Abstract
In this paper, I explain in which way the temporal location of individuals is determined by the temporal interpretation of a clause. The most drastic effects show up in past tense individual-level clauses (section 1). I argue in section 2 that predicates provide lexically determined minimal requirements on their arguments' lifetimes. The role of tense for lifetime effects is an indirect one: by virtue of its determining the temporal interpretation of the main predicate of a clause, it triggers implicatures which cause lifetime effects. This proposal is refined in section 3 so as to be able to explain the blocking of lifetime effects in certain contexts. This blocking is due to the choice of topics and the choice of values for temporal restrictions. In section 4 I compare my proposal to a proposal of Kratzer (1989b) and argue that my account is more adequate. Kratzer's main claim, that the temporal location of individuals is sometimes directly determined by tense, runs into several problems which are avoided in my account.
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Musan, R. Tense, Predicates, and Lifetime Effects. Natural Language Semantics 5, 271–301 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008281017969
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008281017969