The semantics of Scandinavian ‘when’-clauses

Abstract

The system of temporal connectives in Scandinavian exhibits an interesting variation in that Danish, like e.g. German, is a two-‘when’ language, i.e. it has two temporal connectives that have divided between them the semantic area covered in English by the single connective when. One of the two Danish connectives (da) is restricted to past episodic clauses, while the other one (når) may be used in past and present habitual clauses and in future clauses. Swedish, on the other hand, like e.g. English, is a one-‘when’ language: it has only one temporal connective corresponding to the two Danish ones, whereas Norwegian presents an intermediate situation, possibly a stage in the development from a two-‘when’ to a one-‘when’ system. This paper proposes a semantic analysis of the two ‘when’s in Danish: On the one hand, the semantics of da-clauses is similar to the semantics of definite DPs in that a da-clause presupposes that, in the current discourse situation, there is one and only one eventuality corresponding to the description it conveys. This makes it possible for a da-clause to have a reference-setting function with respect to its superordinate clause. On the other hand, når-clauses are similar to indefinite DPs in that they contribute propositions with an unbound eventuality argument, and therefore they yield descriptions of eventualities that never get referentially bound, but always occur in the scope of a non-existential quantifier. This restricts the use of når-clauses to habitual sentences and future sentences. This analysis involves the elaboration of a novel and more adequate formal semantic description of habitual sentences.