This book considers linguistic and mental representations of time. Prominent linguists and philosophers from all over the world examine and report on recent work on the representation of temporal reference; the interaction of the temporal information from tense, aspect, modality, temporal adverbials, and context; and the representation of the temporal relations between events and states, as well as between facts, propositions, sentences, and utterances. They link this to current research on the cognitive processing of temporal reference, linguistic and philosophical semantics, psychology, and anthropology. The book is divided into three parts: Time, Tense, and Temporal Reference in Discourse; Time and Modality; and Cognition and Metaphysics of Time. It will interest scholars and advanced students of time and temporal reference in linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and cognitive science.

Kasia M. Jaszczolt is Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy of Language at the University of Cambridge. She has published extensively on topics in semantics and pragmatics, including propositional attitude ascription, representation of time, semantics/pragmatics interface, and her theory of Default Semantics. One of her current project concerns attitudes de se and first-person reference, the other is a theory of Interactive Semantics, the subject and title of a book in progress for OUP. Her books include Representing Time (OUP, 2009), Default Semantics (OUP, 2005), Semantics and Pragmatics (Longman, 2002) and Discourse, Beliefs and Intentions (Elsevier,1999). Louis de Saussure is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Neuchâtel, where he co-founded the Centre for Cognitive Science. He was formerly a lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin and at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris). He has been a visiting scholar at CNRS in Paris and at University College London. His research in cognitive pragmatics focuses primarily on time and modality but extends to the cognitive underpinnings of persuasion in discourse. His publications include Pragmatique temporelle des énoncés négatifs (University de Geneva, 2000) and Temps et pertinence (De Boeck 2003).