Ron Artstein and Nissim Francez.
Plurality and temporal modification.
Linguistics and Philosophy, to appear.
Abstract: A semantics with plural entities and plural times accounts for cumulative relations between plural arguments and temporal expressions. The semantics equips nominal, verbal and sentential meanings with temporal context variables and treats temporal modifiers as temporal generalized quantifiers; cumulative conjunction, however, takes place at types lower than generalized quantifiers. The mediation of temporal context variables allows cumulative relations to percolate between an argument in a main clause and one in a temporal clause, in apparent violation of locality restrictions. Plural times form a semilattice structure imposed on the set of intervals; no interaction is observed between this and the internal temporal structure of intervals.
Note: I keep the full paper on my personal web site rather than the archive because of Springer’s copyright transfer statement: “An author may self-archive an author-created version of his/her article on his/her own website and his/her institution’s repository”. Ron Artstein, January 2006.