Tense and Aspect are often discussed in terms of verbal morphology and are known to interact in predictable ways which affect the syntax and semantics of sentences. This course reviews a number of specific issues involved in the description of the relevant categories in English and raises a number of more general theoretical questions that relate to their cross-linguistic syntactic and semantic properties. The emphasis is placed on the syntactic effects of ‘tense’ choices, comparing the use of different verb forms in a number of syntactic environments in English, Greek and other languages. These include various types of main and subordinate clauses. Students will be required to analyze linguistic facts they are already familiar with (such as the restrictions on the use of verbal "tenses") in terms of well-defined theoretical predictions.
