Selectional restrictions of tenses and temporal reference of Chinese bare sentences

Abstract

This paper discusses temporal reference of Chinese bare sentences without any time adverb or tense-like marker. We argue that temporal reference of such sentences can be resolved by selectional restrictions of two empty tenses, i.e., covert present tense and covert past tense. We show that while covert present tense must select a homogeneous situation as its complement, covert past tense must select a heterogeneous situation as its complement. We also argue that covert tenses must be distinguished from empty tenses that agree with time adverbs, because the latter do not have selectional restrictions. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.