tailieunhanh - The grammar of the english verb phrase part 26

This also applies to this grammar, even though it aims to be a linguistic study as well as a grammar. As a linguistic study, the book is an exploration of how one framework can account for tense in English, rather than a comparative study of other analyses | 168 2. Towards a theory of tense and time the time of a punctual portion of the situation which is representative of the whole situation. The fact that a progressive clause can combine with an adverbial specifying a punctual Adv-time means that a progressive clause represents the predicated situation as a punctual situation which is representative of the longer full situation. When a durative situation is bounded it is by definition nonhomogeneous and therefore the situation time cannot be a punctual portion of the time of the full situation. Rather the situation time has the same duration as the time of the full situation. This means that a durative bounded situation cannot be located at a punctual time such as t0 or at five o clock . However a durative bounded situation may be referred to in a clause containing a punctual adverb as long as the description of the situation can be interpreted as inchoative or terminative. For example The elephant will have a bath at four locates the beginning of the bathing not the entire situation at four o clock. In a given context a time-specifying or bifunctional adverbial may contain i. e. by inclusion or coincidence a situation time an orientation time other than a situation time or several orientation times usually situation times . We refer respectively to situation-time adverbials orientation-time adverbials and multiple-orientation-time adverbials. As we have seen a pure duration adverbial measures the time of the full situation. In Meg said that the elephant was bathing for two hours the predicated situation expressed by the elephant was bathing for two hours must be punctual because it is T-simultaneous with the more or less punctual situation time indicated by said. However the full i. e. the implied situation is measured as lasting for two hours. Usually the time of the full situation is longer than the time of the predicated situation and so the duration adverbial only measures the time of the full .