The Dynamic Semantics of Aspectual Adverbs

A systematic account is offered of the dynamic semantics of aspectual adverbs, characterizing validity of dynamic temporal reasoning semantically in Discourse Representation Theory. This dynamic perspective determines how their factual content may be revised while attitude information is preserved across updates, taking into consideration in what order the premises are presented. Resetting contextual parameters relies on modeling the interaction of the reference time with the basic aspectual polarity transitions START and END and the temporal binding created by SINCE and UNTIL. For intensional aspectual adverbials the speaker's attitudes regarding past alternatives to and possible continuations of the current state come into play. Additional considerations are offered for generalizing this system to the full logical space for linguistic universals, lexicalized quite differently in Dutch, French and English.