Speaker: Yadav Gowda (MIT)
Title: The long and short of tense in Kannada and English
Time: Thursday, June 25th, 12:30pm - 2pm
Abstract: Across languages, simple present tense forms commonly exhibit two properties, which I will call Non-perfectivity and Presentness:
Non-perfectivity: VPs which denote events are incompatible with perfective aspect in simple present tense forms (e.g. (1)).
1. *I walk to the park (now).
Presentness: Given a stative simple present tense sentence (e.g. (2)) uttered at time t, the state denoted by the VP holds at t. Given an imperfective eventive simple present tense sentence (e.g. (3)) uttered at time t’, the run-time of the event denoted by the VP includes t’.
2. I live in Chicago (now).
3. I am walking to the park (now).
In this talk, I will present an analysis of the Kannada present tense, which, like English, exhibits both Non-perfectivity and Presentness. I will argue, however, that Kannada arrives at these properties by different means. Specifically, I will argue that the properties of Kannada present tense sentences derive from two main components:
a) The present tense existentially quantifies over intervals ending at the Utterance Time.
b) Perfective present tense sentences compete with perfective past tense sentences, triggering a temporal (scalar) implicature which I will call the Utterance Time Alignment Implicature (UTAI), which, in general, rules them out.
In contrast, I argue that the meaning of English present tense sentences does not involve existential quantification over intervals, nor competition with the past tense. Instead, I argue that the meaning of English present tense sentences involves evaluation of the predicate at the Utterance Time itself.
I will call Kannada-type languages, in which the present tense existentially quantifies over intervals ending at the Utterance Time, long present tense languages, and English-type languages, in which the present tense evaluates the predicate at the Utterance Time itself, short present tense languages.
Time permitting, I will argue that this long vs. short present distinction predicts the distribution of two phenomena which have been long-standing puzzles in the analysis of the English present: the ability of durative adverbials to modify simple present stative/imperfective sentences (Kannada (Long): Yes; English (Short): No), and the Present Perfect Puzzle (Kannada (Long): No; English (Short): Yes).