The Proper Treatment Of Events

Presents a novel approach to the semantics of tense and aspect that is motivated by cognitive considerations. This book discusses a theory of the semantics of tense aspect and nominalizations that combines formal semantics and cognitive approaches. It is suitable for students in theoretical linguists, philosophy of language, and cognitive science.

The Proper Treatment of Events offers a novel approach to the semantics of tense and aspect motivated by cognitive considerations. The book begins by presenting data about the human conceptualization of time, proposing that planning is important in this regard, and hence equally for the linguistic encoding of time as tense and aspect. It then introduces a formal theory of planning, a combination of an event calculus as developed in Artificial Intelligence with a truth theory and logic programming techniques. The combined system is then applied to detailed analyses of tense, grammatical and lexical aspect, coercion, and different types of nominalizations.

The Proper Treatment of Events offers a novel approach to the semantics of tense and aspect motivated by cognitive considerations.

• offers a new theory of the semantics of tense aspect and nominalizations that combines formal semantics and cognitive approaches
• written accessibly for students and scholars in theoretical linguists, as well as in philosophy of language, logic, cognitive science, and computer science
• accompanied by a website at (http://staff.science.uva.nl/~michiell/) that provides slides for instructors and background material for students