The sentences of natural language are
tensed. A language is an abstract structure whose syntax is generated by a set of formal rules.
(5) The distinction between
tensed and untensed views of time, in conjunction with the healthy hermeneutic circle between narrative and time, offers a model for understanding the relationship between the already-there-ness of the future in fiction and the apparently open future in lived experience.
The absence of (10) is unsurprising if subjunctives are indeed non-finite, as Anderson (2001b, 2004a: [section] 3) suggests:
tensed "periphrastic do" is obligatory in negative indicative clauses.
show that the correlation between the average frequency of the
tensed and untensed forms in the maternal speech of twelve English-speaking mothers and the average age of acquisition of the forms in the children's speech is highly significant.
The primary goal of Peter Ludlow's Semantics, Tense, and Time is to illustrate how one can study metaphysical issues from a linguistic/semantic perspective by addressing the debate between tenseless theorists and
tensed theorists.
In the 1960s, the debate was still essentially one about translation: could a
tensed token sentence, such as 'The comet is now visible', be translated without loss of meaning into a tenseless sentence, such as 'The comet's being visible is simultaneous with this utterance'?
"Even before you perceive the situation, your muscles have
tensed up," Tataryn says.
Anti-realism about the past is apparently in conflict with our acceptance of a set of systematic linkages between the truth-values of differently
tensed sentences made at different times.
This article considers whether the self-ascription theory can succeed in providing a tenseless (B-theoretic) account of
tensed belief and timely action.
Bourne's book argues that we ought to take presentism very seriously not only because it can overcome the objections often raised against it, but because it is the only plausible
tensed theory of time.
In its first part, Cockburn does indeed address the current debate between advocates of
tensed and tenseless views of time.
Since the discovery of Minkowski spacetime many have felt that special relativity conflicts with the conception of time found in ordinary thought and language, namely, the
tensed theory of time.
According to his thesis of presentism, the property of presentness is ascribed by every
tensed sentence of every natural language, be it past, present or future
tensed.
Cloth, $105.00--In his companion volumes by Kluwer, Thee
Tensed Theory of Time: A Critical Examination and The Tenseless Theory of Time: A Critical Examination, William Craig makes a persuasive case for the A- (
tensed) theory of time and against the B- (tenseless) theory of time.
If we treat
tensed terms as predicates attaching to singular terms or bound variables, then iterations like "(event e is past) is future" are ill-formed.