Why not after is not before
David Beaver
Stanford University
October 3, 2003, 10:30 AM
Abstract:
Since Anscombe (1964) it has been widely accepted that the temporal connectives "before" and "after" are not converses. Whereas a sentence of the form "A before B" is taken to universally quantify over times when B is true, a sentence "A after B" is taken to existentially quantify over both arguments. In this talk, standard accounts will be reconciled with the intuition that "before" and "after" really are converses after all. In fact, the lexical meanings of (veridical) "before" and "after" will turn out to be stunningly simple: the two natural total orderings across times. It will be shown how a range of complexities that have been observed (surprising inference patterns, NPI distribution, non-veridical readings) arise as byproducts of the compositional build-up of sentence meanings and general principles of interpretation.
Last Modified: September 25, 2003