Entities and Indices

A Semantic Problem For Stage Theory

“…On the one hand, there is the view which has its roots in Priorean tense logic (see, e.g., Prior 1968, or Goranko & Galton 2015 for an overview) according to which expressions which carry tense marking introduce temporal operators. As a first pass, this would be to say that a sentence like (2) Carrie swam is well represented in tense logic as where 'P' is a past tense modal operator, the meaning of which could be glossed as 'it has at some time been the case that'.…”

“…Already in Cresswell (1991) it was realised that with sufficient complexification, one can get something like an operator view which will account for all the facts. Such a view requires the positing of a range of new and suspiciously quantifier-looking temporal operators.…”

Speaking of Qualities

“…The standard solution in terms of free world variable indexation Cresswell (1990) argues that natural language possesses the full power of explicit quantification over world and time variables, illustrated by examples like (4).…”

Only the Strong: Restricting Situation Variables

“…Linguists often assume that possible worlds and times are represented as pronouns in natural language (see Cresswell 1990, Percus 2000, Kusumoto 2005, Keshet 2008. This paper will construe such pronouns as world-time pairs, which will be referred to as situations, for simplicity.…”