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<Paper uid="E93-1031">
  <Title>Temporal Connectives in a Discourse Context</Title>
  <Section position="4" start_page="0" end_page="260" type="intro">
    <SectionTitle>
2 Temporal Equivalence and
Discourse Incoherence
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> First, then, consider the following actual sequence of states and events: in the UK in November 1992, some right-wing Tory backbench MPs were objecting to government policy over the treaty of Maastricht, and threatened to vote against it; the Prime Minister, a Mr John Major, offered them a variety of concessions to win them back, in what the press termed a &amp;quot;charm offensive&amp;quot;; the MPs responded by voting with the government. Call this course of events El.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> We can combine descriptions of the main eventualities in several ways, to reflect the right temporal structure, but only some of these seem pragmatically appropriate: consider in particular these possible descriptions of El involving the connectives before, aft fer and tvhe.:  (1) The backbenchers were in revolt.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="2"> (2) a. They were pacified after Major launched a charm offensive.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="3"> b. ?Major launched a charm offensive be- null fore they were pacified.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="4"> c. They were pacified when Major launched a charm offensive.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="5"> d. ?Major launched a charm offensive when they were pacified.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="6"> There are at least two apparent anomalies, which require explanation. First, one might expect that (2a) and (2b) would be temporally equivalent, both describing El; why, then, does (2b) apparently lead to discourse incoherence? Secondly, it has been argued that A when B permits many possible temporal relationships between the eventualities denoted by A and B (cf. Moens and Steedman 1988); it's for this reason that (2c) can be interpreted as denoting El;  but given this permissiveness, why is (2d) not as acceptable as (2c)?</Paragraph>
  </Section>
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