The Simple Present Tense in English: A Unified Treatment

Elizabeth Cowper ^[1]
1. [1] University of Toronto
  
  University of Toronto
  
  Canadá
Localización: Studia linguistica: A journal of general linguistics, ISSN 0039-3193, Vol. 52, Nº 1, 1998, págs. 1-18
Idioma: inglés
Enlaces
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Resumen
- This paper provides a unified account of the matrix uses of the English simple present. The differences between eventive and stative sentences in the simple present, as well as reportive, futurate and habitual uses of eventive sentences are shown to derive straightforwardly from a single constraint on grammatical tense systems: the Principle of Non-Simultaneity of Points. The analysis supports a view of speech time as a moment, rather than an interval, in the unmarked case, and also supports the purely Davidsonian view that only eventive sentences contain an event-denoting element.