The grammatical properties of 'since'

• Main Author: Teresa Maria Xiqués
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Septentrio Academic Publishing 2015-12-01
• Series: Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics
• Subjects: temporal expressions; aspect; interval; boundary; since; des de; desde
• Online Access: http://www.ub.uit.no/baser/septentrio/index.php/borealis/article/view/3615

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.