Hamida Demirdache (Nantes)

Later than the Matrix temporal construals: Mandarin vs. English

— join work with Hongyuan Sun (Université de Picardie Jules-Verne) —

We investigate constraints on the time reference of embedded clauses in Mandarin, a language with no overt grammatical tense, systematically comparing these constraints to those that hold of the time reference of embedded clauses in English, a language with overt grammatical tense.

We show that:

1. while both complement and relative clauses with bare/aspectually unmarked eventive predicates in Mandarin yield temporal free readings even in intensional contexts

2. both complement and relative clauses with overt perfect(ive) aspectual marking do not allow so called later then the matrix readings in intensional contexts, as is also the case for complement and relative clauses in languages with overt (past) tense, such as English.

(ii), but not (i), validates the Upper Limit Constraint (Abusch 1994) according to which the tense of the embedding clause is an upper bound on the tense of an embedded clause. What is the source and the implications of this contrast?

Following Sun (2014), we assume that Mandarin is not Tenseless, but rather has a silent Non-Future Tense restricting the reference time of bare sentences to Non-Future times (thus extending Matthewson 2006 to Mandarin). We moreover provide novel evidence for Non-Future tense from embedded contexts.

On this proposal, the source of the contrast in (i)-(ii) between Mandarin and English will turn out to lie neither in the anchoring of the complement/relative clause into the matrix (i.e. the embedded reference time is bound in intensional contexts, be it in English or Mandarin), nor in the lack of Tense, but rather in the lack of overt Aspect.