A partition semantics for temporal adverbs.

摘要

The goal of the dissertation is to provide a semantic analysis of temporal adverbs expressing location in time. The approach taken uses in a novel way the notion of a partition of the temporal denotational domain.;Adverbs expressing location in time (locational adverbs) denote a time interval during which the situation described in the clause takes place, e.g. yesterday in the sentence John left yesterday.;This is a study in denotational semantics (no compositional semantic analysis is given). The main question the dissertation sets out to address is: what properties should the temporal universe have in order to provide the most adequate denotational domains for the interpretation of temporal expressions in natural language?;The answer is provided in terms of a two-level architecture. The first level is given by a point structure endowed with a strict order relation. The second level is given by the lattice of partitions taken over the point structure, together with an order relation among the partitions called refinement.;Two types of conditions on the partitions are provided: conditions on the order relation of each partition (lifted from the point structure) and conditions on the set of partitions as a whole. The latter are crucial in defining a set of partitions called natural which provide denotations for temporal adverbs.;Calendar time units (temporal nouns like year, month, day...), taken as primitive, are assigned as denotations functions from timepoints to partitions. Four basic types of existential locational adverbs are identified on the basis of the deictic-anaphoric and referential/measure oppositions. A semantics for them is provided on the basis of the partition system, using an intermediate logical language endowed with binary predicates (interpreted as logical constants) expressing temporal relations.;Periodic terms (temporal nouns like Sunday, January...), taken as derived terms, are assigned as denotations functions from partitions (those denoted by calendar time units) to partition blocks.;Finally it is shown that the temporal domain only allows those scope dependencies among temporal adverbs (both in the same sentence and across sentence boundaries) that are already built-in in the denotational model (the partition system), i.e. in the temporal domain the notion of semantic scope is denotational and not structural.