The Present in Linguistic Expressions of Temporality

Book excerpt: This book offers a comprehensive examination of Present Time Expressions (PTEs), illustrating how a more informed understanding of their semantic and pragmatic representations can offer unique insights into the temporal systems of languages. The volume takes as its point of departure the notion that tenses, aspectual viewpoint markers, and temporal expressions have a semantic meaning, which is further pragmatically enriched and manipulated in use by speakers. Building on this foundation, the book introduces current theories on the linguistic expression of temporality toward better highlighting the need for further understanding of PTEs, encompassing tenses of the present and words such as ‘now.’ The volume draws on data from Australian English and Indigenous Australian languages to support its goal of arriving at a theory of the flexibility of uses of PTEs and their centrality in language and highlight the implications for future research on pragmatic and semantic change. This book will be of particular interest to graduate students and researchers in semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, and philosophy of language, as well as those interested in research on Indigenous Australian Languages and Australian English.