A hybrid language for the analysis of aspectual and temporal phenomena in natural language (Q2782491)

The aim of the present paper is to provide a formal semantics, inspired by the framework of dynamic logic (DL), that allows to model the natural language (NL) phenomena met in the theory of aspect. More specifically, the author defines a language \(L\) that is interpreted with respect to a dynamic event structure (ES) on which it is possible to express aspectual distinctions between various NL phrases including clauses (sentences). Besides the means of expressing different types of binary relations on the set of ES states, the language \(L\) is required to provide an additional mechanism that admits reference to elements from different domains of the dynamic event structure ES. To achieve this new quality, the author extends the language \(L\) to a hybrid language \(L^h\), which is no longer purely propositional and which encloses variables of different sorts that can be bound by various types of NL binders. The result is a ``shallow'' semantic analysis of the NL sentence to reveal the semantic structure that accounts for many aspectual distinctions, expressed on the basis of the propositional modal language \(L^h\) augmented by some binding mechanism for variables. The syntax and semantics of the languages \(L\) and \(L^h\) are formally defined and their usefulness to model the NL theory of aspect is illustated by the translation and interpretation of NPs (noun phrases), manner-adverbs, simple tenses, and the perfect of result (the last one being informally defined as follows: ``in the perfect of result, a present state is referred to as being the result of some past situation'', B. Comrie, 1976).NEWLINENEWLINEFor the entire collection see [Zbl 0978.00029].