Semantics, Tense, and Time: An Essay in the Metaphysics of Natural Language

According to Peter Ludlow, there is a very close relation between thestructure of natural language and that of reality, and one can gain insights intolong-standing metaphysical questions by studying the semantics of natural language.In this book Ludlow uses the metaphysics of time as a case study and focuses on thedispute between A-theorists and B-theorists about the nature of time. According toB-theorists, there is no genuine change, but a permanent sequence of events orderedby an earlier-than/later-than relation. According to the version of the A-theoryadopted by Ludlow (a position sometimes called "presentism"), there are no past orfuture events or times; what makes something past or future is how the world standsright now.Ludlow argues that each metaphysical picture is tied to a particularsemantical theory of tense and that the dispute can be adjudicated on semanticalgrounds. A presentism-compatible semantics, he claims, is superior to a B-theorysemantics in a number of respects, including its abilities to handle the indexicalnature of temporal discourse and to account for facts about language acquisition.Along the way, Ludlow develops a conception of "E-type" temporal anaphora that canaccount for both temporal anaphora and complex tenses without reference to past andfuture events. His view has philosophical consequences for theories of logic, self-knowledge, and memory. As for linguistic consequences, Ludlow suggests that thevery idea of grammatical tense may have to be dispensed with and replaced with somecombination of aspect, modality, and evidentiality.