Skip to main content

Back and forth through time and events

Extended abstract

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Temporal Logic (ICTL 1994)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 827))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

In this extended abstract back- and-forth structures are defined and applied to the semantics of natural language. Back- and-forth structures consist of an event structure and an interval structure communicating via a relational link; transitions in the one structure correspond to transitions in the other. Such structures enable us to view temporal constructions (such as tense, aspect, and temporal connectives) as methods of moving systematically between information sources. We illustrate this with a treatment of the English present perfect, and progressive aspect, that draws on ideas developed in Moens and Steedman (1988).

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. van Benthem, J.: 1991, The Logic of Time, sec. edn., Kluwer, Dordrecht.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Blackburn, P. and de Rijke, M.: 1994, Zooming in, zooming out. Unpublished manuscript.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Carlson, L.: 1981, Aspect and quantification, in Tedeschi, P.J. and Zaenen, A. (eds.): 1981, Syntax and Semantics 14, Academic Press, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Kamp, H. and Reyle, U.: 1993, From Discourse to Logic, Kluwer, Dordrecht.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Moens, M., and Steedman, J.: 1986, Temporal information and natural language processing, Research paper EUCCS/RP-2, University of Edinburgh.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Moens, M., and Steedman, J.: 1988, Temporal Ontology and Temporal Reference, Computational Linguistics, 14, pp. 15–28.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Oversteegen, L.: 1989, Two track theory of time, PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Reichenbach, H.: 1947, Elements of symbolic logic, Free Press, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Seligman, J.: 1990, Perspectives: a Relativistic Approach to the Theory of Information, PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Seligman, J. and ter Meulen, A.: 1992, Dynamic Aspect Trees, in Logic at Work, CCSOM, Amsterdam.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Vendler, Z.: 1967, Verbs and times. Chapter 4 in Linguistics and Philosophy, Cornell U.P., Ithaca.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Dov M. Gabbay Hans Jürgen Ohlbach

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1994 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Blackburn, P., Gardent, C., de Rijke, M. (1994). Back and forth through time and events. In: Gabbay, D.M., Ohlbach, H.J. (eds) Temporal Logic. ICTL 1994. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 827. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0013991

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0013991

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-58241-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48585-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics