Publications

Publication details [#8963]

Smith, Neil V. 1981. Grammaticality, time and tense. In Longuet-Higgins, H. Christopher, John Lyons and David A. Broadbent, eds. The psychological mechanismus of language: A joint symposium of the Royal Society and the British Academy, held on 11 and 12 March 1981. The Royal Society and the British Academy. pp. 39–51.

Publication type

Article in book

Publication language

English

Keywords

grammaticality | modality | tense | time deixis

Annotation

It is claimed that each morpho-syntactic tense form has a 'default' meaning that specifies time rather than modality or remoteness; but this default meaning can in every case be overruled by linguistic or pragmatic factors.