Ronald W. Langacker
Cognitive Linguistics, Language Pedagogy, and the English Present Tense
Series B: Applied and Interdisciplinary Papers ISSN 1435-6481 Essen: LAUD 2000 (2., unveränderte Auflage 2006) Paper No. 298
Universität Duisburg-Essen
Ronald W. Langacker
University of California, San Diego (USA)
Cognitive Linguistics, Language Pedagogy, and the English Present Tense
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Ronald W. Langacker
Cognitive Linguistics, Language Pedagogy, and the English Present Tense
1. Introduction Although I cannot claim any experience or substantial knowledge in the area of language pedagogy, I do recognize how essential it is. There seems little doubt that, in the broad field of language and linguistics, the applied, pedagogical side outstrips the theoretical side in terms of intrinsic importance, numbers of practitioners, and the securing of institutional tolerance. The applied folk are, as it were, carrying linguistic theoreticians on their back. Not only that, but the burden tends to be heavy, onerous, and quite unappreciative.
Perhaps cognitive linguistics will prove to be lighter, less onerous, and more appreciative than certain previous theoretical burdens. I hope it will even prove useful. Let me try to con-tribute by sketching some pedagogical implications of cognitive linguistic theory, and some possible directions of research. I see the effectiveness of pedagogical applications as an impor-tant empirical test for linguistic theories. My suspicion is that, in the long run, cognitive grammar will not fare badly in this regard.
2. Implications of a Usage-Based Model Cognitive grammar is a usage-based model of linguistic structure, in which linguistic units are seen as being abstracted from usage events by the reinforcement of recurring commonalities (Langacker 1988, To appear-a). Such units run the gamut from the fully specific to the maxi-mally schematic, with specific structures and local regularities being at least as important as high-level generalizations. Moreover, special cases of general patterns can themselves have the status of linguistic units, provided that they are learned by speakers and conventional in a speech community.
Since linguistic units arise by abstraction from usage events, a usage-based approach is necessarily a construction-based approach. That is, constructions are basic rather than epiphe-nomenal, and rules are nothing more than schematic constructions (cf. Goldberg 1995). A construction is merely an assembly of symbolic structures (form-meaning pairings). Networks of constructions are deemed sufficient for a full description of lexicon and grammar, which form a continuum.
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The usage-based and construction-based nature of cognitive grammar (and other ap-proaches to cognitive linguistics) has certain implications for language pedagogy. One of them is the limited importance of fully general rules. Since regular constructions of full generality constitute only a small proportion of conventional patterns, complete mastery of linguistic rules (as normally conceived) does not assure any degree of actual fluency in a language. I can personally attest that, by thoroughly learning all the rules and vocabulary found in traditional textbooks and taught in traditional language classes, one does not come even close to being fluent in a language. To achieve fluency, one has to learn in addition a vast store of fixed expressions and normal ways of phrasing things in particular circumstances, out of all the ways the “rules” in principle permit. Only by controlling this immense inventory of conventional expressions and conventional modes of expression is it possible for speakers to put together a continuous flow of complex expressions in real time (Langacker 1987a: 35-36). If everything had to be computed from scratch, from general grammatical rules and traditionally recognized vocabulary, the exigencies of rapid, fluent speech would overwhelm our processing capacities. This is the state to which I was brought by traditional language training.
I have often said—and I think fairly accurately—that lexicon and grammar as traditionally conceived and taught constitute only around 1% of the linguistic knowledge required for fluent speech, yet this 1% attracts around 99% of the effort and attention of linguists. The usage-based and constructional perspectives encourage a reallocation of effort that should bring these pro-portions more into balance. If it is accurate, my assessment of the discrepancy between what linguists focus on and what speakers need to know will not come as any great surprise to those engaged in language pedagogy. It should be evident to anyone confronted with real-life prob-lems of language teaching. Nor will I suggest any specific pedagogical techniques or strate-gies—these are better left to the experts. But perhaps this new theoretical perspective can support such initiatives by elevating the perceived status of conventional expressions and facilitating their description.
Another facet of a usage-based model concerns the role of the communicative, social, and cultural context. In particular, cognitive grammar is contextually grounded because all linguis-tic units are abstracted from usage events, comprising the full contextual understandings of socially engaged interlocutors with specific communicative objectives in connected discourse. Any recurring facets of such events can be incorporated in the conventional meanings of lin-guistic units. It is only via progressive abstraction or decontextualization that linguistic units sometimes approximate the situation of having context-independent values. Yet I think they never fully achieve it. I believe that every expression, fixed or novel, is inevitably interpreted with respect to some presupposed context, if only a vanilla context derived from default as-sumptions. Hence the usage-based perspective provides a theoretical underpinning for what we
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all know in practical terms, namely the essential role of context and culture in language under-standing and language learning.
Let me illustrate with a banal example from my own experience. The event took place on a train in France in 1963. I was trying to hang up my jacket, but was having trouble due to the absence of the loop of fabric normally provided for that purpose (this notion appears to be a lexical gap in both English and French). One of the two French women in the compartment summarized the situation with the sentence in (1), which I remember precisely to this very day:
(1) Il n’y a pas de petit cordon.
Without my telling you the context, you could probably not determine the specific import of (1) or of the phrase petit cordon. Conversely, prior to the utterance—having been trained in French in a classroom setting by traditional methods—I had no clue whatever about how to describe the situation or the loop of fabric. Yet this one utterance, immediately interpretable in context, was sufficient for me to learn a natural way of expressing this situation in French. (Admittedly, I have never since found myself in a situation where this knowledge was useful, but if it ever happens again I am ready.)
Once more, I will not presume to make specific pedagogical recommendations. Let me simply state the obvious, namely that these considerations argue for pedagogical approaches which emphasize the interactive exposure to large quantities of natural speech in context.
3. Construal According to cognitive grammar (Langacker 1987a, 1990, 1991, 1999), lexicon and grammar form a continuum, all elements of which are symbolic in nature. It follows that all grammatical elements are meaningful. For everyone but certain linguistic theorists, this is certainly a more attractive vision than the standard view of grammar as pointless drudgery arbitrarily imposed, hence very hard to learn. If this vision is correct—and by now I consider it essentially proven—it offers numerous pedagogical opportunities.
The key to recognizing the meaningfulness of grammar lies in adopting a conceptualist se-mantics that properly accommodates construal, i.e. our ability to conceive and portray the same situation in alternate ways (Langacker 1993). As an inherent aspect of its conceptual-semantic value, every lexical and grammatical element incorporates a particular way of construing conceptual content—either its own content or that evoked by other elements. It is by no means an easy matter to correctly and convincingly describe this essential aspect of linguistic mean-ing, especially given the broad range of units that need to be taught. In principle, however, an accurate appreciation of the construal a unit imposes on a situation should allow one to devise a
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more effective means of teaching it. Lexical and grammatical elements are conceptual tools, and in learning to use a tool it is helpful to know what it does.
Linguistic structures are conceptual tools for imposing particular ways of viewing a situa-tion. Hence their meanings are not directly discernible or objectively present in the situations described—rather they inhere in the cognitive process of apprehending those situations and construing them for expressive purposes. Failure to appreciate this fundamental point is the major reason why so many linguistic theorists do not accept the meaningfulness of basic grammatical constructs. As a case in point, they continue to insist, quite erroneously, that basic grammatical classes (noun, verb, adjective, etc.) are not semantically definable. It is argued, for example, that since a word like escape designates an event (and precisely the same event) whether it functions as a verb or a noun, it must have the same meaning as a member of either class, so verbs and nouns cannot be distinguished semantically. The nominalization of a verb, deriving nouns like performance or explosion, is therefore seen as having no effect on its meaning. Thus statements like (2) still reflect standard linguistic dogma, and (3) represents the only kind of argument advanced to refute the naive view that the parts of speech do have se-mantic import.
(2) “... No constant semantic effect is associated with the functioning of a morpheme as a noun, as a verb, or as any other part of speech” (Langacker 1968: 83).
(3) “... Let’s ask whether each part of speech really denotes a consistent kind of meaning ... Now it is true that any word that names an object will be a noun. But on the other hand, not every noun names an object. ‘Earthquake’ names, if anything, an action, as does ‘concert’; ‘redness’ and ‘size’ name properties; ‘place’ and ‘location’ pretty ob-viously name locations. In fact, for just about any kind of entity we can think of, there exist nouns that name that kind of entity. So the grammatical notion of noun can’t be given a definition in terms of what kind of entity it names ... A particular kind of en-tity need not correspond to a single part of speech either ... We conclude that parts of speech ... are not definable in terms of meaning” (Jackendoff 1994: 68-69).
What is missing from both traditional definitions and the standard refutation is any realization that meaning is not objectively given but reflects our apprehension of situations. Any degree of semantic sensitivity (which I clearly lacked in 1968) should tell us that a change in grammatical class involves a reconceptualization, an alternate construal of the same content. Rather than being semantically vacuous, it results in a subtly different meaning, in accordance with the abstract semantic values of the classes. Going from a verb like perform to a noun like perform-ance involves a conceptual reification wherein a process is reconstrued as a kind of thing. Such
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reification might be characterized in terms of a process being construed metaphorically as a physical object (in the case of count nouns) or a physical substance (for mass nouns). But whatever the details, the standard argument against a notional definition of grammatical classes hinges on the tacit assumption that any characterization based on construal (rather than the objective situation per se) is not even worth contemplating.
Numerous facets of construal are usefully thought of as being analogous to visual phenom-ena. This leads Talmy (1996) to speak of ception as the general process subsuming both per-ception and conception. In the same spirit, I use the term viewing for both vision in particular and conceptualization more generally, to the extent that they seem parallel (Langacker 1995).
An example is our capacity to construe a situation either schematically or at progressively greater levels of specificity. Conceptually, this dimension of construal is reflected in the mean-ings of a series of expressions like (4):
(4) thing > animal > dog > retriever > golden retriever
This increasing semantic specificity seems quite analogous to the visual experience of seeing an object in progressively finer-grained detail the closer we come to it. In any case, we are clearly able to portray a situation at any desired level of specificity or schematicity, and lexical items provide ranges of options for this purpose.
Other analogies noted are diagrammed in Figure 1. In vision, we can distinguish between the maximal field of view (everything visible to any degree at a given moment), within that the general locus of attention (or “onstage region”), and within that the specific focus of attention. The corresponding conceptual entities, adopted as semantic constructs in cognitive grammar, are the maximal scope (i.e. the full array of conceptual content an expression evokes), the immediate scope (the portion directly relevant for a particular purpose), and the profile (the entity the expression is construed as designating, or referring to).
wMaximal field of view Maximal scope (MS)
Focus of attention Profile
Locus of attention Immediate scope (IS) (“onstage region”)
Figure 1
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An expression’s profile determines its grammatical class. Basic grammatical classes have conceptual characterizations. They invoke particular conceptual archetypes for their prototypi-cal values (e.g. ‘physical object’ in the case of nouns), and particular cognitive abilities for their schematic descriptions (e.g. conceptual reification). Class membership is therefore neither arbitrary nor objectively determined. Rather, it inheres in a particular way of viewing a situa-tion and construing it for expressive purposes.
At the schematic level, a noun profiles a thing, abstractly defined as any product of concep-tual reification. A verb profiles a process, defined abstractly as a relationship scanned sequen-tially in its evolution through time. Various other classes (e.g. adjective, adverb, preposition, participle) profile relationships that are non-processual (thus viewed holistically, rather than scanned sequentially, even they develop through time).
Consider a term like aunt. It is clearly relational, so why does it function as a noun (and not, say, a preposition)? The reason, as shown in Figure 2, is that it does not profile this rela-tionship, but rather the person who bears it to the reference individual (ego). Crucial though it is to the meaning of aunt, the relationship is not its referent but is merely evoked to characterize its referent. (Observe that there is no basis in this particular example for distinguishing between maximal and immediate scope. This is analogous to a word consisting of just a single mor-pheme, so that word and morpheme coincide.)
ego
auntMS/IS
Figure 2
Once we decide to use it, a form like aunt gives us no options: it is always a noun by virtue of imposing the scope and profiling shown in Figure 2. Despite polysemy and a certain flexibility
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of interpretation, lexical items are fixed expressions, so basically they embody packaged con-ceptualizations and their conventional symbolization. Ironically, it is grammar—so often thought of as an oppressor imposing arbitrary limits on our expressive freedom—that gives us some relief from these lexical strictures. Many grammatical elements have the specific function of adjusting the construals that would otherwise be inherited from lexical items.
For instance, the verb perform profiles a perfective process, i.e. a process construed as be-ing bounded. In Figure 3(a), the circle represents the focal participant; the vertical line and rectangle stand for the activity this participant is engaged in; and the horizontal line (with endpoints) indicates its progression through time (sequentially viewed). Starting from this basic conception, the derivational morphemes -er and -ance do not add any new content. Rather, their semantic value resides in the construal they impose on that content. Thus -er shifts the profile from the temporally evolving relationship to its focal participant, as seen in Figure 3(b). Performer is therefore a noun, since it profiles a thing rather than a process, although the original process provides its essential conceptual content. Performance is also a noun, but the thing it profiles is abstract, created by conceptual reification. The ellipse in Figure 3(c) stands for this abstract entity, a thing consisting of one instance of the process perform.
(a) (b) (c)perform performer performanceMS/IS
t
MS/IS
t
MS/IS
t
Figure 3
Another example is the English progressive construction with be...-ing. I claim that the pro-gressive is only applicable to processes construed as perfective, hence temporally bounded. It is an imperfectivizing construction, so it does not apply to processes that are already imperfective (not bounded), where its effect would be vacuous (Langacker 1987b). Occurrence in the pro-gressive is of course a standard diagnostic for perfective (or “active”) verbs, and non-occurrence for imperfectives (or “statives”). The other standard diagnostic, with the opposite distribution, is occurrence in the “true” present tense (with an actual, “right now” interpreta-tion). Here are some typical examples:
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(5) (a) *He builds a house. (a´) He is building a house. [perfective] (b) He knows the truth. (b´) *He is knowing the truth. [imperfective]
Intuitively, we can describe the progressive in terms of “zooming in” and taking an “internal view” of a bounded event. Technically, I describe it as imposing an immediate temporal scope that excludes the endpoints of the perfective process it applies to. This is shown in Figure 4(b), where—since only aspect is relevant here—I have reduced the depiction of a process to a line representing its temporal extension. Thus, while the maximal scope is a span of time containing the full, bounded process, the immediate scope subtends only an arbitrary portion of its internal development. Only that portion is profiled, since—as a matter of definition—the profile is the focal point within the immediate scope (see Figure 1). The overall progressive expression is imperfective, because grammatical class is determined by the profile and the profiled process is not bounded. (Also, as with any imperfective, the profiled process is construed as being effec-tively homogeneous.)
(a) Perfective
t
MS/IS(b) Progressive
IS
t
MS(c) Imperfective
t
MS/IS
Figure 4
Because it only applies to perfectives, the progressive construction—though itself imperfec-tive—signals that the original process is construed as being bounded. The subtle contrast between a basic imperfective and one derived by using the progressive is seen in Figures 5(b)-(c). Both profile a process which is unbounded within the immediate temporal scope (and construed as being effectively homogeneous). The difference is that a progressive expression creates this imperfective process by selectively attending to the interior of an overall occur-rence recognized as being bounded. Thus, in (6)(a), both the simple present and the progressive indicate a current residence in Chicago, but the latter portrays this as part of an overall residen-tial episode of limited duration. Likewise, with the past tense (6)(b) merely describes the situa-tion as stable and unbounded within the time span in question (in that era), whereas the pro-gressive construes it in relation to a longer period within which the rule of dinosaurs is seen as being bounded. And in (6)(c), the progressive indicates that the statue’s location in the plaza is only temporary.
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(6) (a) I {live/am living} in Chicago. (b) In that era, dinosaurs {ruled/were ruling} the earth. (c) A statue of Martin Pütz {stands/is standing} in the plaza.
It should go without saying that whether a process counts as being bounded is subject to con-strual. I say this anyway because I have often had linguists—even cognitive linguists—object to my characterization of perfectives by citing examples where bounding is not apparent just by examining the objective circumstances. One such example is (7). Since running around a pole is something that can go on indefinitely, with no intrinsic endpoint, how can it be said that the process is bounded?
(7) He is running around the pole.
The mistake here lies in assuming that the bounding of a process has to be objectively given, with an inherent endpoint observable in the situation itself. Ultimately, what counts for linguis-tic purposes is whether a process is conceptualized as some kind of bounded episode, irrespec-tive of whether a natural endpoint is discernible. There is in general a strong tendency to con-ceptualize force-dynamic occurrences (those requiring the expenditure of energy—cf. Talmy 1988) as being bounded in duration, even when the process is internally homogeneous and nothing appears to be going on. Thus (8)(a) describes a stable situation, but since the stability results from a balance of opposing forces, the basic process (i.e. the dam contain the surging floodwaters) is construed as an episode of bounded duration, hence the progressive is possible. By contrast, in (8)(b) the basic process (i.e. the barrel contain water) is non-force-dynamic. It merely describes a spatial configuration, which as such can maintain itself indefinitely. It thus receives an imperfective construal, and consequently does not allow the progressive.
(8) (a) The dam is containing the surging floodwaters. (b) The barrel contains water.
English has many perfective predicates (e.g. sleep, dream, run, walk, sit, stand, lie, perspire, talk, chat, meditate, wear a tie) in which an internally homogeneous activity is nonetheless construed as occurring in bounded episodes. It is only their grammatical behavior—resisting the simple present, occurrence in the progressive—which alerts us to their perfectivity. This does not however imply that the distinction is “purely grammatical”, with no conceptual basis. The grammatical classification hinges on a conceptual factor which is no less real for being subject to construal.
Once the specific, subtly contrasting construals imposed by lexical and grammatical ele-ments are elucidated, innumerable structural details that otherwise seem quite arbitrary turn out
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instead to have an intuitively graspable conceptual basis. The potential thus exists for devising effective ways of teaching them. How much of this should be explicitly taught to students? Should we burden the language learner with technical constructs like profile and immediate scope? I suspect not. It is not even evident that the classroom teacher should be responsible for such technical details, which might better be brought in at the level of overall planning and design of teaching materials. I will leave this matter for those competent to assess it.
At the same time, these notions might find a natural place in a language arts curriculum. Generative grammarians have often proposed that linguistics ought to be more visible in school curricula at all levels. In particular, they put it forth as a way of teaching science: formulating hypotheses, testing them against the empirical evidence, developing skills of argumentation, etc. While this may have some merit, the very different vision of language embodied in cogni-tive linguistics suggests another option: the concepts and descriptions of cognitive linguistics might instead be used for inculcating an appreciation of language as a means of evoking and symbolizing alternative conceptualizations of experience. If language arts training of this sort were routinely available, it might then be possible to draw upon such notions, even explicitly, in the language classroom.
4. Conceptual Substrate Traditional semantics focuses on the meanings and combinatory properties of overt elements. Cognitive linguistics has clearly demonstrated the limitations of this approach, showing that linguistic meanings rest on a vast and multifaceted conceptual substrate. The conceptions explicitly encoded by formal elements are merely the “visible” portions of far more extensive conceptual structures that support them and provide their coherence. Often left implicit—yet critical for determining and interpreting what does appear overtly—are factors such as the presupposed viewing arrangement, the nature and force of the speaker-hearer interaction, and how expressions relate to the current discourse state. Linguistic understanding further relies on elaborate processes of meaning construction involving metaphor, metonymy, mental spaces, blending, idealized cognitive models, and the evocation of myriad “fictive” entities.
Long ago, my own language training emphasized the translation or transformation of indi-vidual sentences totally isolated from any context. I thus find it interesting to contemplate how many levels of conceptual organization support the interpretation of even a simple expression. The expression itself—overt linguistic elements and the notions they directly encode—is of course merely the tip of the iceberg. The expression per se is part of a usage event, i.e. an actual instance of language use, comprising the interlocutors’ full contextual understanding of the expression, including their apprehension of its interactive force. The usage event is usually part
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of a longer discourse, and is one facet of the interlocutors’ overall social interaction. The inter-action takes place in a particular situational context, which in turn is embedded in a culture, which develops as a way of coping with the world.
We rely on information from any or all of these strata even for the interpretation of seem-ingly straightforward expressions. Let us once again consider example (1), Il n’y a pas de petit cordon. This made perfect sense given the situational context of wanting to hang up a jacket, but without this contextual support it seems rather pointless and hard to interpret. Apprehension of the situational context was itself dependent on the knowledge of certain cultural practices, notably that of hanging up jackets and the usual provision of a loop of fabric for this purpose. Moreover, certain basic properties of the world we inhabit—such as temperature, gravity, and force dynamics—are reflected in these cultural practices and implicitly invoked any time we think of them.
A pivotal aspect of the conceptual substrate, quite clearly, is the ground, comprising the speaker, the hearer, their interaction, and the immediate circumstances. It is quite common—arguably even canonical—for the ground to remain offstage and not be mentioned. In the unmarked situation, the ground functions as the tacit location from which a scene is viewed and an expression’s meaning is apprehended, as opposed to being onstage as the explicit focus of attention. For instance, a tense marker locates a profiled process with respect to the time of speaking (one facet of the ground), invoking it as a temporal reference point, but does not directly mention it. Likewise, a determiner—via its specification of (in)definiteness—invokes the speaker and hearer as the individuals seeking to identify the nominal referent, but leaves them offstage and unprofiled. The ground, then, is the locus of conception. We do of course have ways of putting facets of the ground onstage and referring to them specifically, e.g. with forms like I, you, here, and now. Even so, the ground’s occasional status as focused target of conception coexists with (and is subsidiary to) its more fundamental role as the tacit locus of viewing.
Inherent in every usage event is a presupposed viewing arrangement, pertaining to the rela-tionship between the conceptualizers and the situation being viewed. The default arrangement finds the speaker and hearer together in a fixed location, from which they report on actual occurrences in the world around them. There are however numerous kinds of departures from this canonical circumstance. The departures help make it evident that the default arrangement, so easily taken for granted, is nonetheless an essential part of the conceptual substrate support-ing the interpretation of expressions. Whether canonical or special, the viewing arrangement has a shaping influence on the conception entertained and consequently on the linguistic struc-ture used to code it.
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For expressive purposes, we sometimes invoke a viewing arrangement other than the actual one. On the most likely interpretation of (9), for instance, the speaker is actually in motion and the telephone poles are static (cf. Talmy 1996). Yet the situation is presented as if it instantiated the default-case viewing arrangement, with a static viewer observing the motion of other enti-ties. Granted this fictive viewing arrangement, the description is accurate: it represents what the speaker actually sees, interpreted with respect to an arrangement that, while canonical, is non-actual. A correct apprehension of the speaker’s intent requires that the expression’s overt content be properly related to both the fictive viewing arrangement (which determines its form) and the actual one (where the viewer’s motion generates the visual experience coded by that form).
(9) The telephone poles are rushing past at ninety miles per hour.
Of course, language is not just used for describing what happens. Most of us are unlike phi-losophers (or the idealized speakers sometimes imagined by philosophers) who spend their lives in detached contemplation, producing only objectively verifiable assertions purporting to truthfully describe the world. Beyond assertion and description, we use language for multifari-ous actions and purposes: for asking questions, giving orders, making promises, performing official acts; for attracting and directing attention; for eliciting approval, agreement, acknowl-edgment, permission, and cooperation; for the primal expression of pleasure, pain, fear, and disgust; and so on. The apprehension of these actions and purposes provides a conceptual substrate for the attachment of elements appearing overtly in expessions. Whether or not they refer to the substrate specifically, these elements—via their selection and their conformation—give witness to its presence and its character.
For instance, modifiers sometimes pertain to the substrate rather than the overt content. The since-clause in (10)(a) does not give a reason for the bird being the kind of bird it is, but instead justifies the speaker’s action of requesting this information (Sweetser 1990). Likewise, the honesty referred to in (10)(b) is that of the speaker in tendering the advice, not that of the addressee in following it.
(10) (a) Since you’re an ornithologist, what kind of bird is that? (b) In all honesty, you should give up painting and get a job.
Part of the substrate resides in apprehending an expression’s illocutionary force, i.e. the type of speech act the interlocutors are engaged in (Austin 1962). It is possible for the execution of that act to be put on stage as the focused target of description. The result is a performative sentence, as in (11)(a). More commonly, though, it is left implicit or signalled in a more peripheral manner. In the case of imperatives, where the envisaged action is to be carried out by the
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addressee, the agent can either be indicated in the usual way by the subject pronoun you, as in (11)(b), or else left implicit, as in (11)(c). Since the hearer’s agentive role is an inherent speci-fication of the speech act itself, it can be omitted from the expression’s overt content unless explicit reference is felt necessary for emphasis. In particular cases, the speaker’s role in the envisaged action can also be left implicit, as in (11)(d). To the extent that the speech event instantiates a standard type of interaction, the content overtly expressed may be limited to those facets of the situation not subsumed by the substrate.
(11) (a) I order you to stay away from me. (b) You stay away from me! (c) Stay away from me! (d) Stay away!
Apprehension of the speaker-hearer interaction (including illocutionary force) is always part of the conceptual substrate, even for canonical assertions. It is inherent in the construal of every expression as one facet of the viewing arrangement it presupposes. Expressions that are non-descriptive or have non-assertive force constitute one large class of departures from the stan-dard viewing arrangement. There are however many other kinds of departure from it, even with expressions whose function is basically descriptive. Even when using language to report on what happens in the world around us, there are many ways in which we commonly deviate from the canonical situation of directly describing actual individuals and actual occurrences involving them.
Some—like metaphor, metonymy, and implicature—are extremely prevalent if not utterly pervasive. In the case of metaphor, as in (12)(a), we are not simply viewing and describing an entity in its own terms, but instead create a blend by selectively projecting properties from the source domain onto the target domain; although the target domain is the actual focus of our interest, it is the blend that is directly encoded linguistically. In metonymy, the entity we men-tion directly functions as a conceptual reference point, providing mental access to an associated entity that we are actually referring to, as in (12)(b). And of course, implicature allows us to convey the crucial information without having to express it directly. Thus (12)(c) can serve as an indirect means of telling the guests that it is time to leave the dinner table.
(12) (a) The brain tumor robbed him of the chance to finish his novel. [metaphor] (b) The pen is mightier than the sword. [metonymy] (c) The living room is much more comfortable. [implicature]
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I have already cited (9) as a case of invoking a fictive entity, namely the viewing arrangement itself. Essentially any facet of the overall conception an expression evokes can be fictive (or virtual) rather than actual (Langacker To appear-b). For instance, a rhetorical question like (13)(a) can be analyzed in terms of a fictive speech act—the speaker only pretends to ask a question, it being understood that the actual interactive force is very different.
(13) (a) Would my client—a faithful public servant, a devoted family man, and a deacon in his church—even consider taking a bribe? Of course not! [fictive speech act]
(b) The trees got shorter as we approached the summit. [fictive change]
In (34)(b), both the subject and the profiled event are fictive in nature. The trees does not refer to any actual set of objects, but is rather a role description, designating a feature of the land-scape observable at any altitude. Nor does any tree or set of trees actually change in length. What the sentence describes is a virtual change generated by viewing the trees instantiating the role at different altitudes as if they were a single, changing entity.
Finally, let me mention the frequent but seldom noted phenomenon of resorting to type specifications as a way of describing a set of actual occurrences that are alike in some respect. Imagine a series of actual events in each of which a single stranger—different each time—reaches over a fence and picks a single apple—also different each time. If there are three such events, the entire sequence can be summarized by sentence (14)(a). It is not essential for our purposes that the sentence is subject to alternate interpretations. What is essential is the possi-bility of using (14)(b) for exactly the same event sequence. There are three different strangers, and three different apples, yet these participants are referred to in the singular: a stranger, an apple.
(14) (a) Three times, strangers reached over the fence and picked apples. (b) Three times, a stranger reached over the fence and picked an apple.
I suggest that (14)(b) describes the events at the level of their common type characterization. The three actual events each instantiate the event type a stranger reach over the fence and pick an apple. At the type level, representing what the three events have in common, there is only one stranger and one apple. These are instances of the stranger and apple categories, but they are not actual instances or specific individuals. Rather, they are virtual (or arbitrary) instances conjured up just to characterize the type of event in question. In short, even though (14)(a) and (14)(b) are used to describe precisely the same event sequence, they view it in different ways for linguistic purposes. The latter involves the conceptual operation of extracting a common event type, whose characterization invokes fictive entities distinct from any actual individual. This special viewing arrangement focuses on the type as the level that is directly coded linguis-
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tically, even though the description pertains to actual events. The adverb three times can be seen as an instruction for mapping between these two levels.
The moral of all this, not at all surprising from the standpoint of cognitive linguistics, is that the relation between linguistic expressions and the world is non-transparent, being medi-ated by elaborate mental constructions even when we seem to be merely reporting on what happens (cf. Fauconnier 1997). For an accurate characterization of linguistic elements, we need a detailed understanding of the many subtleties of viewing, as well as the conceptual substrate that supports and shapes expressions. Though I will not suggest any specific pedagogical implications, I have to believe that some appreciation of these factors would be beneficial to both the language learner and the language teacher. In what follows, I will try to show their relevance to a proper analysis of a phenomenon noted for the pedagogical problems it poses, namely the English present tense.
5. The English Present The one thing that is generally agreed upon concerning the English present tense is that it is really not a present tense, i.e. its value cannot be that of indicating that the process in question occurs at the time of speaking. The arguments seem straightforward. On the one hand, events that do occur at the time of speaking generally cannot be expressed in the present tense. This is the case with perfectives, as we saw earlier. As descriptions of actual, bounded events occur-ring at the time of speaking, sentences like (15)(a) are consistently infelicitous:
(15) (a) *Bill {sleeps/paints a fence/changes a tire/learns a poem} right now. (b) Bill {is sleeping/is painting a fence/is changing a tire/is learning a poem} right
now.
To say these things, we must instead use the progressive, as in (15)(b). On the other hand, many uses of the present tense do not refer to the time of speaking. Standard uses of the “pre-sent” pertain to the future, to the past, to “timeless” situations, or even to “eternal truths”:
(16) (a) Your driver’s license expires on your next birthday. (b) I’m driving home last night and I hear a siren. I pull over and stop. This cop
comes up and starts writing me a ticket. (c) Hamlet moves to center stage. He pulls out his dagger. He examines it. (d) Pi is irrational.
Despite these commonplace observations, I have long argued (e.g. 1987b) that the English present does in fact locate the designated process at the time of speaking (coincident with the
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ground). More precisely, the present tense indicates that a full instantiation of the profiled process occurs and precisely coincides with the time of speaking. The proposed account will serve as a case study illustrating many of the points made earlier. I do not know how the pre-sent tense should be taught, but an understanding of how it really works must surely be relevant to the problem.
I analyze a tense marker as imposing an immediate temporal scope for the focused viewing of the process it grounds. For English, there are just two, as shown in Figure 5, where a box with squiggly lines represents the speech event. The past tense morpheme imposes an immedi-ate scope located prior to the speech event, while the present tense morpheme (at least in Eng-lish) imposes one that coincides with it.
Observe that in the past tense there is no inherent limit on the length of the immediate scope, so a perfective process of any length can always be made to fit inside it. By contrast, in the present tense the immediate temporal scope must be the same in duration as the speech event. If an imperfective process endures for a span of time that includes the immediate scope (in either the past or the present), only that portion of it subtended by the immediate scope is profiled. Recall that an expression’s profile is necessarily confined to its immediate scope (the general locus of attention). Moreover, since an imperfective process is internally homogeneous and not characterized in terms of bounding, any subpart singled out for profiling will itself constitute a valid instance of the process type in question. (Imperfectives are quite analogous to mass nouns in this respect.)
(d)
Past Perfective (b)
(c) Past Imperfective Present Imperfective
(a) Present Perfective
IS
t
MSIS
t
MS
IS
t
MSIS
t
MS
Figure 5
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Let me start by pointing out how much this analysis accounts for, straightforwardly and even rather elegantly. First, it accounts for imperfectives being able to occur in the present tense, as sketched in Figure 5(d). Since any part of an imperfective process itself counts as a full instan-tiation of the process type, this will also be true for the portion that coincides with the time of speaking. Observe that the analysis does not imply that the stable situation described is valid only for the brief duration of the immediate scope. For instance, an utterance of (5)(b), He knows the truth, does not entail that his knowledge of the truth is limited to the time of the utterance. What is being claimed, instead, is that the speech event defines a “window” for focused viewing. In using a present tense imperfective, the speaker is taking a temporally coincident sample of the overall situation and observing that—for the portion sampled—the situation is stable and unbounded. It is possible, without contradiction, for the same overall situation to be sampled at different times, as in (17):
(17) He knew the truth then, and he still knows it now.
The same overall situation endures without interruption for a span of time that includes both immediate scopes, those imposed by the past tense in the first conjunct and by the present tense in the second conjunct. There is one overall situation, but from it each clause selects a different sample for focused viewing, resulting in two distinct profiled processes, each characterized by local stability and the absence of bounding. It is in the nature of imperfectives that a local sample is sufficient to reveal a stable situation of indefinite duration.
Because progressives are derived imperfectives, the analysis predicts their occurrence in both the past and present tense, as in (18). This is diagrammed in Figure 6. Observe that two immediate scopes are indicated. The progressive itself imposes an immediate temporal scope, labeled IS1, whose boundaries are internal to those of the perfective process it applies to (see Figure 4(b)). The past or present tense marker then applies to the imperfective process profiled by the progressive. As shown in Figure 5, it imposes its own immediate temporal scope, given as IS2, which either precedes or coincides with the time of speaking. The profile of the complex expression is confined to the sample of the imperfectivized process that falls within the scope imposed by the tense. Recall that the ground is the locus of conception, and a tense marker specifies the locus of attention (or focused viewing) with respect to it.
(18) She {was/is} {working/writing a letter/wearing a sweater}.
The analysis also accounts for the usual infelicity of present tense perfectives, as in (15)(a). The difficulty is not however a matter of conceptual incoherence. Indeed, the conceptual configura-tion depicted in Figure 5(b) is perfectly coherent and non-anomalous. There is nothing inher-ently contradictory about a bounded event temporally coinciding with the speech event. And indeed, true present tense perfectives are sometimes permissible, as we will see. Instead, the
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problem with present tense perfectives is that certain factors make the configuration in Figure 5(b) hard to achieve in practice.
A perfective process is bounded, so a full instantiation of such a process includes its boundaries. Thus, if a perfective process is to coincide with the time of speaking, its beginning point has to coincide with the initiation of the speech event, and its endpoint with its termina-tion. This poses both a durational problem and an epistemic one. The durational problem is that there is no inherent connection between the length of the event described and the length of the speech event describing it. It takes longer to paint a fence, for example, than it does to utter the clause He paints a fence. The epistemic problem resides in having to observe an event in order to identify it as a prerequisite to describing it. By the time an event is observed and identified, it is already too late to initiate a speech event that precisely coincides with it. These problems do not arise with imperfectives, given their mass-like character and the property that any portion of the overall process counts as a full instantiation of the process type. Hence an imperfective has no specific duration, and a portion which follows a period of observation and identification can still count as a valid instance.
If a perfective event has a long enough duration, therefore, and extends through the time of speaking, we can describe its occurrence “right now” by means of a present tense progressive. This was diagrammed in Figure 6(b). The progressive derives an imperfective process delim-ited by IS1, and the present tense selects for focused viewing the portion of it that coincides with the time of speaking (IS2). Of course, this solution is not automatically available if the perfective event is punctual, effectively consisting of just an onset and an offset, with no inte-rior phase of any significant duration. A sentence like (19)(a) is consequently infelicitous if intended as the description of something actually occurring right now (not as merely indicating that the popping is imminent). The reason is that the event is too short for imposition of an immediate scope that excludes its endpoints—there is no interior phase of sufficient duration for focused viewing.
(19) (a) *A balloon is popping (at this very moment). (b) *She is blinking. [single blink]
Likewise, (19)(b) is infelicitous if construed as referring to a single blink in progress. Of course, it can always be construed as repetitive, and since repetitives are perfective, they allow the progressive and require it in the present tense. We can also rescue (19)(b) by imagining a special viewing arrangement. It would be felicitous, for instance, if we were watching a slow motion film in which a single blink were viewed as occurring over a span of several seconds. Such examples show that well-formedness judgments depend on default assumptions about the world as well as a presupposed viewing arrangement.
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Also accounted for by the proposed analysis is a striking systematic exception to the usual non-occurrence of present tense perfectives, namely performatives, as in (20). Performatives clearly profile bounded events and not only tolerate but actually require the present tense. The reason is that a performative represents a special viewing arrangement in which the process put onstage and profiled is the speech event itself. Since the profiled process and the speech event are the same, they have to be temporally coincident, as shown in Figure 7. Because of this property, the durational problem does not arise with performatives. Nor does the epistemic problem. The latter arises when it is necessary to observe an event and identify it prior to initiating its description. But with performatives, the speaker is responsible for carrying out the profiled event and acts with prior intent. As the intentional agent of the process, the speaker has no need to observe it in order to know its identity.
(20) (a) I promise to cooperate. (b) I beg you to give me another chance. (c) I hereby sentence you to 30 years in prison.
Performative
IS
t
MS
Figure 7
Performatives indicate that the durational and epistemic problems are not problems with pre-sent tense perfectives per se. Rather, they stem from particular circumstances of viewing, namely the default viewing arrangement. In the default arrangement, the event to be described is independent of the speech event and beyond the control of the speaker, who merely observes the occurrence and then reports it. In this case the speaker can hardly begin its description coincident with its initiation, nor is its duration likely to match the time needed to utter a finite clause. But performatives, being intentional actions which implement the very events de-scribed, avoid these problems by their intrinsic nature.
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Are there other kinds of viewing arrangements which, by their nature, avoid the durational and epistemic problems? We simply need to imagine a situation where the speaker controls both the occurrence and the duration of the event described and can therefore make the descrip-tion coincide with the occurrence. In one situation I can imagine, a child is playing with toy cars and a play village and accompanies each action she takes with a descriptive sentence. The successive utterances in (21) then coincide with the successive acts of pushing a toy car from one place to another. This use of the present tense for perfective events seems perfectly natural and unproblematic.
(21) Now I drive to work. Now I go to the store. Now I drive home.
More generally, the present tense is naturally used for the narration of demonstrations. Imagine an origami class, where each clause in (22)(a) accompanies the action it describes:
(22) (a) I pick up a sheet of paper and I fold it in two. I fold it again. Now I take the scis-sors, and I make an incision from one corner to the center.
(b) I put a tablespoon of butter in the pan. It melts quickly. Now I put the fillet in. I cook it at a low temperature for five minutes.
Or a cooking program on television, as in (22)(b). Note that the subject does not have to be the speaker (e.g. It melts again). It is only necessary that the speaker have sufficient control over events to avoid the durational and epistemic problems.
The last sentence in (22)(b) is included to raise certain issues concerning duration and co-incidence. Obviously, the chef does not take five minutes to utter this sentence. Nor is the butter likely to melt in exactly the span of time required to say It melts quickly. There are two approaches we might consider for dealing with this type of problem. I suspect that both of them are valid and play some role in overlapping ranges of data. One approach is to recognize a certain amount of tolerance in applying the notion “precise coincidence” to actual circum-stances. Except perhaps with performatives, exact temporal coincidence—in the strictest sense—is not a realistic expectation (for perfectives). It has to be understood as coincidence apparent on a certain time scale, or some approximation close enough for the purpose at hand. This of course is characteristic of language use in general. A person who says that All politi-cians are dishonest is not considered to be lying if he believes that somewhere in the world there might be one who is honest.
Tolerance in what counts as temporal coincidence clearly figures in the play-by-play mode of speech used by sportscasters. In a way, their role exemplifies the default viewing arrange-ment, since they occupy a fixed position and do in fact report on actual occurrences. How, then,
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do they overcome the durational and epistemic problems in their frequent use of present tense perfectives, as in (23)?
(23) Stockton dribbles along the baseline. He passes out to Malone. Carl makes a nice grab. He puts up a three-point shot. He scores!
Note that the events described in this way have approximately the right duration for temporally coincident description. In the context of a sporting event, they are also quite stereotyped, so the announcer has a good idea of what is likely to transpire at any instant. One is therefore able to shadow the events fairly closely, sometimes even to anticipate and describe them simultane-ously with their occurrence. The goal at least is to come as close as possible to coincident description, and the conventions of play-by-play reporting rest on either the fiction that this is feasible or else the tolerance of a certain time-lag.
Undoubtedly we have to recognize flexibility and degrees of approximation in what counts as “precise coincidence”. These are, after all, matters of construal rather than objective scien-tific measurement. Yet this hardly seems adequate for examples like the final sentence in (22)(b). Moreover, I can easily imagine an alternative mode of narration for a demonstration, where—instead of coinciding with it—each statement precedes the action it describes, thereby telling the listener what to watch for. At least for cases like these, we appear to need some other approach.
The approach I suggest is to posit a distinct viewing arrangement, one that does not specifi-cally involve the simultaneous narration of actions. Although, in practice, the events in question are correlated with actions, they are conceptualized more abstractly as entries in a list, collec-tively constituting a kind of script or scenario that is being followed. In this respect they would be roughly analogous to stage directions, as in (16)(c). My proposal for such cases is that the present tense verbs are not in fact being used for the direct description of actual events—instead they indicate the reading off of entries on some kind of list or scenario. In other words, what is being coded linguistically is not the actual occurrence of events, but rather their virtual occurrence as part of a non-canonical viewing arrangement. The viewing arrangement is such that the virtual occurrence does coincide with the time of speaking.
If this proposal should seem far-fetched, it is only because we are so accustomed to think-ing in terms of the default viewing arrangement and regarding linguistic expressions as direct descriptions of the world. I have tried to show, on independent grounds, that there are many other kinds of viewing arrangements, and that we often resort to the direct linguistic coding of virtual entities even when our real concern is with actual ones. Recall (14)(b), Three times, a stranger reached over the fence and picked an apple. To describe an actual situation involving three strangers, three apples, and three events of picking, we resort to an expression that di-
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rectly codes a virtual event involving fictive instances of the stranger and apple categories. We “conjure up” these fictive entities as a way of capturing the abstract commonality of the actual events. Once we recognize the true linguistic prevalence of virtual entities and non-canonical viewing arrangements, the proposal to posit a virtual event occurrence is not at all far-fetched, but rather the sort of thing we ought to anticipate.
Let us begin with the scheduled future use of the present tense, as in (24)(a). My proposal is that such expressions relate only indirectly to the actual event in question. What a sentence like this directly describes is not the actual event per se, but rather a representation of that event on some kind of virtual schedule, some kind of plan or projection concerning the anticipated occurrence and timing of events in the future. Several considerations support the notion that something like a schedule is involved. For one thing, the scheduled future strongly favors a time expression, as seen by the infelicity of (24)(b). Moreover, it does not work well for events that cannot be scheduled or anticipated. Thus (24)(c) is awkward unless it is uttered by God, or perhaps by a scientist with supreme confidence in a method of quake prediction. Finally, there is sometimes an actual schedule that is being read, as in (24)(d).
(24) (a) Our new furniture comes tomorrow. (b) ??Our new furniture comes. (c) ??An earthquake strikes next week. (d) There it is on the monitor—our bus leaves at noon.
A virtual schedule pertains to the future, but its own status and location are another matter. When a plan is in effect, the schedule itself is stable and mentally accessible through a span of time that includes the present. The schedule consists of virtual events, which are representa-tions of anticipated actual events. Moreover, the time interval through which each virtual event is conceived as unfolding is identified with a particular time in the future, as shown by the dotted correspondence lines in Figure 8. However, the events constituting the schedule are only virtual.
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Virtual Schedule
t
2Event
tActual Events
Event1 Event3
Figure 8
Metaphorically, we can think of a virtual schedule as a “document” available to be “read” at any time. In producing a sentence like (24)(a), the speaker is essentially reading off one of its entries. Reading an entry amounts to the virtual occurrence of the event it comprises, and since that event is profiled by the sentence produced, a (virtual) occurrence of the profiled process precisely coincides with the time of speaking. Use of the present tense thus conforms to the proposed characterization, taking into account the special viewing arrangement in which the speaker is “reading” aloud from a virtual schedule. In that context, where all the events are virtual, they occur in the sense of being read, and the reading is necessarily coincident with the speech event.
I take this as being typical of the so-called “non-present” uses of the present tense in Eng-lish. Though details vary, a number of them are plausibly described metaphorically as the reading of a virtual document; the differences reside in the kind of document envisaged. In the case of (22)(b), the document would be an imagined script of how the cooking demonstration is supposed to proceed, step by step. In the case of stage directions, as in (16)(c) [Hamlet moves to center stage. He pulls out his dagger. He examines it.], the script may well be physically embodied. But even conceived as a virtual document, it comprises a series of inscribed events available to be read at any time. Reading them, and thereby apprehending the successive event descriptions, induces their virtual occurrence in the form of mentally constructing the pre-scribed event sequence. What about the historical present, as in (16)(b) [I’m driving home last night and I hear a siren. I pull over and stop. This cop comes up and starts writing me a ticket.]? Here the virtual document consists of a series of recalled events that the speaker can mentally “replay” at leisure, at the pace required for linguistic encoding. Another kind of recall figures in a photo caption, as in (25). Here the statement is physically instantiated and read quite literally. The photo captures one moment of the event described by the caption, and helps to evoke its virtual occurrence in the guise of apprehending the statement’s import.
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(25) Nixon says farewell from the steps of his helicopter. [photo caption]
More generally, the key to understanding “non-present” uses of the present tense lies in recog-nizing the special viewing arrangements they presuppose. They all diverge from the default arrangement by invoking some kind of mental construction—such as a schedule, script, or mental replay—consisting of event representations. Even when these correspond in some fashion to actual events, the represented events are the ones directly coded linguistically and profiled by the present tense verb. What counts as the occurrence of such a process is therefore not an actual occurrence, but rather a virtual one consisting in its apprehension in the manner indicated by the special viewing arrangement (e.g. reading the virtual schedule, or running the mental replay). Indeed, the profiling of actual events in accordance with the default viewing arrangement can be seen as a special case of this more general scheme, the case of identity between the mental construction of represented events and the observation of actual ones.
One broad class of mental constructions comprises generalizations extracted to represent the world’s basic structure, as opposed to specific, contingent occurrences that arise within this stable framework (Goldsmith and Woisetschlaeger 1982; Langacker 1996, 1997). Expressions describing the world’s basic structure—which I refer to as structural statements—include generics, habituals, and “timeless truths”. Even when the verbs employed are perfective, they do not refer to specific, actual events. For example, (26)(a) does not designate any actual in-stance of a kitten being born. The profiled event is a virtual instance of the process type in question, conjured up to express a generalization about one facet of the world’s basic nature. The events coded by structural statements belong to mental constructions purporting to repre-sent the world’s basic structure rather than any actual occurrences. Each of these event repre-sentations corresponds to an open-ended set of actual instantiations, distributed throughout the time span during which the generalization holds. Tense marking on a structural statement specifies the time at which the event representation can be consulted as a way of apprehending this facet of the world’s structure. Present tense indicates its viewing, and thus its virtual occur-rence, coincident with the time of speaking.
(26) (a) A kitten is born with blue eyes. [generic] (b) My cousin goes to a singles bar on Friday night. [habitual] (c) Water decomposes into hydrogen and oxygen. [“timeless truth”]
Another special use of the present tense in English involves causal relationships between events and situations. This curious construction, illustrated by (27)(a), is often heard from sports announcers. I suspect it is rather common in casual speech. Despite the present tense, the sentence does not describe anything happening right now, nor is it a direct description of
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actuality. It is, moreover, ambiguous. Sentence (27)(a) may be construed as comparable to (27)(b), pertaining to a facet of future potentiality. Alternatively, it has an interpretation similar to (27)(c), pertaining to something that failed to materialize in the past. But unlike (27)(b)-(c), which make these interpretations explicit, in (27)(a) they are left implicit: how the events described are connected to actuality is not directly specified by any overt element.
(27) (a) He makes the freethrow and the game is tied. (b) If he makes the freethrow, the game will be tied. (c) If he had made the freethrow, the game would have been tied.
An expression like (27)(a) profiles a sequence of two virtual processes, the first representing an event, and the second a situation resulting from that event. This mental construction manifests a special viewing arrangement allowing the simplified presentation of a contingency inherent in the past or future evolution of reality. Let’s face it, (27)(b) and especially (27)(c) are quite complex both conceptually and grammatically, involving modals, perfect aspect, mental spaces, and shifts of viewpoint within those spaces. The viewing arrangement of (27)(a) does away with all this at the level of explicit linguistic coding. It simply abstracts the causally related processes and presents them as virtual occurrences available for direct viewing at the moment of speech. The complexity of their epistemic status is still all there, but is incorporated in the presupposed viewing arrangement instead of being overtly expressed.
The overall situation is sketched in Figure 9. The two virtual processes are connected by a double arrow to represent the causal relationship between them. It is only this virtual process sequence that is put onstage and profiled by the successive coordinate clauses in a sentence like (27)(a). Each clause is in the present tense, hence their profiles coincide with the respective speech events associated with the two finite clauses. In producing and understanding the ex-pression, the speaker and hearer view and apprehend the virtual process sequence, and their apprehension of it constitutes its virtual occurrence coincident with the time(s) of speaking.
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Virtualt
t Actual
Process1 2Process
Figure 9
The presupposed viewing arrangement incorporates a conception of how the profiled process sequence relates to actuality. There are two options in regard to time. As indicated by the dotted correspondence lines, the time span during which the virtual process sequence is envisaged as occurring is identified with a temporal interval either prior to the speech events or subsequent to them. Under either option, the virtual processes are taken as representing a valid contin-gency, such that the actual occurrence of Process1 results in the actual occurrence of Process2. However, the viewing arrangement also specifies that Process1 is not (or not yet) actual. When applied to the past, where the course of reality has already been determined, the non-actuality of Process1 entails that it did not in fact occur, and thus implicates that the situation coded by Process2 does not obtain. When applied to the future, where the course of reality has not yet been determined so that Process1 is necessarily non-actual, presenting it for consideration has the effect of suggesting that its actual occurrence (and the subsequent occurrence of Process2) may be quite imminent.
Finally, I should mention the use of present tense in certain types of subordinate clauses, as in (28):
(28) {If/when/until/before/after/while} you make a decision, you should consider all your options.
Despite its present tense form, in each case the predicate (make a decision) refers to a process envisaged as occurring in the future. Here I basically follow the analysis proposed by Faucon-nier (1997) in terms of mental spaces. The subordinators introducing these clauses are space builders: if establishes a hypothetical space, and the others set up spaces defined by their tem-poral location. They further shift the viewpoint to the space they establish. In other words, they incorporate the instruction to adopt a special viewing arrangement in which the clausal content is apprehended from a temporal vantage point other than the actual time of speaking. Its appre-
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hension does of course occur at the time of speaking, but when this is fictively identified with the time span internal to the mental space, a process conceived as occurring in this space is fictively viewed as coincident with the speech event.
6. Conclusion I have sketched an analysis of the English present tense that is quite non-standard and undoubt-edly controversial. It is still preliminary (even after all these years), and certainly incomplete. For instance, following Brisard (1999), I have not sufficiently emphasized the epistemic imme-diacy that constitutes the flip side of temporal coincidence. Still, I have little personal doubt that the account is basically valid, or at least suggestive of what a valid account might look like. For sake of discussion, let us suppose that you agree. What then follows? What conclusions can we draw for language pedagogy?
I am of course eschewing any specific pedagogical proposals. I will however suggest that the traditional way of looking at tense, even in linguistics, engenders confusion by obscuring its basic nature. Standard discussions are objectivist in spirit. They ignore construal and the sub-jective basis of factors like homogeneity and bounding. They have no conception of the myriad viewing arrangements that mediate between objective circumstances and the formulation of linguistic expressions. Thus they attempt to account for tense directly in terms of the temporal relation between the actual time of speaking and the full duration of an envisaged actual occur-rence. They do this even when—according to the analysis presented here—the process being viewed and temporally located is only a portion of the actual occurrence (notably with imper-fectives), or else a virtual process connected to it in a manner specified by the viewing ar-rangement. It is no wonder, then, that a cogent description remains elusive, and that the present tense is claimed to be anything but a present tense.
The consideration of pedagogical issues can only be aided by an accurate understanding of what is being taught. In the case of language, unfortunately, traditional and modern understand-ings are usually far from adequate, even for things as fundamental as the present tense. It is premature to suggest that cognitive linguistics is coming to the rescue. I do however see it as a positive development, providing new and revealing perspectives on specific problems as well as our overall conception of language and how it relates to culture, cognition, and social inter-action. In short, I think we are starting to get a real grip on how things work. If so, it should eventually give rise to successful pedagogical applications, which will lend it empirical sup-port.
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