I. Adverbial before -clauses 707 absolute preterite, as in Bill arrived before I did. In that case both situations referred to are represented as t 0 -factual. Neither clause uses a tense relating its situation time to the situation time of the other clause, because both establish a past domain of their own. However, the temporal W-relation between the situation times is indicated by before Ϫ see Figure 14.4 in section 14.4.1. 14.6 Absolute tense in the head clause and relative tense in the before-clause 14.6.1 In 14.5 we have discussed the possibilities of using an absolute tense in both the head clause and the before-clause in cases where the latter functions as a situation-time adverbial (i. e. if the before-clause establishes an Adv-time which contains the situation time of the head clause). In the present section we consider structures with a before-clause used as a situation-time adverbial in which the head clause uses an absolute tense while the before-clause uses a relative one. 14.6.2 Sometimes when the head clause uses an absolute tense, or is an infini- tive clause forming part of a head clause using an absolute tense, the before- clause functioning as situation-time adverbial can show temporal subordina- tion. There are two important conditions for this. First, the head clause has to form part of an intensional (opaque) context or establish one (for example, by the use of the future tense Ϫ see 8.24.3). Secondly, the situation time of the before-clause must be T-related to the implicit Anchor time and not to the situation time of the head clause. The following are some examples, which show that the relation between the situation time of the before-clause and the Anchor time may be that of T-simultaneity or T-anteriority, but hardly T- posteriority. (Note that the before-clause is meant to specify the time of the speaking, not the time of the wanting to speak.) I wanted to speak to Mary before she moved into her new flat. I wanted to speak to Mary before she had moved into her new flat. ?? I wanted to speak to Mary before she was going to move into her new flat. (This is hardly acceptable as a means of saying ‘I wanted to speak to Mary before the time when she was going to move into her new flat’.) It should be noted that in none of these examples is the posteriority relation implied by before expressed by the tense form. Sentences in which the tense form does express this relation are ungrammatical: *I wanted to speak to Mary before she would move into her new flat. *I wanted to speak to Mary before she would have moved into her new flat. *I wanted to speak to Mary before she would be going to move into her new flat. 708 14. Adverbial before-clauses and after-clauses These sentences are ungrammatical because the situation time of the before- clause is T-related to the situation time of the head clause rather than to the Anchor time. This kind of indirect binding is not allowed in before-clauses. (However, it is pointed out in 14.4.4 that, in archaic English, should can be found in the before-clause of such sentences. This is in keeping with our claim that in I wanted to speak to Mary before she moved into her new flat the form moved is a relative tense form, expressing simultaneity with the Anchor time, and not an absolute tense form.) The following are similar examples in which the intensional domain is estab- lished by the future tense form in the head clause itself: I will speak to Mary before she {moves /*will move} into her new flat. I will speak to Mary before she {has moved /*will have moved} into her new flat. I will speak to Mary before she { ?? is going to move /*will be going to move} into her new flat. 14.6.3 In I wanted to speak to Mary before she had moved into her new flat and I will speak to Mary before she has moved into her new flat, the reason why the speaker chooses to express T-anteriority in the before-clause is that he wants to refer to the resultant state produced by the before-clause situation rather than to the situation itself. In addition, the choice of a perfect tense form promotes a not-yet-factual reading (see 14.6.5 below). In other sentences the reason for expressing T-anteriority may be that the speaker wants to convey a continuative reading of the before-clause, i. e. that he wants to represent the before-clause situation as continuing at (and possibly beyond) the Anchor time: Mary wanted to move into the flat before she had been pregnant for longer than five months. Mary will move into the flat before she has been pregnant for longer than five months. Note that in examples like these, ‘before X’ means ‘before the Anchor time’, i. e. ‘before the temporal point when the before-clause situation has lasted for five months’, and not ‘before the beginning of the before-clause situation’. 14.6.4 The analysis (in terms of an implicit Anchor time) proposed here ac- cords with the observation that in many cases we can substitute by the time that for before without changing the tenses. There is little difference of meaning between the following sentences: Mary intends to be married before she moves into her new flat. Mary intends to be married by the time she moves into her new flat. In the phrase by the time that, the NP the time makes explicit the Anchor time which remains implicit when we use the conjunction before (ϭ ‘before the time I. Adverbial before -clauses 709 that’). In the second example, the Pseudo-t 0 -System form moves clearly relates the situation time of the that-clause to the time, not to the situation time of the head clause. The fact that before-clauses use exactly the same verb form therefore confirms our hypothesis that the same temporal relation is expressed. 14.6.5 One of the consequences of relating the situation time of the before- clause to the implicit Anchor time (rather than using an absolute tense form) is that the before-clause situation is not represented as being a fact at t 0 .The only element of interpretation is that the before-clause situation is something which was (or is) expected to take place at some time later than the head clause situation, which means that the before-clause situation is represented as not- yet-factual ( i. e. as ‘still nonfactual at the situation time of the head clause’ Ϫ see 14.4.2), i. e. that the before-clause situation has not yet actualized at the time of the head clause situation. (4a) Bill intends to go home before the play is over. (4b) I want to leave before the police {arrive / have arrived}. (4c) The thief will run away before the police {arrive / have arrived}. In (4aϪb) the head clause forms part of an intensional domain; in (4c) it creates the intensional domain itself by using the future tense (which creates an inten- sional world Ϫ see 8.24.3). In each case the before-clause locates its situation time in the temporal domain established by the head clause because it is to be interpreted as part of the intensional domain Ϫ see 10.4.6. It does so by relating the situation time of the before-clause to the Anchor time. In (4b) and (4c), arrive and have arrived express T-simultaneity and T-anteriority, respectively. In the latter case the speaker is more concerned with the state resulting from the arrival than with the arrival itself. The result is anyhow a not-yet-factual reading: ‘A before B’ is interpreted as ‘A when not yet B’. Thus (4b) can be paraphrased as follows: ‘I want to leave at a time when the police {do not arrive / have not arrived (ϭ are not there)} yet’. The sense of not-yet-factuality is stronger when have arrived is used than when simultaneity is expressed. At least, while I want to leave before the police arrive strongly implies that I expect the police to arrive, I want to leave before the police have arrived tends to draw the hearer’s attention away from this implication. That is, with dy- namic verbs, expressing T-anteriority instead of T-simultaneity is a conven- tional device to abstract away from the expected actualization and bring not- yet-factuality into focus. 14.6.6 The not-yet-factual reading ‘The before-clause situation is not yet a fact at the situation time of the head clause’ can also be expressed in non- intensional contexts: 710 14. Adverbial before-clauses and after-clauses Mary recognized the visitor before he had entered the house. Mary recognized the visitor before he was in the house. [When the men started fighting] Bill hurriedly left the pub before the police arrived. The first two examples receive the same interpretations (respectively) as the fol- lowing: Mary recognized the visitor, and when she did he had not yet entered the house. Mary recognized the visitor, and when she did he was not yet in the house. The third example is ambiguous between a t 0 -factual and a purely not-yet- factual reading of the before-clause. In the former case the speaker is taken to assert that the police arrived. In the latter case there is an implicit intensional domain, viz. a world of expectation, and the before-clause explains why Bill left hurriedly: he left in a hurry because he expected the police to arrive soon and wanted to have left before that. The use of hurriedly thus promotes the not-yet-factual interpretation: ‘A before B’ means ‘A at a time when not yet B’. Whether A did or did not actualize after A is left vague: it is irrelevant to the truth of the sentence (on the purely not-yet-factual interpretation) whether the police actually arrived or not. Because sentences like the above three leave it vague whether the situation of the not-yet-factual before-clause eventually actualized or not, they can occur in a context making it clear that the situation did not actualize at all, as in the first two examples below, or did eventually actualize, as in the third example: I saw him before he had seen me. So I had time to conceal myself. The letter was destroyed before I had read it. He read the paper before I had read it. I did not read it until I was back from work. In these examples it is the linguistic context that makes it clear whether the before-clause situation ever actualized or not. The purely not-yet-factual be- fore-clause itself does not tell us anything about this. It just represents its situa- tion time as T-anterior to the Anchor time, which is itself interpreted as W- posterior to the situation time of the head clause (because this is the contained orientation time included in the Adv-time and preceding the Anchor time). It follows that the before-clause situation is interpreted as still nonfactual at the situation time of the head clause. 14.6.7 Apart from the context, pragmatic knowledge can also induce a factual or counterfactual reading of the not-yet-factual before-clause. Thus, out of context, the not-yet-factual before-clause of the first example below is interpre- ted as counterfactual, whereas that of the second is not: The sergeant removed the fuse before the bomb exploded. The sergeant took off his helmet before the bomb exploded. I. Adverbial before -clauses 711 The interpretation of such sentences happens in accordance with the following pragmatic principle: When both the head clause and the not-yet-factual before-clause are in the past tense, the before-clause is given a counterfactual interpretation if the head clause situation is represented as t 0 -factual and its actualization is seen as a necessary and sufficient condition to prevent the before-clause situation from actualizing. In other words, The sergeant removed the fuse before the bomb exploded yields a counterfactual interpretation because the following conditional is pragmati- cally plausible: If the sergeant had not removed the fuse, the bomb would have exploded (later). By contrast, The sergeant took off his helmet before the bomb exploded does not yield a counterfactual interpretation because the following conditional is not plausible: If the sergeant had not taken off his helmet, the bomb would have exploded (later). The above pragmatic principle is only one of a pair. The second is the follow- ing: A not-yet-factual adverbial before-clause in the past tense receives a t 0 -factual inter- pretation if the head clause situation is represented as t 0 -factual and its actualization is seen as a necessary and sufficient condition for the before-clause situation to actu- alize. In accordance with this principle, the before-clauses in the following examples are interpreted as t 0 -factual: We had to bribe the secretary before we were accepted as members of the club. They had had to kill him before they could get at his money. This type of sentence is special in that the head clause expresses necessity and does not allow the insertion of a measure phrase (e. g. long) before the before- clause. As a rule, t 0 -factual before-clauses do allow such an insertion Ϫ see 14.6.13. The fact that a measure phrase is not allowed here suggests that the before-clause is not primarily interpreted as a time adverbial but rather as a conditional clause. (This would mean that the idea of temporal precedence has been metaphorically extended to the idea of logical precedence: the head clause and the before-clause express something like condition and consequent, or cause and effect.) 14.6.8 When the before-clause represents its situation as nonstatic (ϭ dy- namic) and is interpreted as t 0 -counterfactual for pragmatic reasons (and not 712 14. Adverbial before-clauses and after-clauses because of the verb form) Ϫ see 14.6.7 Ϫ it can use a verb form expressing simultaneity or a verb form expressing anteriority: 7 (5a) The letter was destroyed before I read it. (5b) The letter was destroyed before I had read it. Actually, there is a double difference of meaning between such sentences. To begin with, (5a) is only possible if it means ‘The letter was destroyed as a precaution against my reading it’. This aspect of interpretation is not conveyed by (5b), which has an extensional before-clause rather than an intensional one. The second meaning difference between (5a) and (5b) is brought out by the following paraphrases: (aЈ) The letter was destroyed before the time when it would have been the case that I read it (if it had not been destroyed). (bЈ) The letter was destroyed before the time when it would have been the case that I had (already) read it (if it had not been destroyed). In other words, the destruction of the letter is located before the (imaginary) time of my reading it in (5a) and before the (equally imaginary) time of my already having read it in (5b). However, this difference of meaning is blurred by the fact that the before-clause situation is anyhow interpreted as counterfac- tual: if there is no actualization, then there is neither a time at which the situation actualizes nor a time at which it has already actualized. Still, there is a reason why even in this case the past perfect is often used instead of the preterite: the past tense by itself suggests a t 0 -factual reading, and it takes considerable processing effort on the part of the hearer to conclude that this t 0 -factual reading does not fit in with the context, which requires a t 0 - counterfactual reading. The past perfect, by contrast, brings the not-yet-factual reading into focus (see 14.6.5 above); it is a small step from ‘not-yet-factual at t’ to ‘not-yet-factual at t 0 ’, and an easy further step to ‘counterfactual at t 0 ’if such a reading is imposed by the context. 14.6.9 When the before-clause uses a stative verb and is interpreted as t 0 - counterfactual for pragmatic reasons and not because of the verb form (because this is not a conditional perfect form), there is a difference of meaning between a verb form expressing T-simultaneity and one expressing T-anteriority. Whereas the first two of the following examples (with a nonstative verb) only show the two meaning differences discussed in the previous section (in connec- tion with (5aϪb), the latter two clearly yield different not-yet-factual inter- pretations: 7. In this case the Adv-time-bounding orientation time is interpreted as the time when the before-clause situation would have actualized if it had not been prevented by the actualization of the head clause situation. I. Adverbial before -clauses 713 ? The company closed down before John finished his apprenticeship. (Unlike (5a), this sentence is questionable because its natural interpretation Ϫ ‘The company closed down as a precaution against John’s finishing his apprenticeship’ Ϫ is prag- matically unlikely.) The company closed down before John had finished his apprenticeship. The company closed down before John felt at home in the job. The company closed down before John had (ever) felt at home in the job. (Had felt is interpreted as a ‘perfect of experience’ Ϫ see 5.16.1: the before-clause means ‘be- fore John had ever had the experience of feeling at home in his job’.) This difference results from the fact that in a before-clause, the past perfect of a stative verb (e. g. had felt) can only receive a ‘perfect of experience’ reading (see 5.13.1), whereas the past perfect of a nonstative verb (e. g. had finished) invites a resultative reading. 14.6.10 When the context or our shared pragmatic knowledge of the world does not induce a t 0 -factual or t 0 -counterfactual interpretation, the interpreta- tion of a before-clause with a nonstative VP will be as follows. Other things being equal, a past perfect will be interpreted as explicitly representing the situation as not-yet-factual, whereas a past tense will be interpreted as repre- senting the situation as t 0 -factual. Thus, John read the letter before I had read it merely expresses that I had not (yet) read the letter when John read it; it does not say anything about whether or not I did read it afterwards. By con- trast, John read the letter before I read it suggests that I did read the letter, but only after John had read it first. In a post-present domain, there is a similar difference of interpretation be- tween a present tense in the before-clause and a present perfect (of a nonstative verb): in John will read the letter before Mary has read it, the before-clause is interpreted as not-yet-factual, i. e. as expressing no more than that John will read the letter at a time when Mary has not read it yet. By contrast, John will read the letter before Mary reads it suggests that Mary too will read the letter, but only after John has done so. (This implicature can be overridden by the pragmatics of the context, as in Mary will catch John before he hits the floor.) In sum, when the verb of the before-clause is nonstative and neither the context nor pragmatic knowledge induces a t 0 -factual or t 0 -counterfactual in- terpretation, the before-clause uses a tense form expressing T-simultaneity with the Anchor time to suggest a factual interpretation and a form expressing T- anteriority to emphasize the not-yet-factual interpretation without suggesting a factual or counterfactual reading. When the anteriority form is used, the distance between the Anchor time (to which the situation time of the before-clause is represented as T-anterior) and the situation time of the before-clause is felt to be minimal: the Anchor time lies right after the terminal point of the situation of the before-clause. . exactly the same verb form therefore confirms our hypothesis that the same temporal relation is expressed. 14.6.5 One of the consequences of relating the situation time of the before- clause to the. 709 that’). In the second example, the Pseudo-t 0 -System form moves clearly relates the situation time of the that-clause to the time, not to the situation time of the head clause. The fact that. to the implicit Anchor time and not to the situation time of the head clause. The following are some examples, which show that the relation between the situation time of the before-clause and the