This book is a collection of slightly revised papers on tense and indexicality that were published between 1995 and 2008 by James Higginbotham, one of the most renowned scholars in philosophy and linguistics. Chapter topics range from philosophical discussions of ‘Tensed thoughts’ (Chapter 3), demonstrative reference (Chapter 10, ‘Competence with demonstratives’) and the role of first person in thoughts and communication (Chapter 12, ‘Remembering, imagining, and the first person’) to detailed syntactic and semantic analyses, such as ‘The English progressive’ (Chapter 8) and ‘The English perfect and the metaphysics of events’ (Chapter 9). The book adopts as its basic framework the assumptions of event semantics, the anaphoric (relational) theory of tense, and context dependence of the interpretation of temporal and indexical expressions. Each chapter discusses well-known controversies, introducing new linguistic material that allows us to examine these problems from a different perspective. Although Higginbotham touches on a number of pragmatic issues and emphasizes the context dependence of truth and interpretation, his solutions are largely syntactic in nature, relying on the notion of Logical Form and utilizing notions such as copying and movement.

One of the main theses of the book is that incorporating context into a semantic theory based on truth conditions and logical consequence provides an account of indexical language and its logical form. Tense has traditionally been treated both as an operator and as a kind of modality. Higginbotham argues against the modal theory of tense, proposing instead that tense is a two-place predicate expressing temporal relations between events.

In this book, Higginbotham defines truth conditions for indexical languages. He represents them as conditional statements whose truth depends on the satisfaction of an antecedent that spells out the import of the context-dependent elements. For example, the range of the quantification over events for the present tense is confined to those that temporally overlap the utterance u. The author emphasizes the difference between contextual information that sets up proper conditions for language use, which includes indexicals and tenses, and what is said. Only what is said enters the truth conditions. He stresses that the representation of thought expressed extends beyond the narrowest truth-conditional conception of semantics, to include the circumstances of our deployment of indexical concepts.

Another important position defended by Higginbotham is the extension of Davidson's (Reference Davidson and Rescher1967) hypothesis that there is a special argument position, the E-position for events (and states), associated with predicative heads. Whereas Montague's (Reference Montague1974) approach took events to be properties of moments of time, involving arguments of higher types for constructing individual events, the E-position hypothesis takes events as primitives, and deals with semantic compositional problems without invoking second-order logic. Positing the Davidsonian E-position simplifies the combinatorics of adverbial modification, as illustrated in (1), which asserts that there was an event of walking in which John was the agent at a time t prior to the time of utterance and the event was slow.

1. (1)

   1. (a) John walked slowly.

   2. (b) ∃e[walk(e) & Actor(John, e) & slow(e) & e<u]

Higginbotham provides linguistic evidence for E-positions, not only for action predicates but for all predicates of all lexical classes. He also argues for a more fine-grained semantics for lexical aspect that makes use of event semantics. For example, accomplishments are represented as ordered pairs of positions for events, corresponding to process and telos. While discussing some metaphysical questions concerning the nature of events, which are interlocked with the investigation of the perfects, he suggests further extension of event semantics, drawing attention to the data in (2) and (3).

1. (2)

   1. (a) The traffic lights changing to amber caused John's quick crossing of the street.

   2. (b) (the e)(crossing the street (John, e) & quick(e))

1. (3) The traffic light's changing to amber caused John's crossing of the street.

If, as Davidson argues, events are primitives and (2a) has the logical representation in (2b), (2a) should entail (3), contrary to fact. Higginbotham solves this problem by postulating an extra E-position for the adverb that refers to the quickness of the crossing. His approach results in a flourishing of E-positions, locating them in modifiers, quantifiers, and other non-heads. Higginbotham's work can thus be considered to be strongly Davidsonian, as it extends event semantics beyond action verbs to all predicates, including non-heads.

The anaphoric (relational) theory of tense also figures prominently in Higginbotham's work. He stresses that anaphoric theories of tense do exactly what is required to explain the dependencies of c-commanded tenses upon c-commanding ones, and observes that alternatives, such as, for example, Abusch (Reference Abusch and Kamp1994), Ogihara (Reference Ogihara1995) and von Stechow (Reference Stechow1995), ‘must build back into their respective accounts the anaphoric properties of sequence of tense if those accounts are to be part of an empirically adequate system’ (102). Higginbotham, then, provides an explanation of the asymmetry of complement clauses and object relatives in the interpretation of the embedded tense. Thus, in (4), the time of Maria's illness either overlaps Gianni's speech time or precedes it, but there is no such restriction in (5).

1. (4) Gianni said that Maria was ill.

1. (5) Gianni saw a woman, who was ill.

A well-known approach to the obligatory sequence of tense in complements is Ogihara's (Reference Ogihara1995) Temporal Directionality Isomorphism condition. Ogihara provides a metaphysical/conceptual solution, requiring the temporal orientation of a complement clause to match that of the content of the matrix predicate. Thus, a speaker cannot use (4) to report speech of Gianni whose content lay in Gianni's future at the time that he made it but now lies in the speaker's past. However, Higginbotham observes that the prohibition on the temporal orientation does not apply globally to all complements but is closely related to the feature [−past]. He provides a syntactic solution, asserting that the phenomenon of temporal anaphora is optional in both constructions: [+past] can be interpreted either as expressing anteriority or as merely triggering anaphora. In complement clauses, the functional head I(nfl) must move to the C(omplementizer) position. While C obligatorily triggers anaphora, this is not the case in relatives, which are always in situ and optional. Obligatory anaphora in complements is hence explained by a copying of the tense feature and its dual interpretation. While the problem of sequence of tense and double-access in English might very well be syntactic in nature, Higginbotham does not give any reasons for why I must move to C in complement clauses and why anaphora from C is obligatory, which leaves the account stipulative.

This book stimulates deep thinking about philosophical issues such as the nature of de se interpretation, tensed thoughts, and the fundamentally indexical nature of natural language. Higginbotham discusses the difference between tensed thoughts about the past, as in (6a), and untensed ones, as in (6b), adapting Arthur N. Prior's famous example.

1. (6)

   1. (a) I am relieved that my root canal is over now.

   2. (b) I am relieved that my root canal is over at 4 p.m., October 31, 1994.

Sentence (6b) is untensed: although it contains the temporal designator 4 p.m., October 31, 1994, it is not indexical in the sense that it does not relate the situation with the thinker's (or the speaker's) present. Tensed thoughts locate the temporal reference of the untensed thoughts with respect to the thinker's present state, and therefore they accompany passions of relief, regret, or anticipation. Higginbotham calls them ‘reflexive’ as they essentially involve cross-reference between the time of the thinker's state and the time of a situation. It follows from Higginbotham's conception of tense as encoding temporal relations between situations that cross-reference is independently needed for the analysis of other linguistic phenomena, such as sequence of tense.

Higginbotham further discusses the nature of de se interpretation. He opts for the view that there is a special first-person interpretation of the reflexives and PRO. De se interpretations of embedded clauses are neither the result of suppressing a conceptualized constituent in favor of the bare object, nor do they call for a construal of clauses as expressions of properties (Chierchia Reference Chierchia, Bartsch, Benthem and van Emde Boas1990). Rather, they have their own conceptualized constituents. Consider the data in (7).

1. (7)

   1. (a) John/Each man remembered/imagined [his going to the movies].

   2. (b) John/Each man remembered/imagined [himself going to the movies].

   3. (c) John/Each man remembered/imagined [PRO going to the movies].

The gerundive complements in (7) have an event-like rather than a proposition-like reference, and (7c), which has a PRO subject, exhibits the phenomenon of ‘immunity to error through misidentification’. Immunity to error through misidentification ‘arises for certain circumstantial reports of experience in which one cannot sensibly wonder whether it is oneself that plays a given role in what is reported’ (221): if I feel that I am in pain, although I might conceivably ask whether it is really pain that I am in, I cannot ask whether it is I who am in pain if anybody is. Reports of remembering that contain PRO involve remembrance of events as processes that the speaker underwent or remembering things from inside. Therefore, they are more ‘first-personal’ than first-person pronouns or reflexives. Higginbotham concludes that the problem of de se interpretations and immunity through misidentification call for a solution in terms of logical form.

In addition to these philosophical discussions, Higginbotham provides detailed syntactic and semantic analyses of particular English constructions, such as progressives and perfects. He proposes a solution to the imperfective paradox in terms of the semantic treatment of accomplishments and Dowty's (Reference Dowty1979) counterfactual theory. Consider the sentences below, for which Higginbotham points out that, while Mary is travelling to London and the plane is hijacked and diverted to Havana, it might be correct to say (8a) and (8b), but not (9).

1. (8)

   1. (a) Mary is flying to London.

   2. (b) Mary is flying to Havana.

1. (9) Mary is flying to London and to Havana.

Dowty's counterfactual theory is here recast with events as primitives. Landman's (Reference Landman1992) theory of ‘continuation branches’ is interpreted as a way of delivering the relevant inertia world: it is the closest world where the telos is to be found at the end of a process of which the event is an initial segment. Once some interfering events obtain that prevent the continuation of the initial event from bringing Mary closer to the telos, one is not allowed to use the progressive anymore.

Turning to the English perfect, Higginbotham argues that it is purely aspectual and not involved in the tense system at all, serving to shift a predicate of events e to a predicate of events that are results of e. He provides a simple and intuitive solution to the present perfect puzzle. The English present perfect resists modification with past adverbials, as shown in (10).

1. (10) *I have visited the museum yesterday.

1. (11) I have visited the museum recently.

Higginbotham argues that (10) is awkward because the visit was yesterday and so was its result, but the present perfect requires the onset of the result state to be present. On the other hand, (11) is fine because both the event and the result state are recent, which can be included in the present. The adverbials that are possible with the present perfect have the property of the past times of which they are true and are closed under temporal succession.

Higginbotham's book contains comprehensive discussion of and genuine solutions to some of the current puzzles in the syntax, semantics, and philosophy of tense and indexicals, and he suggests a principled semantic theory that can deal with these issues. This book is unique among those on the topic of the semantics of tense and aspect, as its approach is both philosophical and linguistic, drawing on the author's expertise in both disciplines. What is lacking, however, is the discussion of language variation and its implication for the acquisition of tense and aspect systems. Although Higginbotham occasionally mentions some cross-linguistic issues, in general this book aims for an analysis of English, as the author himself acknowledges in the preface. It is thus not clear whether his account extends to a wider set of data. The book is also not easy to read, as the author assumes considerable background knowledge on the topics covered. On the whole, however, it is a valuable resource for those involved in the study of the semantics of tense and indexicals, and its interactions with syntactic theory in linguistics, philosophy, and related fields.