Aspect in Ancient Greek - Nijmegen Centre for Semantics

144 Chapter 6. The temporal structure of discourseOn the pushing account, on the other hand, t 5 binds by default to t 3 (rule2a):(175) (171) ⊕ (173) =n e 1 t 1 t 2 t 3 e 2 t 4 t 6p enter(e 1 )τ(e 1 ) = t 1t 1 ⊆ t 2t 1 ⊃≺ t 3t 2 ≺ nm phone(e 2 )τ(e 2 ) = t 4t 4 ⊆ t 5t 4 ⊃≺ t 6t 5t 5 ≺ nt 5 := t 3⇒n e 1 t 1 t 2 t 3 e 2 t 4 t 6p enter(e 1 )τ(e 1 ) = t 1t 1 ⊆ t 2t 1 ⊃≺ t 3t 2 ≺ nm phone(e 2 )τ(e 2 ) = t 4t 4 ⊆ t 3t 4 ⊃≺ t 6t 3 ≺ nThe reader may check himself that in both ways we obtain the desired resultthat the telephoning (e 2 ) follows the entering (e 1 ).We could say that on a pushing account this ρ is always the identity relation.I prefer this over a resolution of ρ to various temporal relations, whathappens on a pulling account, because I think it’s conceptually clearer. Thepoint is that if the resolution options of ρ are not restricted the relation is toopermissive. A restriction to ≺ and ⊆, however, or any temporal relation, isjust a stipulation. Moreover, we would expect that the default resolution forρ is identity. Let me explain this. The complex anaphoric condition of (172)is reminiscent of Asher and Lascarides’ (1998) account of the phenomenon ofbridging. They define bridging as “an inference that two objects or events thatare introduced in a text are related in a particular way that isn’t explicitlystated, and yet the relation is an essential part of the content of the text inthe sense that without this information, the lack of connection between thesentences would make the text incoherent” (p. 83). Let me illustrate this with(176):(176) I took my car for a test drive. The engine made a weird noise.The definite description the engine introduces the instruction to pick up apreviously introduced engine. The context doesn’t supply one explicitly. However,the hearer makes the inference that the engine spoken of in the secondsentence is the engine of the car mentioned in the first sentence. On Asherand Lascarides’s account of this phenomenon, a definite description introducesa discourse marker that has to be linked to a previously introduced discourse