326 The subjectivity of utterance

The grammatical resources that English provides for this pur­pose include the quantifiers, determiners and classifiers that are used primarily for first-order reference: their use, secondarily, for second-order reference (with expressions such as 'the situa­tion in which John found himself, 'the initial phase of this con­tinuing process', etc.) is what justifies the employment, in this context, of the traditional philosophical terms 'reification' and 'hypostatization'. This kind of reification, or hypostatization, is consonant with, and may well be connected historically with, the development of particular languages for abstract philosophi­cal or scientific discourse.

Independently, however, of the development of a special second-order vocabulary and the associated grammatical resources for this purpose in particular languages, there is another, related, phenomenon which is found in very many languages throughout the world and should be mentioned in this connexion. This is the modelling of the vocabulary and grammar of temporal reference and denotation on that of spatial reference and denotation. For example, in many languages the case-system or set of prepositions (or postpositions) will use the same case or preposition in the formation of both tem­poral and spatial expressions; and there is often, if not always, justification for saying that the temporal meaning has derived historically from the earlier spatial meaning. So widespread is this phenomenon that it has given rise to a general approach to the analysis of natural languages known as localism. The localist approach to case, as it is commonly explained, holds that temporal expressions are intrinsically more abstract than spatial expressions and that the modelling of temporal refer­ence and denotation on spatial reference and denotation is part of the more general process of modelling the abstract upon the concrete.

Not surprisingly, there are localist theories of tense and aspect, which have been developed with reference to a wide range of languages. They are now given more prominence in readily accessible textbooks and monographs written in English than was the case until recently; and I will not go into them here. What I will do is emphasize the fact that, just

10.5 Modality, modal expressions and mood 327

as tense is semantically comparable with demonstratives and determiners, so aspect is semantically comparable with classi­fiers and quantifiers, and also with such properties as count-ability, which distinguishes first-order entities from first-order aggregates of stuff or matter. This parallelism is well recognized in traditional accounts of aspect. To make the point baldly: as space is to first-order (extensional) entities, so time is to second-order (extensional) entities, situations. In other words, situations are located in time, just as physical objects are located in space. At this level of generality, what I have just said may sound high-falutin and irrelevantly philosophical. Its relevance and specificity will be evident to anyone who looks at any of the detailed accounts of aspect in general or of the aspectual systems that are now available.

10.5 MODALITY, MODAL EXPRESSIONS AND MOOD

There is an obvious etymological connexion between the terms 'modality', 'modal' and 'mood'. Though obvious, it is histori­cally quite complex; and all three terms have been given a variety of conflicting interpretations by linguists and logicians, both traditionally and in more recent work. Students should be aware that the term 'mood', in particular, has long been used in different, though ultimately related, senses by linguists and logicians. Since linguistic semantics has been strongly influenced by logical semantics in recent years, 'mood' is now frequently employed by linguists in the logician's sense of the word; and this can cause confusion. In this section, and throughout this book, I am using it solely and consistently in the sense in which it is used in traditional grammar: i.e., with reference to such grammatical categories as 'indicative', 'sub­junctive' and 'imperative'. As was noted in Chapter 6, many if not all the functions of mood are non-propositional and beyond the scope of truth-conditional semantics; the gramma­tical categories of mood and tense are interdependent in all natural languages that have both categories; and mood is more widespread than tense throughout the languages of the