Crew members of the Titanic – a lexical temporal account

Abstract

In this paper, I propose an analysis for the temporal interpretation of noun phrases according to which nouns independently locate the time at which they are temporally evaluated depending on noun class and context. I will argue that nouns separate into two aspectual classes: eventive and stative nouns. On top of this, noun phrases possess a covert time pronoun that is semantically under-specified for nouns that are eventive, and restricted to the utterance time if they are stative. This novel approach explains puzzling data and unifies previous accounts by means of extending analyses of verbal tense phenomena (i.e., pronominal tense, superficial tenselessness) to the nominal domain.