ABSTRACT
This concluding chapter deals with some ‘residual’ problems – residual in the sense that the analysis of temporality presented in the preceding ten chapters does not cover them but provides the basis for their treatment. Basic to this analysis is the distinction between two types of time spans involved in an utterance: the time which goes with the finite component – FIN-time; and the time which goes with the non-finite component – INF-time. The latter is regularly the time of the situation as described by the non-finite component of the utterance – TSit. The situation in itself may be complex, and accordingly we may have various subintervals of TSit, as, for example, in the case of 2-state contents or of the complex infinitivals analysed in chapter 9. FIN-time is regularly interpreted as the time for which an assertion is made – the topic time, TT. But not all sentences are used to make an assertion. This holds for non-declarative main clauses, such as imperatives, as well as for all types of subordinate clauses. In these cases, FIN does not seem to have the function of being the carrier of assertion, and hence, FIN-time must have a different interpretation. This will be examined in the following two sections. What is common to these cases is the fact that there is at least a verb – that kind of element which ever since Aristotle is considered to be marked for time. But temporality also shows up in noun phrases, although it may be less salient there. The chapter concludes with a look at this particular reflex of time in language.
