OF LINGUISTIC TIME AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TIME 1

In the first section a sketch of a tense logic is presented and a mechanism is suggested for including aspects of the tense logic into the Grammar (theory of language). Specifically, several grammatical structures are shown to incorporate temporal features. A semantic projection mechanism is utilized to amalgamate the temporal features in elements of the Auxiliary, Conjunctions, Adverbials and, in addition, the inherent temporal features of Nouns and Verbs to yield an overall reading of temporal specification. The second section examines the psychological validity of a tense logic model. Two alternative hypotheses are considered to account for the encoding of structures of temporal specification. The first is a derivational theory of complexity of the sort proposed in recent psycholinguistics. The other is a theory based on the structure of the tense logic model. The results of the recall and recognition experiments appear to support the tense logic hypothesis that the subjects encode sentences (and perhaps discourses) into an Event Space in which the temporal information concerning both explicit and implicit predicates (events) is represented. The Event Space appears to be subject to Tense Shift laws. It would appear that subjects are sensitive to the temporal information in conjunctions as well as the information expressed by the elements of the verbal auxiliary. This supports the hypothesis that the overall temporal specification is derived by the amalgamation (projection) of temporal features or properties of various linguistic structures, and, furthermore, that the encoded representation can be conceived of as a complex Event Space in which the temporal relations among all the events in an utterance or discourse are specified.