Selectionalrestrictionsoftensesandtemporal referenceofChinesebaresentences Jo-wangLin Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Chiao Tung University, 1001 Tahsueh Road, Hsinchu 30050, Taiwan Received15November2001;receivedinrevisedform5May2002;accepted20June2002 Abstract ThispaperdiscussestemporalreferenceofChinesebaresentenceswithoutanytimeadverb ortense-likemarker.Wearguethattemporalreferenceofsuchsentencescanberesolvedby selectionalrestrictionsoftwoemptytenses,i.e.,covertpresenttenseandcovertpasttense.We showthatwhilecovertpresenttensemustselectahomogeneoussituationasitscomplement, covertpasttensemustselectaheterogeneoussituationasitscomplement.Wealsoarguethat coverttensesmustbedistinguishedfromemptytensesthatagreewithtimeadverbs,because thelatterdonothaveselectionalrestrictions. # 2002ElsevierScienceB.V.Allrightsreserved. Keywords: Temporal reference; Tense(s); Aspect; Bare sentences; Selectional restrictions of tenses; Agreementtenses;Descriptivecomplements;Resultativecomplements 1. Introduction AgreatdifferencebetweenMandarinChineseandtheIndo-Europeanlanguages liesingrammaticalizationoftensemorphology.Toexpressthelocationofanevent orstateintimeaxis,theIndo-Europeanlanguagesoftenmakeuseofverbalinflec- tions.Forexample,Englishusestheverbalsuffix- edtoexpresspasttenseand- e(s) to indicate present tense. In comparison, Chinese does not have verbal inflections correspondingtoEnglish- edand- e(s).Inotherwords,tensemorphologyinMan- darinChineseisnotgrammaticalized.IftemporalreferenceinMandarinChineseis notindicatedbyverbalmorphology,howisitdetermined?Acommonassumptionis Lingua113(2002)271–302 www.elsevier.com/locate/lingua 0024-3841/02/$-seefrontmatter # 2002ElsevierScienceB.V.Allrightsreserved. PII:S0024-3841(02)00089-X E-mail address: jowang@cc.nctu.edu.tw(J.Lin).