The Sequence of Tense in English Revisited

The stative predicate in a sequence-of-tense (SOT) sentence like a past-under-past sentence behaves differently from that in a SOT sentence like a past/present-under-present sentence. The former is interpreted to be ambiguous between a shifted reading and a simultaneous reading, while this is not the case with the latter. This paper is mainly concerned with addressing a semantic analysis of the contrast between the two types of entences. Pointing out some problems with the previous semantic treatments of SOT sentences, this paper proposes that tense be classified as an indexical tense evaluated relative to the utterance time and a vacuous tense which has no meaning. The indexical tense is licensed at LF just in case it is governed by the complement C with [+coincide], whereas the vacuous tense is licensed just in case it is governed by the embedded C with [-coincide]. After observing stative predicates are involved in establishing either a precedence relation or an overlap relation, this paper aruges that the property is active when the stative predicate combines with the vacuous tense, but it remains inactive when it combines with the indexical tense. This may assist in understanding why both a shifted reading and a simultaneous reading are available in a past-under-past sentence with a stative predicate in it, and why this is not the case with a past/present-under-present sentence with a stative predicate.