What I have attempted to show in the foregoing is that: (1) For any frequency adjective f, there is an element of meaning common to both the adverbial and the generic usage of f; this is a function f′ from propositions to truth-values such that f′(Φ)′ is true at an interval i iff Φ′ is true at subintervals of i distributed through i in a certain way. (2) In an adverbial use of f, f′ functions like the corresponding frequency adverb. (...) (3) In a generic use of f, f′ quantifies the times intervals which a specified object is realized by some stage. (4) In their adverbial usage, frequency adjectives are not regular attributive adjectives at the level at which interpretation takes place, but are perhaps determiners. And (5) in their generic usage, frequency adjectives are adjectives at the level at which interpretation takes place.More generally, I hope to have suggested something of the range of uses to which frequency is put in natural language. That we effortlessly grasp what is meants by Monday, the Columbus Dispatch, autumn, the Today Show, and so on, demonstrates our fluency in interpreting certain sequences of objects, events, or states of affairs as sequences of values of some function cycling on a time-axis. Much more must ultimately be told about the psychological and anthropological significance of frequency. (shrink)

Ancient Sanskrit had two tenses of particular interest: periphrastic perfect and periphrastic future. At first glance, they are rather similar: both realize a particular value of tense through a combination of a lexical verb and an agreeing auxiliary. There are, however, important differences which are revealed in this chapter: the periphrastic future is available for every verb, and can be distinguished from the synthetic future on semantic grounds, while the periphrastic perfect is available only for certain verbs, and these do (...) not make up a semantically homogeneous group. A formal analysis is proposed, within Paradigm Function Morphology, for the two periphrastic tenses. It is demonstrated that a morphological rather than a purely syntactic account is preferable here. The verbs with a periphrastic perfect make up a conjugation class; on the other hand, the periphrastic future is formalized as a morphosyntactic property whose default realization is periphrastic. (shrink)