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<Paper uid="W91-0214">
  <Title>FB lnformatik AB Wissensund Sprachverarbeitung</Title>
  <Section position="5" start_page="159" end_page="161" type="evalu">
    <SectionTitle>
4 Temporal and Non-Temporal Readings of before
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> It is a well known fact that the temporal connective before as well as its equivalents in other languages has a wide variety of non-temporal readings. Consider the following examples. In (ll.a), before has a purely temporal reading. In (ll.b-d), the connective has various kinds of non-temporal readings: (ll.b) shows a likelihood reading, (ll.c) a preference reading, and (ll.d) a conditional reading.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> (11) a. Before the Edmonton Oilers played the Minnesota North Stars, they beat the Los Angeles Kings.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> b. Before the Pittsburgh Penguins win the Stanley Cup, the Minnesota North Stars will.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> c. Before Wayne Gretzky signs with the Edmonton Oilers again, he will quit playing hockey.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> d. The Pittsburgh Penguins will not get their money before they have beaten the Boston Bruins.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> In its temporal use, before says that the relevant time of the situation reported in the main clause is located on the time scale prior to the time of the event introduced in the complement clause. Since before puts no aspectual restriction on the main clause, the relevant time is either the definite time of occurrence of an event or some indefinite time at which a state holds. In addition to this purely temporal relation, before determines that the time associated with the main clause situation is proximal to the complement  clause event, i.e. it is placed within what I call the proximal pre-state of the event. Note that the notion of proximity is again crucial to the meaning of before, just as it is in the case of German nachdem and English after: (ll.a) can hardly be used to convey the information that the Oilers played the North Stars in the spring of 1991 and beat the L.A. Kings a year or a decade ago (which would not be excluded if the connective were to express nothing but a temporal ordering relation), even if the Oilers actually happened to beat the L.A. Kings in 1990 and 1980 as well as in 1991. Apart from marginal cases, relating the events in (ll.a) by means of before most naturally indicates that both events occurred within the same season (or any other period which can serve as the conceptual basis for fleshing out the notion of proximity in a given context).</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> As for the preference and likelihood readings, a number of relevant features, such as the choice of tenses, has already been brought to attention by I-Iein~im~iki \[6\]; so I will not unneccessarily repeat them here. There are, however, two things which Hein~im~iki did not make particularly clear: first, under what circumstances these readings arise, and second, whether or not she thinks that the temporal and non-temporal readings follow from different semantic representations of the connective.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="7"> Note in the first place that tile non-temporal readings are only options we may choose in the interpretation of (ll.b) and (ll.c). If we consider (ll.b) to be a claim about two successive seasons of the National Hockey League, say tile 1991 and the 1992 season, (ll.b) may perfectly well be understood to tell us that in 1991 the Minnesota North Stars and in 1992 the Pittsburgh Penguins will win the Stanley Cup. (Since in this case NHL seasons or years in their entirety form the basic units of time, we must count the time of the North Stars' triumph as proximal to the Penguins' 1992 victory.) If, however, (ll.b) is intended to be a claim about the very same season, as, for example, when we are discussing the prospects of our favourite teams for the season to come, a temporal interpretation would not make any sense. After all, we know that there can be only one champion per season. In the same way, (ll.c) can simply mean that Wayne Gretzky will first quit his career and then sign a contract with his former team. But this temporal interpretation of the sentence would contradict our assumptions about what the president of a team normally expects from the players he employs.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="8"> This shows that the preference and likelihood readings of before are alternatives to the temporal interpretation of the connective which we choose in case the latter hardly makes any sense. The conditions under which these non-temporal readings car/ appear must be spelled out in terms of our extra-linguistic knowledge of and assumptions about features of types of situations, i.e. they are genuinely conceptual in nature. Tile relevant conditions are the following: A temporal interpretation contradicts what we think is plausible, and the two statements linked by the connective allow us to establish a contrast between types of situations. In (ll.b), the neccessary contrast is given by two possible outcomes of the hockey season. In (11.c), the contrast consists in a player's choice either to end or to continue his career, the latter being a prerequisite for being offere'd a new contract. Where there is no contrast, a preference or likelihood interpretation can hardly be achieved; compare (ll.b) and (ll.c) to (12). The two readings differ in that tile preference reading requires that the situations are under a subject's control; see sentence (13), which has a likelihood reading only.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="9"> (12) a. Before the Pittsburgh Penguins win tile Stanley Cup, Mario Lemieux will score for them more than once.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="10"> b. Before Wayne Gretzky signs with the Edmonton Oilers again, he will decide to continue his career.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="11">  (13) Before Wayne Gretzky signs with tile Edmonton Oilers again, the Pacific Ocean will dry out.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="12"> I consider the basic meaning of before to be temporal. The preference and likelihood readings require no special semantic representations, but arise through a conceptual reinterpretation of the ordering relation conditioned by the circumstances outlined above. Ill the basic temporal use, the ordering relation is interpreted as the temporal precedence relation between times associated with situations. In preference and likelihood readings, this relation is replaced by the relation of subjective prcference or likelihood, respectively, which ranks one type of situation superior to another type of situation. (What comes first on the scale is more likely or preferred than what comes later, just as what is present or in the past has a higher degree of certainty than what is yet to come.) In both the temporal and the non-temporal cases, there is a projection of parameters associated with situations - their times or their types - onto a scale, on which situations can be located with respect to that parameter. The notion of proximity in the semantics of before also carries over to non-temporal uses. In the cases discussed above it means that the type of situation described in the main clause is among the closest alternatives to the type of situation described in the complement clause with respect to the nature of the scale.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="13"> Nothing has been said so far about tile conditional reading of before in (11.d), which is repeated here as (14): (14) The Pittsburgh Penguins will not get their money before they have beaten the Boston Bruins.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="14"> A conditional reading can only arise if the main clause contains a negation and the subordinate clause is in the perfect aspect. The reasoning that leads to a conditional reading can be elucidated by considering what the standard temporal meaning of before yields in connection with these types of clauses. In its temporal interpretation, (14) says that prior to the consequent state of the Penguins' victory there is no event of the type that the team is getting money. This means that tile earliest possible change from a period without such an event to a period including such an event is when the victory has occurred. If there will be such an event at all, it must occur after the victory. This reasoning leads us to regard a victory of the Pittsburgh Penguins over the Boston Bruins as a condition for the occurrence of any event of the Penguins getting their money. Here again, the two types of events are projected onto a non--temporal scale, which in this case is a scale on which events are preceded by their conditions. The relation of proximity in the meaning of before now means that the realization of the event type introduced in the main clause is among the immediate consequences of the type of event described in the subordinate clause.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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