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<Paper uid="E89-1006">
  <Title>TENSES AS ANAPHORA*</Title>
  <Section position="2" start_page="0" end_page="0" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
1 Introduction
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> On a Reichenbachian analysis tenses are interpreted as relating three kinds of temporal entities: the time Of the event talked about, the speech time (time of utterance) and the refer*The research was done in the context of ACORD (ES-PRIT P393) and LILOG, and was also supported by the German Science Foundation (Ro245/13-3) ence time. In the original version these entities are understood as time-points. In the sequel frequently this system was transformed into interval-based approaches to describe the interaction of adverbials, tenses and aspect on sentence level (cf. v.Eynde(1987), Bras/Sorillo(1988)) or to describe the course of events on text level (cf. Hinrichs(1986), Partee(1984)l). A detailed criticism of the Reichenbachian analysis of tenses can be found in B~uerle(1979)). Motivated by text-phenomena the Kamp/Rohrer approach (1983,1985) splits the Reichenbachian reference time into three contextually given parameters by adding temporal perspective points and location times.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> Our approach which is based on the Kamp/Rohrer analysis differs from treatments of the semantics of tenses (and aspects) which characterize the tenses by some simple operator (usually interpreted as a temporal quantifier) in that respect that the tenses are described in terms of their contribution to the problem of how the temporal structure of the events talked about can be constructed. The problem how to determine the times the context has to supply and to which the events have to be related is largely neglected in theoretical discussions of the semantics of tenses. It is the main topic of our discussion. Special attention has been paid to the interaction of tense, aspect and temporal adverbials in determining these relations. The approach represents a unified account of tense and aspects. Another problem dealt with is the problem of tense switch.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> We will restrict the discussion to French tenses prevailing in (written) reports about past events (imparfait, pass~ simple, passd composd, plusqueparfait, conditionnel). The tense system x Partee has discussed at length the parallelism between nominal and temporal anaphora. The idea of tenses as anaphora, as developed there, underlies to a certain extent our approach as well.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> - 43 concerning the past, in contrast to that relating to the present or future time, is rather elaborated, especially in French. A proper theory of tenses has to account for this multiplicity.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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