The grammatical properties of 'since'

Abstract

In this paper, I compare the grammatical properties of English since-adverbials, which have been analysed as perfect-level adverbials (Iatridou et al. 2001), with Catalan des de-adverbials. I argue against the claim that either the perfect tense or prepositions like since are ambiguous between a universal and an existential interpretation. I show that an analysis based on the grammatical properties of the internal structure of the temporal path denoted by des de or since can contribute to a more fine-grained derivation of universal and existential interpretations of PrP sentences modified by since-type of intervals in both languages.

Keywords

• temporal expressions
• aspect
• interval
• boundary
• since
• des de
• desde