Spatio-temporal situations

A subset of propositions produced in discourse designates spatio-temporal situations. These occupy a moment or a period in time. When two such propositions follow each other in discourse, these moments or periods are necessarily in one of the temporal relations classified in section 3 below. The following symbols are used in the analysis:

• S↴ is the main clause; its time is T↴.
• ↴S is the subordinate clause; its time ↴T.

The temporal properties and relations of two joined situations exist side by side with other concrete interpropositional relations which may obtain between them. The latter may be coded by some interpropositional relator. The interpropositional relation is not then a temporal one, but, e.g., a causal or concessive one. Nevertheless, the temporal relation exists even in such cases. It may be coded independently by grammatical categories like the tenses of the two clauses. In this perspective, choosing the temporal relation between S↴ and ↴S for coding their concrete interpropositional relation is a kind of fallback strategy that may be resorted to if no more specific interpropositional relation is to be coded.

Some concrete interpropositional relations require a certain temporal relation to be operative. For example, if the purpose relation obtains between S↴ and ↴S, yielding the configuration ‘S↴ in order that ↴S’, then S↴ is necessarily anterior to ↴S. In this perspective, temporal relations between S↴ and ↴S could also provide an independent parameter for the classification of (non-temporal) interpropositional relations.

In an interpropositional relation of the form ‘S↴ when ↴S', ↴S provides a temporal reference point ↴T for S↴. The clause representing ↴S is a temporal clause. ↴T may be a moment or a period.

Tense and interpropositional temporal relations

In human language, the spatio-temporal situation par excellence is the speech situation. Since it is omnipresent, it is always available as a temporal reference point for other designated situations. Since the speech situation remains implicit, the temporal relation of the designated situation to the speech situation is not coded as an interpropositional relation and instead by the deictic category of tense.

A temporal relation that takes the form of an interpropositional relation hits upon the temporal relation between speech act time and the event time which may be coded in the tense of the main clause. In the situation designated by ,

the following situations and temporal relations are relevant:

1. S₀: the speech act; t₀: now
2. S_i: Linda turns right; t_i < t₀
3. S_j: Linda crosses the street; t_j < t_i

Temporal relation #2 is expressed by the S↴ tense, temporal relation #3 is expressed by the temporal relator after plus ↴S tense. S_i thus has two reference points:

1. by its relation to t₀ (relation #2), t_i is in the past;
2. by its relation to t_j (relation #3), t_i is later than t_j.

Relation #2 leads out of the text into the speech situation and the world containing it. It is therefore exophoric (more specifically, deictic). By contrast, relation #3 is between two time points in the text. It is therefore endophoric (anaphoric). Only the latter relation is an interpropositional relation and of relevance in junction. The former relation belongs in the functional domain of temporal orientation (cf. Klein 1994). The functional domains of temporal orientation and of junction overlap in temporal interpropositional relations.

By the same token, the tense t_i is called absolute, while t_j is called relative. These terms are rather well-established despite the fact that they are misleading: As made explicit in relation #2, t_i is relative, too, viz. relative to speech-act time t₀.

Finally, the meaning of the term ‘reference point’ in the analysis of temporal relations is to be controlled:

• The reference point for a tense is the moment or period of time relative to which it is interpreted. As just said, this is speech-act time for an absolute tense, but the tense of a proposition in the context for a relative tense.
• The reference point for a proposition Si connected to proposition Sj by an interpropositional temporal relator is the time of Sj. This could, in principle, be either S↴ or ↴S. However, in conformity with the orientational function of a subordinate clause, its proposition with its time will be taken to constitute the reference point for the superordinate proposition.

Temporal relations

Assume two propositions S↴ and ↴S, designating situations which hold at some moment or in some period of time, T↴ and ↴T, resp. The relations between T↴ and ↴T are analyzed by the following parameters (cf. Haspelmath 1997):

1. Simultaneity:
1. coincidence
2. overlap
3. incidence
2. Succession:
1. order:
• anterior
• posterior
2. delay:
• immediate succession
• unspecified succession.

Parameters #2a and #2b cross-classify, while the others exclude each other. The two major parameters are treated in the following two subsections.

Simultaneity

The simultaneity of two situations (denoted by S↴ and ↴S) may be further specified as follows:

1. coincidence: both the starting points and the end points of both situations coincide:
2. overlap: the starting point of one situation (expressed by S↴) is between the starting and the end point of the other situation (expressed by ↴S):
3. incidence: both starting and end point of one situation (the incident) fall between starting and end point of the other situation
   • incident is ↴S:
   • incident is S↴: .

Since ↴S provides the reference point for S↴, the default information structure of such an asymmetric complex sentence is such that ↴S provides the topic or background for S↴. This is the case in all of – . As a special case of coding the incident situation in ↴S, this default information structure may be reversed, so that it gets a rhematic function instead, as in .

The same happens in a below. This construction may be formally marked, as in Latin, where the subordinative conjunction cum ‘when’ is exceptionally combined with the indicative of the subordinate verb (“cum inversum”).

Succession

Relations of succession are classified by at least two parameters:

1. order: the situation of S↴ precedes (anterior) or follows (posterior) ↴T;¹
2. delay: S↴ and ↴S succeed each other immediately, or this is left open.

The terminology of the two order relations of succession presupposes that ↴S provides the reference point and that the term designates the temporal order relation born by S↴ to ↴T. This is visualized in the following table:

Thus, both ‘anterior’ and ‘posterior’ designate the temporal relation of S↴ to ↴S. The relation ‘anterior (x, y)’ is, of course, equivalent to ‘posterior (y, x)’. Thus, it might seem that one of the two concepts should be sufficient. However, the preceding convention has priority over parsimony.

The cross-classification of the parameters of order and delay yields combinations of the following kind:

• anteriority:
• unmarked:
• anterior S↴ ends upon start of ↴S:
• ↴S starts immediately after anterior S↴:
• posteriority:
• unmarked:
• posterior S↴ succeeds immediately upon ↴S:
• start of posterior S↴ coincides with ↴S: .

There is an equivalence relation between ‘S↴ until ↴S' and ‘S↴ as long as not ↴S'.²

Irrelevant time and iteration

The above temporal relations may hold at any time that the subordinate situation is realized. This may mean that the time of S↴ is not fixed (), or that the situation is repeated ().

¹ There is also a terminological usage which takes the first argument of these relations to be the first in the sequence of two clauses, so that the first clause in would be anterior to the second. While this is logically unobjectionable, it is misleading with respect to linguistic structure, since the relation coded by the conjunction constitutive of the construction is not the anterior relation of the first, but the posterior relation of the second clause.

² Given the paradigmatic relationship noted above and under the syntagmatic condition of a negated main clause, chiefly in the future, clauses introduced by bis ‘until’ are negated (countersemantically) in colloquial German. Ex.: Du wirst keine Anstellung finden, bis/bevor du nicht dein Examen gemacht hast. "You won't find employment until/before you have (not) finished your exam."). The same goes for Italian: fino a quando non riceviamo i dettagli della Sua carta di credito la prenotazione non può essere confermata ‘until we (don't) receive the details of your credit car, the reservation cannot be confirmed’ (message from hotel 17/06/2016).