The grammar of the english verb phrase part 101 doc

I. Adverbial
before
-clauses 693
This shows that the use of an absolute tense in a before-clause is not a priori
impossible.
As usual, the claim that a before-clauses can in principle use either a relative
or an absolute tense form is difficult to corroborate when the verb form is in
the past tense, because there is no formal difference between an absolute and
a relative preterite form. In sections 14.4.2Ϫ5 we will review some evidence
and apply it to the following example:
John left before Bill arrived.
We will argue that in examples like this both the head clause and the before-
clause use an absolute tense form, i. e. that John left before Bill arrived has the
temporal structure shown in Figure 14.4, which is determined both by the
tenses and by the semantics of before. On the other hand, we will argue that
arrived is a relative past tense form in John wanted to leave before Bill arrived.
Figure 14.4. The temporal structure of John left before Bill arrived.
14.4.2 In a sentence like John left before Bill arrived not only the head clause
situation but also the before-clause situation is represented (and interpreted)
as ‘
factual at t
0
’ (or ‘t
0
-factual’), i. e. as a situation which did actualize in
the past. In this respect this sentence differs from John wanted to leave before
Bill arrived, in which the before-clause situation is not represented as a past
fact but as part of a past expectation which may or may not have been fulfilled
before t
0
. In other words, in John wanted to leave before Bill arrived, the

before-clause forms part of the
opaque (intensional) context created by
want.
3
John’s leaving is therefore not represented as t
0
-factual but as something
3. As noted in 10.4.6, an opaque context (or ‘intensional context’) is one in which the
reference is not to the real world but to an alternative (e. g. imaginary) world. Such a
context is created by (amongst other things) ‘intensional verbs’ (‘verbs of propositional
attitude’) like want, expect, believe, think, imagine, etc. Clauses that form part of an
intensional context receive an ‘opaque’ (‘de dicto’) interpretation, i. e. their truth is not
evaluated in relation to the real world but in relation to the alternative world referred to.
Clauses belonging to a nonintensional context receive a ‘transparent’ (‘de re’) inter-
pretation, i. e. their truth is evaluated in relation to the real world. It is typical of such
an interpretation that the truth value of the clause is not affected when a referring
expression in the clause is replaced by an ‘identical’ expression (i.e. by an expression
694 14. Adverbial before-clauses and after-clauses
which John wanted to happen later. Whether it did actually happen or not is
not expressed by this sentence. The same is true of the before-clause situation
(Bill’s arrival), which is represented (by before) as posterior to John’s leaving.
Because of this posteriority relation, Bill’s arrival is interpreted as ‘
not-yet-
factual at the binding time
’, i. e. as not yet a fact at the time of the situation
time of the head clause (ϭ the time of John’s leaving). Note that we are not
using the term ‘not-yet-factual’ in the sense of ‘counterfactual’ (which is the
opposite of ‘t
0
-factual’ and means ‘running counter to what is factual at t

0
’).
Thus, John wanted to leave before Bill arrived does not imply that Bill did not
arrive; it just fails to imply that he did. In what follows we will simplify ‘not-
yet-factual at the binding time’ to ‘
not-yet-factual at t’ or simply ‘not-
yet-factual
’.
Since it is inherent in the structure ‘A before B’ that B is not yet a fact at
the time of A, one might expect that all sentences consisting of a head clause
and a before-clause represent the situation time of the before-clause as not-yet-
factual, and therefore (a fortiori) as not t
0
-factual. However, it is clear from
John left before Bill arrived that not all before-clauses are not interpreted as
t
0
-factual. This means that there is something in John left before Bill arrived
that supplements the natural not-yet-factual interpretation of the before-clause
with a t
0
-factual (ϭ factual at t
0
) interpretation: ‘Bill had not yet arrived when
John left, but he did arrive later.’ Since the sentence is used out of context, the
only element that can be responsible for this t
0
-factual interpretation is the fact
that arrived is an absolute tense form. If a clause uses an absolute past tense
form, it T-relates its situation to t

0
, not to the situation time of the head clause
(nor to any other orientation time that is related to the situation time of the
head clause). The use of the absolute preterite places the situation time of the
before-clause on the time line, so that, in the absence of any indication to the
contrary, it is interpreted as a past fact, i. e. as t
0
-factual.
In this context, it is useful to compare the following:
(2a) John wanted to leave before Gordon arrived.
(2b) John left before Gordon arrived.
(2c) Mary {said / imagined / believed} that John had left before Gordon arrived.
(2d) Mary {said / imagined / believed} that John left before Gordon arrived.
with the same referent). Thus, since in the real world the capital of France and Paris
have the same referent, we can replace the former by the latter in The capital of France
has ten million inhabitants without altering the truth value of the sentence.
In sentences that receive an opaque interpretation, the replacement of a term by an
‘identical’ expression may affect the truth value: the sentence Bill thinks that Paris is the
capital of Spain may be true even if Bill thinks that the capital of France is the capital
of Spain is not true.
I. Adverbial
before
-clauses 695
In (2a), the before-clause forms part of the intensional domain (world) created
by wanted and represents the time of its situation (Gordon’s expected arrival)
as T-simultaneous with the Anchor time that is implicit in before (ϭ ‘before
the time at which’). In this way the before-clause situation is not directly related
to t
0
. Arrived is therefore a relative preterite form. This, and the fact that the

before-clause forms part of an intensional domain, entails that the before-
clause situation (Gordon’s arrival) is not represented as a past fact. Instead it
is represented as a situation which, at the time of the head clause situation,
was expected to actualize later. In sum, in (2a) arrived is a relative preterite,
whose situation is not interpreted as a past fact.
When (2b) is used out of context, the before-clause does not form part of
an intensional domain and is interpreted as t
0
-factual. This is in keeping with
the claim that arrived is now an absolute preterite form, which means that it
relates its situation time directly to t
0
.
Example (2c) is like (2a) in that both the before-clause and its head clause
form part of the intensional domain created by the first clause (i. e. the matrix)
and are therefore interpreted as not-yet-factual at t
0
. The fact that the situation
time of the head clause is now represented as T-anterior to the central TO of
the temporal domain does not alter this.
Sentence (2d) differs from (2c) only in that the speaker does not incorporate
the situation times of the head clause and the before-clause into the temporal
domain established by the matrix clause but has these two clauses shift the
domain: both left and arrived are absolute tense forms. However, this does not
produce a t
0
-factual (nonintensional, transparent) interpretation of these forms,
because the head clause and the before-clause are anyhow not interpreted as
t
0

-factual (ϭ factual at t
0
) because the head clause is syntactically dependent
on the intensional verb of the matrix clause.
4
We can draw the following conclusions from the above examples:
(a) When it is within the scope of an intensional verb, a head clause is not
interpreted as t
0
-factual (i. e. as being a past fact), irrespective of whether
it uses a relative tense, such as had left in (2c), or an absolute tense, such
as left in (2d).
4. In other words, in this sentence both John left and Bill arrived shift the domain (i. e. use
the absolute past tense). But the t
0
-factual interpretation that is normally induced by the
use of the absolute preterite is overridden by the fact that the that-clause depends on an
intensional verb which refers to a world that is different from the speaker’s t
0
-world.
The not-yet-factual-at-t
0
reading thus persists in spite of the fact that the tense does not
locate John’s leaving and Bill’s arrival in the temporal domain created by the intensional
verb. In other words, the syntactic relation between the matrix and the that-clause any-
how imposes an intensional reading on the that-clause, even though the tense of the
head clause does not.
696 14. Adverbial before-clauses and after-clauses
(b) If the head clause is not interpreted as t
0

-factual, neither is the before-
clause depending on it.
(c) When not used in an intensional context, a head clause and a before-clause
in the past tense are interpreted as t
0
-factual. This is the case in (2b). A t
0
-
factual interpretation implies that the situation referred to is T-related to
the speaker’s t
0
. This means that the past tense forms in (2b) are absolute
preterites.
(d) A preterite in a before-clause can in principle be either a relative preterite
or an absolute one. In the former case the tense form itself does not trigger
at
0
-factual interpretation,
5
whereas in the latter case it does, unless that
interpretation is ruled out by the fact that the matrix clause creates an
intensional domain, as in (2d).
14.4.3 It is not easy to find further direct evidence supporting the hypothesis
that a before-clause in English can in principle use either a relative or an abso-
lute preterite, because there is no formal difference between these tense forms.
However, indirect evidence can be derived from a cognate language, viz. Dutch.
In Dutch, the two meanings that we assign to the preterite forms in English
(viz. t
0
-factual and not-yet-factual-at-t) can be distinguished on the basis of the

fact that one of them can be expressed in an alternative way. Consider:
(3a) Jan vertrok voordat Bill toekwam. (‘John left before Bill arrived’)
(3b) Jan wou vertrekken voordat Bill toekwam. (‘John wanted to leave before Bill
arrived’)
(3c) Jan wou vertrekken voordat Bill zou toekomen. (‘John wanted to leave before
Bill would arrive’)
Sentence (3a) is the exact Dutch equivalent of John left before Bill arrived, and
(3b) is the exact equivalent of John wanted to leave before Bill arrived. How-
ever, the latter sentence can also be translated as (3c). The reason is that Dutch
allows a form of indirect binding which is ungrammatical in English: the tense
structure of a Dutch sentence with a before-clause may be such that the situa-
tion time of the before-clause is directly related to the situation time of the
head clause (in terms of T-posteriority). Whereas in (3b) the preterite form
toekwam represents the situation time of the before-clause as T-simultaneous
with the implicit Anchor time, the conditional tense form zou toekomen in (3c)
represents the situation time of the before-clause as T-posterior to the situation
5. Note, however, that a relative tense form is not incompatible with a factual interpreta-
tion which is triggered by the linguistic or extralinguistic context. For example:
[“Did he write that letter when he was going to commit suicide?”] Ϫ “No, he wrote
it long before he was going to commit suicide.”
The before-clause in the reply sentence ‘inherits’ the factual interpretation of the when-
clause in the question.
I. Adverbial
before
-clauses 697
time of the head clause (ϭ indirect binding). In neither case is the before-clause
situation interpreted as t
0
-factual.
The Dutch data lend support to the claim that the past tense form arrived

in John wanted to leave before Bill arrived is a relative tense form. Since indi-
rect binding is an alternative to direct binding in Dutch, the fact that the past
tense form toekwam in (3b) alternates with the conditional tense form zou
toekomen in (3c) corroborates the view that the former is an instance of direct
binding, i. e. a relative tense form. The claim that toekwam is not a relative
past tense form in (3a) is then corroborated by the fact that the substitution of
the relative tense form zou toekomen for toekwam is ungrammatical in this
sentence: *Jan vertrok voordat Bill zou toekomen (‘John left before Bill
would arrive’).
In sum, the data from Dutch are consonant with the claim that an absolute
preterite represents a before-clause situation as t
0
-factual, whereas a relative
tense form (irrespective of whether it is a preterite or a conditional tense form)
locates the before-clause situation in the temporal (and intensional) domain
established by the head clause or the matrix clause, and in so doing fails to
represent it as t
0
-factual.
14.4.4 The similarity between Dutch and English is actually stronger than
has been suggested so far. Although, unlike Dutch, present-day English does
not allow the use of the conditional tense in before-clauses that are not-yet-
factual-at-t but not t
0
-factual, more or less archaic English does allow the use
of should in such before-clauses. This use of should represents a form of indi-
rect binding:
[I was railfanning in Lima this afternoon and took this shot of the signal bridge that
guards the NS(NKP) diamond at Ford Park. I’m not sure how far back it dates, but
I know it was there at least in the early ’70’s from photo’s I’ve seen.] I wanted to take

a picture before it should suddenly disappear like some other things recently. (www)
[It was all of 8 o’clock by now and I told of my plan.] I wanted to go to the cemetery
before we should leave for the other half of our pilgrimage. (www) (written in 1971,
but quite possibly a bit pseudo-archaic)
[When we came to understand what the gentleman meant we told him that we
were very glad, for] we wanted to wake him up before he should die with such a
misunderstanding of God’s terms. (www)
[I now gained on him, so much so that when I first saw the ocean he was but one
day’s journey in advance, and] I hoped to intercept him before he should reach the
beach. (www) (from Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’)
[… knowing in what good hands I left the cause, I came away on Monday,] trusting
that many posts would not pass before I should be followed by such very letters as
these. (www) (from Jane Austen’s ‘Mansfield Park’)
[Where is it to end? Suppose the Bowl were increased to even 125,000,] how many
years would it be before we should have 150,000 seats demanded? (www)
698 14. Adverbial before-clauses and after-clauses
14.4.5 Further evidence, again from Dutch, can be derived from what we
have called the ‘Dutch test’ (see 8.32). This test relies on the observation that
Dutch can sometimes use the present perfect where English has to use an abso-
lute preterite, but cannot normally use the present perfect where English uses
a relative preterite. If we apply this test to John left before Bill arrived,wesee
that it can be translated not only as (3a) but also as follows:
6
Jan is vertrokken voordat ik ben aangekomen. (‘John has left before I have arrived’)
Since the Dutch present perfect cannot normally be used as a relative tense, we
must conclude that the present perfect in the before-clause is an absolute tense
form, i. e. a form which shifts the domain. Given the strong similarity between
the English and Dutch tense systems (especially the fact that neither language
uses the present perfect to express a relation in a past or pre-present domain),
this corroborates our claim that the preterite in the English counterpart of the

above example should also be analysed as an absolute tense form.
14.4.6 The above conclusion is also supported by the ‘represented speech
test’ Ϫ see 8.25. Consider the following scrap of conversation:
A. John is a doctor. And I think Bill is a doctor too.
B. Yes. As a matter of fact Bill was a doctor before John was one.
B’s reply can be reported as
Mary said that Bill had been a doctor before John had been one.
T he fact that both preterites of (B) can be ‘backshifted’ in represented speech
proves that both preterites are absolute tense forms Ϫ see 8.25. (Note that had been
cannot be an instance of indirect binding Ϫ see 9.29. Before-clauses do not allow
indirect binding by means of a past perfect, because, unlike when, before rules out
the possibility that, if both clauses use the past perfect, the before-clause situation
is interpreted as W-simultaneous with the head clause situation.)
14.4.7 In sum, there appears to be sufficient evidence that a preterite form in
a before-clause can be an absolute tense form, in which case the situation it
refers to is represented as a past fact.
B. The tense system if the
before
-clause is a
situation-time adverbial
As noted in 14.2.2, adverbial before-clauses are nearly always used as situation-
time adverbials. An investigation of the possible tense combinations in the head
6. This does not mean that the two Dutch translations are interchangeable in any context.
The two are subject to slightly different conditions of use, but this is irrelevant to the
argument that is presented here.
I. Adverbial
before
-clauses 699
clause and the before-clause is necessary because different tense patterns often
entail different meanings (which have to do with different degrees and kinds

of factuality). As will be made clear, adverbial before-clauses functioning as
situation-time adverbials can appear in four major tense configurations (apart
from some others mentioned further on). They are exemplified by the following
sentences, all of which can be used to describe the same state of affairs, but all
of which are interpreted differently:
Jim arrived before the others left.
Jim arrived before the others had left.
Jim had arrived before the others had left.
Jim had arrived before the others left.
The first sentence (with an absolute tense in both clauses) will be discussed in
14.5. The second (with an absolute tense in the head clause and a relative one
in the before-clause) will be examined in 14.6. The third sentence (with a rela-
tive tense in both clauses) will be discussed in 14.7. The fourth example (with
a relative tense in the head clause and an absolute one in the before-clause)
will be investigated in 14.8. In all four sections, related tense patterns will be
investigated too.
14.5 Absolute tense forms in both before-clause and
head clause
14.5.1 It is possible for both the head clause and the before-clause to use the
absolute past tense. In 14.4.2Ϫ6 we have adduced evidence that this tense
structure is realized in sentences like John left before Bill arrived. This type of
sentence is typically used when the speaker wants to express no more than that
two situations actualized in a particular order (‘A before B’) in the past. The
claim that both tense forms are absolute tense forms is in keeping with the fact
that both situations are interpreted as t
0
-factual. The temporal structure of
John left before Bill arrived is represented by Figure 14.4 in section 14.4.1.
14.5.2 As we have seen, it is not normally possible for a before-clause to use
an ‘Absolute Future System form’ (see 10.1) establishing a post-present domain:

Bill will leave before the pub {closes /*will close}.
However, there are a few exceptions to this rule. These constitute further cases
in which an absolute tense form is used in both the before-clause and the
head clause.
(a) Firstly, there are situations involving a head clause and a before-clause in
which the temporal relation between the two situations seems to be less