Why is it awkward to say that "Napoleon has been dead" in lieu of "Napoleon was dead?" What aspect of "John has arrived at seven o'clock" leaves an odd ring in the ears and mind? Why do languages often depend on redundant expressions in order to convey temporality and temporal shifts?
In "Time in Language," Wolfgang Klein examines these questions and others in this original study of the ways in which time encodes itself within language. Casting a penetrating look at problems of tense and aspect, the present perfect puzzle, the duration puzzle, and the semantics of temporal expressions,...