Cover not available

Article published In: New Developments in Relevance Theory
Edited by Manuel Padilla Cruz and Agnieszka Piskorska
[Pragmatics & Cognition 28:2] 2021
► pp. 228–251

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Pragmatic resolutions of temporal and aspectual mismatches

 | Université de Neuchâtel
Published online: 27 June 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.21014.sau
Abstract
This paper proposes a pragmatic solution to utterances where the various indicators of time and aspect (tenses, lexical-conceptual features of Aktionsart, adverb phrases and contextual cues) seem to have divergent temporal reference and aspectual properties. This type of cases is usually treated at the semantic level as ‘mismatches’ and resolved compositionally through logical operations of ‘aspectual coercion’. We suggest on the contrary that no such effect of ‘mismatch resolution’ or ‘coercion’ is at work: these utterances are worked out inferentially according to the various pieces of evidence they provide for their relevance, in line of Deirdre Wilson’s and Dan Sperber’s (1995) relevance theory. Such utterances give rise to cognitive effects that are hardly attainable by apparently more literal formulations, while being cost-effective. Our analysis follows the work of Escandell-Vidal, Victoria & Manuel Leonetti. 2011. On the rigidity of procedural meaning. In Victoria Escandell-Vidal, Manuel Leonetti & Aoife Ahern (eds), Procedural Meaning: Problems and Perspectives (CRISPI 25), 81–102. Bingley: Emerald. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar about the rigidity and thus prevalence of computational linguistic expressions, called ‘procedural expressions’ by Blakemore, Diane. 1987. Semantic constraints on relevance. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar within Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson. 1995. Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford: Blackwell (1st edition 1986).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar framework, relevance theory.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Mismatch resolution: Theoretical overview
  • 3.Tense as aggregates
    • 3.1Temporal and aspectual meanings of tenses: General and specific
    • 3.2On tenses as procedural items
  • 4.Principles in temporal and aspectual information management
    • 4.1Principle 1: Procedural meaning forces conceptual compliance
    • 4.2Principle 2: More specialized linguistic evidence is more relevant
    • 4.3Principle 3: High contextual salience is mandatory information
  • 5.Pragmatic imports
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
References (39)
References
Asher, Nicholas & Julie Hunter. 2012. Aspectual coercions in content composition. In Luna Filipović & Katarzyna M. Jaszczolt (eds.), Human Cognitive Processing, Vol. 371, 55–81. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baranzini, Laura & Louis de Saussure. 2017. Le futur épistémique en italien: de la modalité à l’évidentialité. In Laura Baranzini (ed.), Le futur dans les langues romanes, 299–316, Berne: Peter Lang. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barbet, Cécile & Louis de Saussure. 2012. Sporadic aspect as a pragmatic enrichment of root modality. In Cinzia Russi & Chiyo Nishida (eds), Building a bridge between communities of the Old and New Worlds : Current research in tense, aspect, mood and modality, 25–43. New York: Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blakemore, Diane. 1987. Semantic constraints on relevance. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Damourette, Jacques & Edouard Pichon. 1911–1936. Des mots à la pensée. Essai de grammaire de la langue française. Paris: D’Artrey, volume V.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dölling, Johannes. 2014. Aspectual coercion and eventuality structure. In Klaus Robering (ed), Aspects, phases and arguments: Topics in the semantics of verbs, 189–226. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dowty, David. 1979. Word Meaning and Montague Grammar. The Semantics of verbs and Times in generative Semantics and in Montagues’s PTQ. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Egg, Markus. 2005. Flexible Semantics for Reinterpretation Phenomena. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Escandell-Vidal, Victoria & Manuel Leonetti. 2011. On the rigidity of procedural meaning. In Victoria Escandell-Vidal, Manuel Leonetti & Aoife Ahern (eds), Procedural Meaning: Problems and Perspectives (CRISPI 25), 81–102. Bingley: Emerald. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gosselin, Laurent. 2015. Conflits et mécanismes de résolution dans le domaine aspectuo-temporel : applications à la rhétorique des pointes. In: Aude Lafferrière & Marc Durain (eds), « Ce mot qui m’avait surpris … ». Conflits et décalages de langage, 59–74. Paris: Champion.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang. 1992. The present perfect puzzle, Language 681. 525–552. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lascarides, Alex & Nicholas Asher. 1993. Temporal interpretation, discourse relations and commonsense entailment, Linguistics and Philosophy 161. 437–493. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martin, Robert. 1971. Temps et aspect. Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moens, Marc and Mark Steedman. 1988. Temporal Ontology and Temporal Reference. Computational Linguistics 141. 15–28.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Piñango, Maria, Edgar Zurif and Ray Jackendoff. 1999. Real-time processing implications of enriched composition and the syntax-semantics interface. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 281, 395–414. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Piñón, Christopher J. 1995. An Ontology for event semantics. Dissertation, Stanford University.
Pickering, Martin J., Brian McElree, Steven Frisson, Lillian Chen & Matthew J. Traxler. 2006. Underspecification and Aspectual Coercion. Disourse Processes (42–2). 131–155. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pylkkänen, Liina. 2008. Mismatching meanings in brain and behavior. Language and Linguistics Compass 21. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pulman, Stephen. 1997. Aspectual shift as type coercion. Transactions of the Philological Society 951. 279–317. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reichenbach, Hans. 1947. Elements of symbolic logic. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sauerland, Uli. 2002. The present tense is vacuous. Snippets 6 (11). 12–13.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Saussure, Louis. 2003. Temps et pertinence. Bruxelles: De Boeck. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. On some methodological issues in the conceptual / procedural distinction. In Victoria Escandell-Vidal, Manuel Leonetti & Aoife Ahern (eds), Procedural Meaning: Problems and Perspectives (CRISPI 25), 55–79. Bingley: Emerald. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. Perspectival interpretations of tenses. In Kasia Jaszczolt & Louis de Saussure (eds), Time : Language, cognition and reality, 46–69. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. Future reference and current relevance with the French composed past. In Philippe De Brabanter, Mikhaïl Kissine & Saghie Sharifzadeh (eds), Future times, Future tenses, 247–265. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2471.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Saussure, Louis & Patrick Morency. 2012 [online 2011]. A cognitive pragmatic view of the French epistemic future, Journal of French Language Studies 22–021. 207–223. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smith, Neil. 1990. Observations on the pragmatics of tense. UCL Working Papers in Linguistics 21. 113–46.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan & Deirdre Wilson. 1995. Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford: Blackwell (1st edition 1986).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1998. The mapping between the mental and the public lexicon. In Peter Carruthers and Jill Boucher (eds), Thoughts and language, 184–200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sthioul, Bertrand. 1998. Le passé composé: une approche instructionnelle. In Svetlana Vogeleer, Andrée Borillo, Carl Vetters & M. Vuillaume (eds), Temps et discours, 79–94. Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000a. Aspect et inferences. Cahiers de linguistique française 221, 165–188.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000b. L’imparfait comme expression procédurale. In Jean-Emmanuel Tyvaert (ed.), L’imparfait, Recherches en Linguistique et Psychologie cognitive 151, Presses Universitaires de Reims, 53–71.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Therriault, David J. & Gary Raney. 2007. Processing and Representing Temporal Information in Narrative Text. Discourse Processes (43–2). 173–200. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Todorova, Marina, Kathy Straub, William Badecker & Robert Frank. 2000. Aspectual Coercion and the Online Computation of Sentential Aspect 6.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vendler, Zeno. 1957. Verbs and times. Philosophical Review 561, 143–160. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilmet, Marc. 1998. Grammaire critique du français. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre. 2011. The conceptual-procedural distinction : Past, present and future. In Victoria Escandell-Vidal, Manuel Leonetti & Aoife Ahern (eds), Procedural Meaning: Problems and Perspectives (CRISPI 25), 3–32. Bingley: Emerald. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre & Dan Sperber. 1993. Pragmatics and time. UCL Working papers in Linguistics 51, 277–300.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1998. Pragmatics and time. In Robyn Carston & Seiji Uchida (eds), Relevance Theory: Applications and Implications, 1–22. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Cao, Yufei, Yiwen Ding & Jiahui Yang
2025. Construction of Context in Noun Recategorization: Comparison Between Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. Researching and Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language DOI logo
Piskorska, Agnieszka & Manuel Padilla Cruz
2023. Concepts and context in relevance-theoretic pragmatics. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 33:3 ► pp. 313 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue