Refining temporal reference in event structures. (English) Zbl 0855.03018

Pianesi, Fabio; Varzi, Achille C.

Notre Dame J. Formal Logic 37, No. 1, 71-83 (1996).

Summary: This paper expands on the theory of event structures put forward in previous work by further investigating the subtle connections between time and events. Specifically, in the first part we generalize the notion of an event structure to that of a refinement structure, where various degrees of temporal granularity are accomodated. In the second part we investigate how these structures can account for the context-dependence of temporal structures in natural language semantics.

MSC:

03B65

Logic of natural languages

Keywords:

event structures; refinement structure; temporal granularity; context-dependence; temporal structures in natural language semantics

References:

[1]	Davidson, D., “The logical form of action sentences,” pp. 81–95 in The Logic of Decision and Action , edited by N. Rescher, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1967 (reprinted in Davidson’s Essays on Actions and Events , Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1980).
[2]	Dowty, D., Word Meaning and Montague Grammar , Reidel, Dordrecht, 1979.
[3]	Habel, C., “Discreteness, finiteness, and the structure of topological spaces,” pp. 81–90 in Topological Foundations of Cognitive Science: Papers from the Workshop at the First International Summer Institute in Cognitive Science , edited by C. Eschenbach, C. Habel, and B. Smith, University of Hamburg, Reports of the Doctoral Program in Cognitive Science, No. 37, 1994.
[4]	Humberstone, I. L., “Interval semantics for tense logic,” Journal of Philosophical Logic , vol. 8 (1979), pp. 171–196. · Zbl 0409.03012 · doi:10.1007/BF00258426
[5]	Kamp, H., Tense Logic and the Theory of Linear Order , Doctoral Dissertation, University of California at Los Angeles, 1968.
[6]	Kamp, H., “Events, instants, and temporal reference,” pp. 376–417 in Semantics from Different Points of View , edited by R. Bäuerle, U. Egli, and A. von Stechow, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1979.
[7]	Kamp, H., “Some remarks on the logic of change, part I,” pp. 135–179 in Time, Tense, and Quantifiers: Proceedings of the Stuttgart Conference on the Logic of Tense and Quantification , edited by C. Rohrer, Niemeyer, Tübingen, 1980.
[8]	Lambert, K., “Notes on E! III: a theory of descriptions,” Philosophical Studies , vol. 13 (1962), pp. 51–59.
[9]	Landman, F., Structures for Semantics , Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1991.
[10]	Parsons, T., Events in the Semantics of English. A Study in Subatomic Semantics , MIT Press, Cambridge, 1990.
[11]	Pianesi, F., and A. C. Varzi, “The mereo-topology of event structures,” pp. 527–546 in Proceedings of the 9th Amsterdam Colloquium , edited by P. Dekker and M. Stokhof, Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, Amsterdam, 1994.
[12]	Pianesi, F., and A. C. Varzi, “Mereo-topological construction of time from events,” pp. 396–400 in Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Artificial Intelligenc e, edited by A. Cohn, Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 1994.
[13]	Pianesi, F., and A. C. Varzi, “Events, topology, and temporal relations,” The Monist , vol. 78 (1996), pp. 89–116. · Zbl 0855.03018
[14]	Prior, A. N., Past, Present, and Future , Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1967. · Zbl 0169.29802
[15]	Simons, P. M., Parts. A Study in Ontology , Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1987.
[16]	Smith, B., “Ontology and the logistic analysis of reality,” pp. 51–68 in International Workshop on Formal Ontology in Conceptual Analysis and Knowledge Representation , edited by N. Guarino and R. Poli, Ladseb-CNR, Padova, 1994 (revised version forthcoming in Analytic Phenomenology , edited by G. Häfliger and P. M. Simons, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1996).
[17]	Varzi, A. C., “On the boundary between mereology and topology,” pp. 423–442 in Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences. Proceedings of the 16th International Wittgenstein Symposium , edited by R. Casati, B. Smith, and G. White, Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, Vienna, 1994.