Reichenbach's (1947) theory of tense

Hans Reichenbach is one of the first and also most influential contributors to the semantic analysis of tense. In Reichenbach (1947), he distinguishes three points in time and two ordering relations. The points in time are: ‘E‘ (the event), ‘R’ (a point of reference) and ‘S’ (point of speech). The two ordering relations are (i) anteriority (represented by ‘-‘) and simultaneity (represented by ‘,’). The different relations between S and R correspond to the tense categories ‘past’ (R-S), ‘present’ (R,S) and ‘future’ (S-R). The position of the reference point R relative to the time of the event E corresponds to the categories ‘anterior’ (E-R), ‘posterior’ (R-E) and ‘simple’ (E,R; cf. Reichenbach 1947: 296f).

The combination of the three temporal points with the two ordering relations results in thirteen major constellations. These have the status of tenses in Reichenbach’s framework:

Literature

 * Reichenbach, Hans (1947). Elements of Symbolic Logic. New York: Macmillan & Co.