Jinhong Liu

Yiqin Qiu

Yijun Fang

Brenda Laca

Fabienne Martin

Victor Junnan Pan

Guillaume Thomas

Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria

Hamida Demirdache
email: hamida.demirdache@univ-nantes.fr

Hongyuan Sun
email: hongyuan.sun@u-picardie.fr

Analyzing Tenselessness*

Keywords: absolutive, CL: classifier, Asp: aspect, AspP: aspect phrase, COP: copular, DET: determiner, DECL: declarative, DP: determiner phrase, ET: event(uality) time, EvalT: evaluation time, FUT: future, LF: logic form, MOD: modal, NEG: negation, NF(UT): nonfuture, NMLZ/NOM: nominalizer, PFT: perfect, PFV: perfective, POSS: possessive, PROG: progressive, RT: reference time, SG: singular, Spec: specifier, SUBJ: subject, TopT: topic time, TP: tense phrase, UT: utterance time, VP: verb phrase Tenseless, Syntactic tense, (Non-)Future time reference, Relational tense, Pronominal tense, Topic time, Evaluation time, Aspect, Salish, Chinese

This paper addresses a longstanding issue -that of the universality of tense -by assessing the theoretical and empirical claims underlying analyses of so-called tenseless languages -that is, languages lacking at least on the surface grammatical tense. We distinguish the following typology of approaches. (i) Analyses that posit syntactic tense, distinguishing two subclasses: positing both semantic and syntactic covert tense, thus preserving the universality of tense, vs. positing covert syntactic but not semantic tense, thus preserving the universality of syntactic tense, but not of semantic tense. (ii) Analyses refuting syntactic tense, distinguishing two further subclasses: positing covert semantic but not syntactic tense, thus preserving the universality of semantic, but not syntactic tense, vs. positing neither semantic, nor syntactic (covert) tense and thus refuting the universality of both semantic and syntactic tense. We then tackle an issue at the heart of many of the core arguments put forth either for or against tensed/tenseless analyses: constraints on future time reference. We provide novel arguments for (absolute) future time reference in Chinese, and in light of these arguments, conclude in favor of the universality of both syntactic and semantic tense, moreover correlating two putative tense universals.

Introduction: is Tense Universal?

This chapter focuses on the core, fundamental issue concerning linguistic variation in the expression of temporality across languages: is tense a universal semantic and/or syntactic category? Obviously, if there are languages that lack tense, then tense is not universal. And clearly, there is a wide diversity of languages that lack overt morphological tense, as illustrated in (1a) from St'át'imcets Salish (adapted from [START_REF] Demirdache | Predication times in St'àt'imcets Salish[END_REF]) and (1b) from Mandarin.

(1) a. Nilh s-Biden [ti kel7áqsten-s-a ti UaS-a] focus NOM-Biden DET chief-3SG.POSS-DET DET USA-DET 'Biden is the chief of the United States.' (or 'It is Biden who is the chief of the USA.') b. Bàidēng shì měiguó zǒngtǒng. Biden be United.States president 'Biden is the president of the United States' The sentences in (1) are well-formed although their main predicate lacks any overt temporal -be it tense or aspect-marking (we henceforth refer to such predicates/sentences as bare predicates/sentences). It could well be, however, that the syntax of the above sentences integrates a TP headed by an unpronounced temporal head projected under T°. On this analysis, the syntax of (1a/b) would involve syntactic and semantic tense and it would merely be that tense receives no dedicated phonological realization in these languages. The issue then is evaluating the arguments for making such a move, given Occam's razor which dictates that parsimonious accounts are to be preferred. One could thus argue that some temporal parameters must be encoded in the LFs assigned to these sentences in order to determine their truth conditions. Assuming that (1a/b) uttered out of the blue are by default interpreted as holding at the present time of utterance (henceforth UT), the truth of (1a/b) also depends on the time at which they are evaluated: (1a/b) are true at UT (that is, August 2022) but would come out as false had they been uttered say anytime time prior to January 20, 2021 (the date of Biden's inauguration). The question is then whether we need to posit syntactic and/or semantic tense to explain such constraints.

As we shall see, ascertaining whether a given language has tense or not is a hard and controversial question. Mandarin is a very good case in point since it has been analyzed as having covert semantic and syntactic tense [START_REF] Sybesma | Whether we Tense-agree overtly or not[END_REF][START_REF] Sun | Temporal Construals of Bare Predicates in Mandarin Chinese[END_REF][START_REF] Lin | Tense in Mandarin Chinese Sentences[END_REF], as lacking semantic and syntactic tense altogether [START_REF] Li | Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar[END_REF][START_REF] Klein | Aspect and assertion in Mandarin Chinese[END_REF], or as lacking syntactic tense, but not semantic tense [START_REF] Lin | Time in a language Without Tense: The case of Chinese[END_REF].

The source and limits of cross-linguistic variation in temporal systems has been a fundamental research topic in linguistic studies for decades. The issue we tackle here is not whether all natural languages have the capacity to convey how situations are located in time, which we take to be a given on any reasonable theory of language knowledge and use. The issue rather is understanding the mapping between time, a universal ontological concept, fundamental to human cognition and experience, and language, given that languages differ radically in the morphosyntactic means instantiated to express time. This raises the issue of the scope and limits of semantic and morphosyntactic variation in the domain of temporality. Take the two morphosyntactic means essentially used across languages to express temporal reference (cf. [START_REF] Klein | Time in language[END_REF][START_REF] Bittner | Future discourse in a tenseless language[END_REF]): tense and temporal adverbials. While there is no consensus in the literature as to whether all languages have tense, that all languages have temporal adverbials is not a matter of debate:

(2) Time adverbial universal a. "Some languages lack tense, i.e. do not have grammatical time reference, though probably all languages can lexicalise time reference, i.e. have temporal adverbials that locate situations in time." (Comrie 1976: 6) b. "[Temporal adverbials] are by far the richest class of temporal expressions, and in contrast to tense and aspect, they are found in all languages." (Klein 2009: 2) Languages analyzed as lacking at least overt tense are widespread and typologically very diversified. 1 This chapter seeks to answer the question of the universality of tense by 1 These include Blackfoot, an Algonquian language [START_REF] Ritter | The lack of tense as a syntactic category: evidence from Blackfoot and Halkomelem[END_REF], 2014[START_REF] Reis Silva | An Instantaneous Present Tense in Blackfoot[END_REF], Chinese, a Sino-Tibetan language [START_REF] Klein | Time in language[END_REF][START_REF] Sybesma | The Mandarin VP[END_REF], [START_REF] Smith | Temporal in Mandarin[END_REF][START_REF] Lin | Time in a language Without Tense: The case of Chinese[END_REF], 2012[START_REF] Sun | Temporal Construals of Bare Predicates in Mandarin Chinese[END_REF][START_REF] He | Time in Mandarin: The Fingerprints of Tense and Fininiteness[END_REF][START_REF] Lee | Genuinely tenseless: Encoding time in Cantonese[END_REF], Gitxsan, a Tsimshian language [START_REF] Jóhannsdóttir | Zero-marked Tense: The Case of Gitxsan[END_REF][START_REF] Aonuki | Relative pronominal tense: evidence from Gitksan, Japanese, and English[END_REF][START_REF] Matthewson | Future time reference and viewpoint aspect: Evidence from Gitksan[END_REF], Guaraní, a Tupi language [START_REF] Tonhauser | Temporal reference in Paraguayan Guaraní, a tenseless language[END_REF][START_REF] Thomas | Nominal tense and temporal implicatures: Evidence from Mbyá[END_REF][START_REF] Pancheva | Temporal reference in the absence of tense in Paraguayan Guaraní[END_REF], 2023), comparing a wide array of theoretically diverging analyses of typologically diverse so-called tenseless languages -that is, languages without overt morphological tense markers such as in (1) -seeking to understand what these analyses, however divergent, agree on.

Identifying whether so-called tenseless languages have/lack semantic and/or syntactic tense is a controversial and hotly debated issue that has, moreover, been gathering renewed interest in the literature (see the discussions in [START_REF] Matthewson | Future time reference and viewpoint aspect: Evidence from Gitksan[END_REF][START_REF] Pancheva | No tense: temporality in the grammar of Paraguayan Guarani[END_REF], Sun & Demirdache 2022, a.o.).

There are three intertwined issues at stake here. First, what are the constraints on the temporal interpretation of bare predicates across languages? Typically, for instance, the inherent aspectual class of a bare predicate is one factor constraining its temporal interpretation in out-of-the-blue contexts. This is why stative predicates such as those in (1) are only interpreted as holding at UT in Mandarin, or show a strong preference for a present interpretation in St'át'imcets. Secondly, how do we formally derive their temporal interpretation? Thirdly, is it necessary or more explanatory to posit covert tense in say (1a/b) to achieve a cross-linguistically valid theory of the temporal interpretation of tense(d/less) languages? Importantly, we break down the question of the universality of tense into two correlated albeit independent questions: is tense a universal semantic category -that is, are there arguments/diagnostics for positing covert lexical 2 tense even in the absence of overt morphological tense? Is tense a universal syntactic category -that is, is T(P) always projected in the syntax even in languages lacking overt morphological tense and independently of whether there are arguments for positing lexical semantic tense in a given language?

The paper is organized as follows. §2 is divided into two main subsections. §2.1 introduces background on tense, spelling out two alternative approaches to the syntax of tense, instantiating different approaches to the semantics of tense: pronominal vs. relational.

§2.2 then provides criteria for determining whether languages have syntactic and/or semantic tense, distinguishing three broad ways in which languages with no overt grammatical tense can be analyzed as tenseless. Languages can lack a syntactic Tense Phrase (TP) projection (syntactic tenselessness). Languages can lack in their lexicon items -be it pronounced or unpronounced-with the denotation of a tense (genuine/underlying semantic tenselessness).

Languages can lack pronounced lexical items that have the denotation of a tense (superficial/surface semantic tenselessness). This typology will yield a four-way classification of the analyses developed in the literature for so-called tenseless languages. §3 discusses analyses that have in common that they posit syntactic tense, distinguishing two subclasses: positing covert semantic as well as syntactic tense, thus preserving the universality of tense, ( §3.1) vs. positing covert syntactic tense but not semantic tense, thus preserving the universality of syntactic tense, but not that of semantic tense, ( §3.2). §4 discusses analyses that have in common that they posit no syntactic tense, distinguishing two Hausa of the Afro-Asiatic family [START_REF] Mucha | Temporal interpretation in Hausa[END_REF][START_REF] Bochnak | Variation in Tense and Aspect, and the Temporal Interpretation of Complement Clauses[END_REF], Inuit, an Eskimo-Aleut family [START_REF] Shaer | Towards the tenseless analysis of a tenseless language[END_REF][START_REF] Bittner | Future discourse in a tenseless language[END_REF], 2011), Mayan languages [START_REF] Bohnemeyer | The grammar of time reference in Yukatek Maya[END_REF][START_REF] Bohnemeyer | Temporal anaphora in a tenseless language[END_REF], Northern Paiute (Toosarvandani 2016), an Uto-Aztecan language, Salish languages including St'át'imcets [START_REF] Matthewson | An underspecified Tense in St'a t'imcets[END_REF][START_REF] Matthewson | Temporal semantics in a superficially tenseless language[END_REF], Skwxwú7mesh (Bar-el 2005) and Halkomelem [START_REF] Ritter | The lack of tense as a syntactic category: evidence from Blackfoot and Halkomelem[END_REF], 2014), Samoan [START_REF] Bochnak | Variation in Tense and Aspect, and the Temporal Interpretation of Complement Clauses[END_REF]), an Austronesian language, Tlingit (Cable 2017) of the Na-Dené language family, Vietnamese [START_REF] Bui | The Vietnamese perfect[END_REF], an Austroasiatic language, Zapotec (Toosarvandani 2021), an Oto-Manguean language, among many others. 2 The underlying assumption here is that a language L will have semantic tense if there is an entry in the lexicon of L for an item/items with the denotation of tense (cf. (13), §2.2). further subcategories: analyses which posit covert semantic tense but not syntactic tense ( §4.1), thus preserving the universality of semantic tense, but not that of syntactic tense, vs. analysis refuting (covert) semantic and syntactic tense and where tense is thus neither a semantic, nor a syntactic universal ( §4.2). §5 is devoted to constraints on future time reference in languages without overt grammatical tense since this question is at the heart of many of the core arguments put forth either for or against a tensed/tenseless analysis of these languages. We provide novel arguments for semantic tense in Mandarin and Cantonese based on (absolute) future time reference, and for a relational approach to the syntax of covert tense to capture the distribution of (absolute/relative) future time reference. §6 closes the paper by reconsidering the initial question -that of the universality of tense-in light of the arguments put forth in §5, concluding in favor of the universality of both syntactic and semantic tense, and correlating two putative tense universals.

What does it mean (not) to have tense?

Understanding what it means to lack overt tense presumes defining what it means to have tense, which is in and of itself a matter of long-standing debate.

Approaches to tense

We adopt here what we take to be the most widely accepted (and relatively consensual across both the formal and typological literature) stance: the neo-Reichenbachian approach to tense and aspect, as developed in [START_REF] Klein | Time in language[END_REF], where tense encodes temporal relations (precedence, subsequence, coincidence) between times, just like viewpoint aspect does also. Temporal interpretation involves three times: the evaluation-time (EvalT), the reference-time (RT) or topic-time (TopT) in Klein's terminology, and the event(uality)-time (ET). The ET is the time of the described eventuality (the time at which the described state/event holds/unfolds). The EvalT is the time relative to which a clause is evaluated, which, as we just saw with the discussion of (1), plays a critical role for evaluating the truth conditions of a sentence. In an independent/root clause, the EvalT by default corresponds to the UT, but it can also correspond to the matrix ET in subordinate contexts, or when embedded in attitude contexts, to the subjective now of the attitude holder. The ET and EvalT have been taken as sufficient to describe the three basic (non-compound) tenses: past indicates that the ET precedes the UT/EvalT, future that it follows the UT/EvalT, and present that it overlaps the latter. [START_REF] Reichenbach | Elements of Symbolic Logic[END_REF] introduces a third time: the reference time which provides a temporal perspective from which "the speaker invites his audience to consider the event" (Taylor 1977: 203). [START_REF] Klein | Time in language[END_REF] develops the notion of reference-time as the time about which the speaker makes a claim/an assertion -that is, the time talked about or TopT, a temporal parameter necessary even with the basic tense forms. Take for instance the simple past. If it were merely to encode that the eventuality was over by UT, then a sentence such as Eva's cat was dead would be saying something false since obviously Eva's cat is still dead at UT. In Klein's (2009: 46) own words: "When someone asserts Eva's cat was dead, then he asserts something about some time span in the past -the time talked about, the assertion time, or the topic time, as I shall say. This time can, but need not, be the time at which the situation obtains or happens. In Eva's cat was dead, the topic time is most likely a subinterval of the time of the situation, that is, the time at which the cat is dead." On Klein's neo-Reichenbachian approach, tense thus always encodes the relation between the UT/EvalT and the TopT -that is, conveys whether the UT/EvalT precedes the TopT (UT < TopT), follows (TopT < UT) or is simultaneous with the latter (UT ⊆ TopT). And it befalls to (viewpoint) aspect to relate in turn the TopT relative to the ET --that is, to convey whether the TopT precedes (TopT < ET), follows (ET < TopT) or is simultaneous with the ET (TopT ⊆ ET). Going back to Eva's cat was dead, the past tense on the copula thus tells us that the TopT precedes UT (TopT < UT). In the absence of overt aspectual marking, the past TopT is understood as simultaneous with the ET (TopT ⊆ ET).

Before turning to more formal analyses, let's illustrate Klein's proposal with the English sentence in (3). The past tense on the copula was orders the EvalT after the the TopT, thus indicating that the time about which the speaker is making a claim (TopT) is a time in the past of the EvalT (here UT since we are dealing with an independent clause), as depicted with the temporal schema in (4). Progressive aspect on the main verb (ing) in turn orders the TopT within the ET, thus, indicating that the described event is ongoing at the TopT.

(3) Cleo was standing next to Kiya.

(4) -----[ ET ///////STAND///[ TopT ]//////// ET ]---UT------> Although the assumption that the meaning of tenses involves relations between times is relatively consensual, approaches differ with respect to the formal implementation of this assumption. We contrast below two major approaches to the semantics of tense: pronominal vs. relational. We pay very close attention to the syntax/semantics mapping, seeking to explicate the mapping and the issues that different approaches to the semantics of tenseand, thus, of tenselesssness -raise in and for the syntax.

Pronominal tense

The pronominal analysis which traces back to the work of [START_REF] Partee | Some structural analogies between tenses and pronouns in english[END_REF], [START_REF] Enç | Towards a Referential Analysis of Temporal Expressions[END_REF] and [START_REF] Kratzer | More Structural Analogies Between Pronouns and Tenses[END_REF] a.o. views tenses as the temporal analogues of pronouns -that is, as pronouns receiving time intervals (of type i) as their semantic value, on a par with regular pronouns receiving persons or objects (of type e) as their value. And just like individualdenoting pronouns, time-denoting pronouns can have indexical, anaphoric or bound variable construals. [START_REF] Heim | Comments on Abusch's Theory of In H. Kamp[END_REF] and [START_REF] Kratzer | More Structural Analogies Between Pronouns and Tenses[END_REF] push the analogy further by arguing that, just like phi-features (i.e. [MALE]/[FEMALE]) contribute presuppositions constraining the possible choice of referents for pronouns, [PAST]/[PRES] are temporal features contributing presuppositions constraining the choice of possible referents for time-variables. The feature [PRES] on a time-variable thus contributes a presupposition restricting its denotation to the EvalT (UT in an independent clause), while [PAST] restricts its denotation to times anterior to the EvalT.

The syntax of pronominal tense is illustrated below. We see the proposal that tenses are the temporal analogue of pronouns is captured syntactically by analyzing the tense morpheme of a given sentence (past tense for the sentence in (3)) as a temporal pronoun hosted by the functional head T° in the syntactic representation associated with the sentence (given in (5) for the sentence in (3) above). The lexical entries for past and progressive are given in (6). 5 Past tense in (6a) restricts the denotation of the pronoun under T° to times preceding the EvalT. Importantly, T° here corresponds to Klein's TopT: it denotes a contextually salient past time whose denotation is related to the ET by Asp°. As shown with the derivation in (7), progressive (PROG) requires the TopT, g(1), to be contained within or coincide with the ET of Cleo's standing next to Kiya.

[t ⊆ t' & p(t')=1] b. !PAST 1 " g,c = g(1); defined only if g(1) < t c . (7) a. !VP" g,c = λt. STAND NEXT TO KIYA (Cleo)(t)=1 b. !AspP" g,c = λt.∃t'[t ⊆ t' & STAND NEXT TO KIYA (Cleo)(t')=1] c. !TP" g,c = 1 iff ∃t'[g(1) ⊆ t' & STAND NEXT TO KIYA (Cleo)(t')=1],
Summarizing in [START_REF] Cable | Semantics of Tense and Aspect Across Languages -Proseminar on Semantic Theory[END_REF] words, the idea underlying the pronominal approach to the syntax of tense is that "Tense ([T° in (5)]) denotes the Topic Time of the sentence".

Relational tense

We now turn to an alternative view where tenses do not themselves denote time intervals, but rather serve to relate two times. As [START_REF] Ogihara | The Interpretation of Tense: "I Didn't Turn Off the Stove[END_REF] point out, as an argument against the pronominal approach, unlike the gender presuppositions of pronouns, the presuppositions contributed by the temporal features associated with tense morphemes are inherently relational and context sensitive:

"The anteriority meaning associated with past tense sentences is inherently relational in that we regard some time as a past time only with regard to some other time, which we might call an evaluation time. The default 'evaluation time' is of course the utterance time of the sentence under consideration." (Ogihara & Kusumoto 2020: 3).

On the relational approach to tense [START_REF] Von Stechow | On the Proper Treatment of Tense[END_REF][START_REF] Stowell | What do the present and past tenses mean[END_REF][START_REF] Ogihara | Tense Attitudes and Scope[END_REF], Demirdache & Uribe-Etxebarria 1997 a.o.), tenses serve to order syntactically represented time-denoting arguments and, as such, are akin to dyadic predicates of spatio-temporal ordering (i.e. after/within/before). 6 We present here a specific implementation of the syntax of relational tense, developed in [START_REF] Demirdache | Predication times in St'àt'imcets Salish[END_REF]Uribe-Etxebarria (1997, 2014 andreferences therein;henceforth D&UE), which incorporates insights of both referential and relational theories of tense, building on the pioneering proposals of [START_REF] Stowell | The Phrase Structure of Tense[END_REF] and [START_REF] Zagona | Times as Temporal Argument Structure[END_REF] to syntactically break down tense into its semantic components. D&UE's approach shares with relational theories the core assumption that tenses have a relational meaning, moreover extending this assumption to aspect, and shares with referential approaches the assumption that the semantics of tense involves nominal-like expressions referring to times, projected in the syntax as time-denoting DPs (ZeitPs, for [START_REF] Stowell | The Syntactic Expression of Tense[END_REF]), again extending this approach to aspect. Assuming with [START_REF] Klein | Time in language[END_REF] that tense does not directly order the ET relative to the EvalT, this relation being mediated by Aspect, D&UE analyze both tense and aspect in relational terms -that is, as (prepositional like) predicates with a spatiotemporal meaning ordering times. D&UE share with the abovementioned relational approaches, the assumption that the two times related by tense (EvalT/TopT in e.g. von [START_REF] Von Stechow | Events, Times and Worlds -An LF Architecture[END_REF], or EvalT/ET in e.g. [START_REF] Ogihara | The Interpretation of Tense: "I Didn't Turn Off the Stove[END_REF] who set aside the RT and the role of aspect in their discussion) are syntactically represented, extending it to AspP: the times related by aspect, just like those related by tense, are syntactically represented. This yields the temporal phrase structure in (8) for the sentence in (3), where the three temporal parameters involved in the temporal calculus of sentences are syntactically projected. The highest time argument (t c in ( 8)) projected in [Spec, TP] corresponds to the EvalT. Moving down the tree, the time argument projected in [Spec, AspP] (t 2 ) corresponds to the TopT, while the lowest time argument (t 1 projected in the (highest) specifier of VP) corresponds to the ET.

(9) a. !PROG" g,c = λp <i,t> .λt.∃t'[t ⊆ t' & p(t')=1] b. !PAST" g,c = λp <i,t> .λt.∃t' [t' < t & p(t')=1] c. !t 1 " g,c = g(1); !t 2 " g,c = g(2); !t c " g,c = t 0 (The time of context t c is the utterance time t 0 in matrix clauses ) (10) a. !VP" g,c = λt. STAND NEXT TO KIYA (Cleo)(t)=1 b. !Asp'" g,c = λt.∃t'[t ⊆ t' & STAND NEXT TO KIYA (Cleo)(t')=1] c. !T'" g,c = λt.∃t' ∃t"[t' ≤ t & t' ⊆ t" & STAND NEXT TO KIYA (Cleo)(t")=1] d. ! TP" g,c = 1 iff ∃t' ∃t"[t' ≤ t0 & t' ⊆ t" & STAND NEXT TO KIYA (Cleo)(t")=1]; 0 otherwise
Comparing the phrase structure in (8) with that in (5) for pronominal tense, we see that both phrase markers share in common the assumption that the Tense head takes as sister an aspect projection (AspP) denoting a property of times, <i,t>. Importantly, however, in (8), T° does not itself denote the TopT. Rather, T° takes AspP, a predicate of times to yield a new predicate of time (type <it, it>), and Asp° in turn does exactly the same, it takes a predicate of times (the VP Cleo stand next to Kiya denoting the set of intervals corresponding to runningtimes of events of Cleo's standing (10a)) to yield another predicate of times. As we see with the denotations in (9a-b) for the two temporal heads in ( 8), together with the derivation in (10) of the temporal meaning of (3), Tense (here PAST) and Aspect (here PROG) both relate two time variables by imposing ordering constraints on the latter: Progressive Asp° requires the TopT (t 2 ) to be contained within/coincide with the ET (t 1 ), while Past T° requires the EvalT(t c ) to fall after the TopT (t 2 ).

Summarizing. D&UE's relational approach to both tense and aspect nicely captures Klein's seminal proposal that aspect relates the ET (projected in [Spec, VP]) to the TopT (projected in [Spec, AspP]), which in turn tense relates to the EvalT (projected in [Spec, TP]).

Importantly, this proposal differs in one core respect from other, be it pronominal or relational, approaches in assuming that time arguments, just like regular individual denoting arguments, are maximal projections projected in true argument positions, the specifier positions of the relevant heads (T°, Asp°, V°). In contrast, on the pronominal approach (5), just like on the relational approaches in e.g. [START_REF] Ogihara | The Interpretation of Tense: "I Didn't Turn Off the Stove[END_REF] or von [START_REF] Von Stechow | On the Proper Treatment of Tense[END_REF], time denoting arguments are heads projected either under T° (8) or adjoined to T° (and Asp° in von Stechow & Beck 2015), as illustrated in (11) from Ogihara & Kusumoto (2020: 27), where t 0 stands for UT and t 1 for ET. The assumption that time-denoting arguments occupy regular argument (XP) positions (which we take to be the default assumption) has interesting consequences for adverbial modification, as we shall see in §5.2.

(11

) TP ru ru VP ru t 1 ru PAST R t 0 Mary V' g arrive

What does it mean not to have tense?

Having outlined two major approaches to the semantics and syntax of tense, we can now tackle the question of what it means not to have (overt morphological) tense. We break this question into two sub-questions: what does it mean to lack (overt morphological) semantic tense? What does it mean to lack (overt morphological) syntactic tense?

To understand the issues at stake let's take the St'át'imcets sentence in (12a) from [START_REF] Matthewson | Temporal semantics in a superficially tenseless language[END_REF], comparing it with its English correspondent in (12b).

PAST

As stated in the lexical entries given for past tense, be it in (5a) under the pronominal approach, or (8a) under a relational approach, the past tense morpheme realized as-ed in English (12b) imposes constraints on the denotation of the TopT by requiring the latter to be a time that falls in the past of the EvalT (UT in the cases at hand). The question at stake is whether the lexicon of St'át'imcets lacks such a morpheme altogether. Alternatively, it could well be that St'át'imcets has such a morpheme, but differs from English only in that the tense morpheme lacks a phonological matrix (remains unpronounced).

We thus take a language to lack semantic tense if it has no grammatical/functional item listed in its lexicon whose denotation imposes a restriction on the relation of the EvalT to the TopT (under a neo-Reichenbachian approach, as assumed here), or of the EvalT directly to the ET (in systems with only two times). This is stated in (13). We take membership in a closed class of items to be the defining property distinguishing functional from lexical categories. 9 (13) Semantic tenselessness A given language L lacks semantic tense if there is no functional item in the lexicon of L whose meaning (at least in part) imposes a restriction on the relation of the EvalT relative to the TopT (alternatively the event(uality) time). Turning now to the criteria for lacking syntactic tense.

(14) Syntactic tenselessness a. A given language L lacks syntactic tense if independent/root clauses in L lack a T(P) projection.

b. Independent/root clauses lack a T(P) projection if they lack a functional morpheme obligatorily generated under T° and projecting TP -be it a bound morpheme or not, phonologically overt or not.

Importantly, (14a) ensures that lack of tense in embedded contexts alone does not disqualify L from counting as having tense. By the same token, the existence of infinitival clauses, whether or not the latter are analyzed as projecting a TP or less than a TP (i.e. AspP, VP), does not disqualify say English from counting as tensed. The criterion in (14b) furthermore captures the traditional idea that tense is a so-called 'grammatical category of the verb', since TP is an extended functional projection of the verb (or more precisely of the Predicate Phrase, whether the main predicate of the clause is VP, AdjP or NP) 10 . This criterion, however, does not discriminate between bound morphemes (e.g. inflectional) and periphrastic/morphologically independent ones -thus allowing both inflectional items and markers realized as separate words/particles standing on their own, to count as tense markers, while excluding lexical phrasal categories such as temporal adverbials. Now although morphological overtness is not a relevant criterion for determining whether L is tensed, obligatoriness is. The assumption here is that tense can be phonologically null cross-linguistically: this can be the case in languages identified as having no overt tense, just as it holds in languages where covert tense often coexists alongside overt tense (thus many tensed languages such as English have a spelled-out past tense, but an unmarked form for the present). Phonological realization is thus a parameter of variation across/within languages. Obligatoriness on the other hand is a criterion that must be satisfied: L will be classified as having tense -whether its tense morphemes receive a dedicated phonological realization or not-if such morphemes are necessary to account for the (constraints on the) temporal interpretation of (at least) independent/root clauses 11 .

The challenge then is to find strong arguments, both empirical and theoretical, for positing phonological null tenses to reach descriptive and explanatory adequacy since. This is 10 The issue of whether Tense is a sentential category restricted to extended projections of the VP/main predicate of the clause, or also a nominal category that can be part of the extended projection of NPs (carrying information relevant either only for the NP itself, or also for the clause as a whole) is a matter of lively and renewed debate (see Tonhauser 2008[START_REF] Thomas | Nominal tense and temporal implicatures: Evidence from Mbyá[END_REF], and references therein). 11 There are a number of languages discussed in the literature that do not lack tense altogether, but have so-called optional tense in independent root clauses -that is, that have a morpheme identified as a past tense morpheme but which is not obligatory in matrix clauses. Such languages include Mbyá Guaraní [START_REF] Thomas | Nominal tense and temporal implicatures: Evidence from Mbyá[END_REF], Washo [START_REF] Bochnak | Past time reference in a language with optional tense[END_REF], Medumba [START_REF] Mucha | Past interpretation and graded tense in Medumba[END_REF], Tlingit [START_REF] Cable | The Implicatures of Optional Past Tense in Tlingit and its Implications for 'Discontinuous Past[END_REF], or Atayal and Javanese [START_REF] Chen | The 'experiential' as an existential past Evidence from Javanese and Atayal[END_REF]. This is why criterion (14a) is not stated more strongly, as requiring that all independent/root clauses in L lack a T(P) projection. all the more important given that by the principle of Occam's razor, parsimonious accounts positing less principles and entities are to be preferred.

Positing syntactic tense

The above criteria yield a four-way classification of the analyses developed for so-called tenseless languages, divided up below into two broad classes according to whether or not they posit syntactic tense. Analyses positing both covert semantic and syntactic tense ( §3.1) preserve the universality of tense since languages with no overt grammatical tense are only tenseless on the surface. Analyses positing covert syntactic -but not semantic-tense ( §3.2) preserve the universality of syntactic tense, but not that of semantic tense.

Covert semantic and syntactic tense

We present below two alternative instantiations of this line of analysis, together with three empirical and theoretical arguments supporting it.

Covert tense agreement hypothesis

There is a longstanding tradition in the literature where tense marking is taken to merely signal agreement with a temporal adverb. To understand why, take (15), where the temporal adverb locates the TopT in 1998/on the day preceding UT. The past tense inflection on the verb though obligatory in English is semantically superfluous, since the adverb suffices to determine the temporal interpretation of the clause (locate the eventuality-time of the main predicate).

(15) She lived in Vancouver in 1998/yesterday. This has led authors both in the semantic (e.g. [START_REF] Vlach | Temporal adverbials, tenses and the perfect[END_REF][START_REF] Richards | Tense, Aspect and Time Adverbials: Part I[END_REF][START_REF] Cresswell | Logics and Languages[END_REF]) and the syntactic (e.g. [START_REF] Hornstein | As Time Goes By: Tense and Universal Grammar[END_REF]) literature to assume that the TopT is always introduced by means of a temporal adverbial, overtly realized as in (15), or implicit (provided by the discourse context). For Vlach, temporal semantics reduces to the semantics of temporal adverbials and 'tense is a sort of agreement phenomena' contributing nothing to event representations (only helping to determine which temporal adverbial is to be understood).

This approach allows for languages with vs. without overt grammatical tense: the former would have morphologically overt tense agreement, the latter morphologically null/zero tense agreement. Importantly however, on such a proposal, tense counts as universal since all languages have time adverbs (cf. the tense universal in ( 2)). This is the position advocated by [START_REF] Sybesma | Whether we Tense-agree overtly or not[END_REF]. Mandarin Chinese is a tenseless language on the surface only. Just like Dutch, an overtly tensed language, it has a syntactic T(P) node hosting past/present tense morphemes which are mere agreement morphemes with a time adverbial. The difference is "that in Dutch the agreement features have to be spelled out at PF whereas in Mandarin they do not" (Sybesma 2007: 585).

Sybesma's proposal explains why a past time adverb is required to fix the temporal reference of a Dutch clause in the past. Past tense in Dutch is a mere agreement marker, enforced by the occurrence in (16b) of the past time adverbial. Uttered in isolation, (16a) is odd because the tense agreement features under T° cannot be checked by an appropriate time adverb provided either in the sentence or by previous discourse context. Now, Mandarin shows exactly the same pattern. Sentences with bare stative predicates uttered out-of-the-blue only allow a present interpretation (17a). To license a past reading, a past time adverb is required (17b). Sybesma thus concludes that Mandarin also has a past tense -that is, a covert tense agreement morpheme requiring as input to the agreement process a past time adverb (17b). ( 16 The lexical entry in (19b) restricts the denotation of the pronoun under T° to NF-times (that is, times that do not fall after the EvalT). Recall (from the discussion in §2.1.1) that T° on a pronominal analysis corresponds to the TopT: it denotes a contextually salient NF-time whose denotation is related to the ET by Asp°: Perfective (PFV) in (19a) requires the running time (τ(e)) of Mary's walking to be contained within (or equal to) the TopT (that is, g(1)). [START_REF] Matthewson | Temporal semantics in a superficially tenseless language[END_REF] gives two core arguments for this hypothesis. First, sentences with a bare eventive predicate in St'át'imcets (20a) can receive either past or present, but not future readings. Future time reference requires a future marker -even with a future time adverb (20b). [START_REF] Sun | Temporal Construals of Bare Predicates in Mandarin Chinese[END_REF] shows that this argument carries over to Mandarin (21).

This asymmetry in the expression of future vs. past and present time reference follows automatically on the proposal that St'át'imcets and Mandarin have a covert NF-tense restricting the TopT to past or present times -that is, times preceding or coinciding with the EvalT (TopT ≤ EvlT). ( 20 Lulu MOD very frustrated 'Tomorrow, Lulu will be very frustrated.' (Sun 2014: 177) The second argument provided to support the NF-tense hypothesis comes from sentences such as ( 22) where the one and only bare predicate of the clause (and, by hypothesis, the one and only syntactic tense (TP) projection) is used to describe simultaneously a past and a present event. This is also, yet again, the case in Mandarin (23). Uttered in 2022, (23) conveys that Gǔlóng, a novelist who died in 1985, used to smoke, and Mòyán, a writer alive at UT, is a smoker. The smoking habits of these two individuals hold of different past and present times. ( 22)/(23) can only be translated to English as a conjunction of two clauses, because the temporal information encoded in ( 22)/(23) cannot be conveyed with a single tense in English. The truth conditions of ( 22)/(23) thus require a tense simultaneously selecting for both past and present intervals, as is precisely the case with NF-tense. 23) is taken from Sun (2014: 205). We provide the paradigm in ( 24) with undeniably stage-level predicates (e.g. 'feel ill', 'have a headache') to refute subsequent claims in the literature [START_REF] He | Time in Mandarin: The Fingerprints of Tense and Fininiteness[END_REF][START_REF] Cheng | All structures great and small: On copular sentences with shì in Mandarin[END_REF][START_REF] Cheng | On the tenselessness of Individual Level Predicate sentences[END_REF], according to which only individual level predicates can be used to describe simultaneously past and present eventualities when predicated of a coordinated or plural subject.

Sun concludes that Mandarin has NF-tense, just like St'át'imcets, while moreover providing a further original argument from semantic compositionality for syntactically projecting tense in Mandarin, to which we now turn.

Compositional arguments for syntactic tense

Sun's (2014) argument for covert tense holds irrespectively of the meaning assigned to it: past/present, semantically underspecified, or non-future. Sun shows that while Mandarin root clauses with bare states are well-formed and allow stative readings (25), bare eventive predicates do not allow episodic readings, unless aspect is present (26), an observation that traces back to at least [START_REF] Kǒng | Yǐngxiǎng hànyǔ jùzi zìzú de yǔyán xíngshì [Linguistic forms that affect sentence completeness in Chinese[END_REF], [START_REF] Smith | Temporal in Mandarin[END_REF] and [START_REF] Lin | Time in a language Without Tense: The case of Chinese[END_REF].

(25) Yīchén xǐhuān lǚxíng.

Yichen like travel 'Yichen likes traveling.

(26) Zuótiān/Jīntiān Mòyán *(zài) dú "Sān-Guó Yǎnyì". yesterday/today Moyan PROG read three-kingdom romance 'Moyan was/is reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms (yesterday/today).' (Adapted from Sun 2014: 64-65) We see that (26), unlike (25), is ungrammatical be it on past or present construal without progressive aspect (and even with a past/present time adverbial). This contrast follows from the assumption that stative and eventive predicates have different semantic types12 [START_REF] Katz | Stativity, Genericity and Temporal Reference[END_REF][START_REF] Katz | Event arguments, adverb selection and the Stative Adverb Gap[END_REF]. Stative predicates being properties of times (type <i,t>), true or false of a time interval, can combine directly with a time, while eventive predicates, being properties of events (type <v,t>), cannot, requiring the mediation of aspect, which serves to map properties of events to properties of times (type <<v,t>, <i,t>>) (Kratzer 1998: 107). Aspect is thus obligatory in eventive root clauses with episodic readings (26), but not in stative root clauses (25). On this proposal, sentences with eventive bare predicates cannot describe episodic events because they are simply due to type mismatch: the eventive VP being of type <v,t> cannot combine with its sister node T°, the Tense head, the latter being of type i, as shown in (27a). In contrast, sentences with stative bare predicates are well-formed and interpretable, because states are properties of intervals (type <i,t>) that can combine directly with a sister Tense head. Likewise, sentences with an eventive aspectually marked VP are well-formed on episodic readings, since in this case T° first combines with AspP, a property of times, as shown in (27b). Importantly, this account of the contrast between stative vs. eventive predicates rests on the assumption of a Tense head projected in the syntax in Mandarin, triggering the type mismatch in (27a), ruling out (26) when T° combines with an eventive VP without aspect. 13 Summarizing. Assuming a pronominal approach, the syntax of a covertly tensed language involves the projection of TP, where the T° node itself denotes the TopT. NF-tense in St'át'imcets (19a) or Mandarin (27b), just like past tense in English (5), contributes a presupposition constraining the choice of possible referents for T°. It differs, however, from the tense morpheme hosted by T° in an overtly tensed language (e.g. English) only in that it has no morphological exponent. 14 13 Mandarin bare eventive predicates are felicitous in sentences receiving a generic/habitual interpretation. On Sun's (2014) analysis, the latter contain an underspecified Q(uantificational) operator, matching properties of events to properties of times. 14 The reader should not hastily conclude that NF-tense has no morphological exponent across languages. Phonologically overt NF-tense is attested in e.g. Karitiana (i), alongside future tense (ii), from Ferreira & Muller (2019: 1055), see also [START_REF] Storto | Aspects of a Karitiana Grammar[END_REF][START_REF] Storto | Subordination in Karitiana[END_REF].

(i) Sara ∅-na-aka-t akan i-aka-t koot/ka'abm. Sara 3-DECL-COP-NFUT village NMLZ-COP-ABS today/yesterday 'Sara is/was in the village today/yesterday. (ii) Sara ∅-na-aka-j akan i-aka-t dibm. Sara 3-DECL-COP-FUT village NMLZ-COP-ABS tomorrow 'Sara will be in the village tomorrow.'

Syntactic tense without semantic tense

Having reviewed the analyses of tenslessness positing both syntactic and semantic (covert) tense, we now turn to a second line of analysis having in common with the previous one that it posits a syntactic T(ense) Projection hosting a covert temporal pronoun, as shown in (28), from [START_REF] Bochnak | Variation in Tense and Aspect, and the Temporal Interpretation of Complement Clauses[END_REF]. The time variable hosted by T° corresponds to the TopT. Crucially, it has no feature lexically restricting its possible values. It thus fails to qualify as semantic tense by the criterion in (13), §2.2, since its meaning does not impose a restriction on the relation of the TopT relative to the EvalT. ( 28 Note that the pronominal approach is the most commonly adopted analysis of languages argued to have covert syntactic tense -whether these languages are taken to lack semantic tense, as is the case under the analysis in (28), or to have covert semantic tense ( §3.1). Indeed, the only difference between these two subclasses of languages lies in the features content of T°: in both ( 19) and ( 28), the time variable hosted by T° receives its value from the context, though in (28), unlike in ( 19), T° has no features restricting its denotation.

Recapitulating: languages with covert syntactic tense

The first class of analyses discussed in §3.1 posits syntactic tense (T(P) is projected in at least independent/matrix clauses) and semantic tense (T° hosts a phonologically unpronounced TopT argument with lexical semantic tense features imposing restrictions on its temporal reference). Such analyses thus preserve the universality of both syntactic and semantic tense. The only parameter of crosslinguistic variation at stake is whether tense is phonologically overt or not: if we do not see tense overtly, it is merely because lexical tense lacks phonological content. The second class of analyses ( §3.2) also posits covert syntactic tense, thus also preserving the universality of syntactic -but crucially not semantic-tense: time 15 This line of analysis traces back to [START_REF] Matthewson | An underspecified Tense in St'a t'imcets[END_REF] who initially argued for covert syntactic tense in St'át'imcets without any lexical semantic restrictions, before revising her analysis in favor of the covert NF-tense hypothesis which straightforwardly accounts for the absence of future readings of bare sentences (20). It has been defended for by [START_REF] Thomas | Temporal implicatures[END_REF] for Mbyá Guaraní, [START_REF] Mucha | Temporal interpretation in Hausa[END_REF] for Hausa, [START_REF] Bochnak | Past time reference in a language with optional tense[END_REF] for Washo, [START_REF] Mucha | Past interpretation and graded tense in Medumba[END_REF] for Medumba, [START_REF] Bochnak | Variation in Tense and Aspect, and the Temporal Interpretation of Complement Clauses[END_REF] for Samoan, a.o. 16 Importantly, the covert TopT merged under T° in ( 28) should be able to freely refer to future (alongside present/past) times in independent clauses since its reference is unconstrained. This prediction is too strong as the authors themselves acknowledge. See [START_REF] Sun | Futurity in (superficially) tenseless languages: evidence for (Non-)Future tense in Mandarin / Cantonese[END_REF] for discussion. variables are universal semantic primitives, tense itself (understood as a feature, a presupposition restricting the denotation of the TopT variable) is not.

Positing syntactic tenselessness

We now turn to syntactically tenseless analyses, starting with analyses which preserve the universality of semantic tense, but not of syntactic tense ( §4.1). We then turn to analyses which refute both (covert) semantic and syntactic tense and for which tense is thus neither a semantic, nor a syntactic universal ( §4.2). [START_REF] Lin | Time in a language Without Tense: The case of Chinese[END_REF] develops an influential syntactically tenseless treatment of Mandarin based roughly on the following assumptions.

Semantic tense without syntactic tense

i. There is no TP projection in Mandarin. See [START_REF] Lin | A Tenseless Analysis of Mandarin Chinese Revisited: A Response Sybesma 2007[END_REF] for syntactic arguments supporting this claim and [START_REF] Law | Syntactic Tense from a Comparative Syntax Perspective[END_REF] for counter-arguments. The temporal construals of sentences with bare predicates (without aspect or temporal adverbials) follows from the interaction of aktionsart/lexical aspect together with pragmatic reasoning (cf. [START_REF] Bohnemeyer | Event realization and default aspect[END_REF] Default Viewpoint Aspect Hypothesis). 17

ii. Tense and aspect bundling. Lin assumes that the Mandarin aspectual markers guo and le encode in their meaning the relation between the TopT and the EvalT. On the denotation given for guo below, which incorporates the semantics of past tense by requiring the TopT (t Top ) to precede the EvalT (t 0 ), guo is not a purely aspectual head, but rather a morpheme combining past tense and perfective aspect. On this account, Mandarin is not a semantically tenseless language, as it does not meet the criterion in (5) for semantic tenselessness since it counts in its lexicon morphemes whose meaning encodes in part the relation between the EvalT and the TopT. Mandarin, however, is a syntactically tenseless language since it lacks TP altogether.

This approach to languages without overt tense thus preserves the universality of semantic tense by encoding tense semantics into the meaning of viewpoint aspect morphemes, but not the universality of syntactic tense.

Neither syntactic, nor semantic tense

We now turn to approaches refuting not only syntactic tense (there is no Tense/TP node in the syntax), but also semantic tense (there is no functional item in the lexicon whose meaning encodes the relation between the TopT and the EvalT), as universal primitives. 19 In most part, 17 For a critical evaluation of this hypothesis and discussion of the shortcomings in its predictions for Mandarin, see [START_REF] Sun | Temporal Construals of Bare Predicates in Mandarin Chinese[END_REF], [START_REF] Lin | Tense in Mandarin Chinese Sentences[END_REF], [START_REF] Sybesma | Tense[END_REF], [START_REF] He | Time in Mandarin: The Fingerprints of Tense and Fininiteness[END_REF] and references therein. 18 'IStage' stands for 'inner stage'. [START_REF]On P&Z's tenseless[END_REF] says that guo requires that an inner stage of a P-event be included within the TopT, itself constrained to precede the ET. 19 Here again, we cannot do justice to the diversity of analyses advocating semantic and syntactic tenselessness, merely referring the reader to [START_REF] Shaer | Towards the tenseless analysis of a tenseless language[END_REF], [START_REF] Lin | Temporal Reference in Chinese[END_REF][START_REF] Lin | Time in a language Without Tense: The case of Chinese[END_REF], Ritter & Wiltscko these analyses take the temporal reference of bare sentences to be recoverable via the interaction of the following parameters: i. Aktionsart (whether the main predicate is stative or eventive and if so, telic or atelic, along the lines of [START_REF] Bohnemeyer | Event realization and default aspect[END_REF]);

ii. Grammatical aspect (perfective/imperfective viewpoint) which, as we shall see below, is itself built directly into the meaning of the verb itself, or contributed by the meaning of phonologically silent morphemes heading AspP in the syntax;

iii. Mechanisms of temporal anaphora and pragmatic reasoning (see e.g. [START_REF] Bittner | Future discourse in a tenseless language[END_REF][START_REF] Bittner | Aspectual universals of temporal anaphora[END_REF] theory of aspect-based temporal anaphora, [START_REF] Bohnemeyer | The grammar of time reference in Yukatek Maya[END_REF][START_REF] Bohnemeyer | Temporal anaphora in a tenseless language[END_REF] theory of TopT resolution, or [START_REF] Smith | Temporal in Mandarin[END_REF] and [START_REF] Smith | Reference time without tense[END_REF] who derive the deictic temporal interpretation of bare sentences from the telicity of the predicate and invariant pragmatic principles).

We present three alternative views of syntactic and semantic tenselessness in Tupí-Guaraní languages, dividing these approaches into two broad subclasses, depending on whether the analysis relies solely on a time variable corresponding to the TopT, or solely on a time variable corresponding to the EvalT.

Topic-time only

We start with analyses relying on time variables corresponding to the TopT -but crucially not syntactically represented-to compute the temporal reference of sentences.

No (topic-)time argument in the syntax or the lexicon

Tonhauser (2011) develops a highly influential tenseless analysis of Paraguayan Guaraní, without any time variable represented syntactically. Bare sentences thus have no temporal argument: rather the RT (=TopT) variable -corresponding to t' in (30)-is encoded into the meaning of the verb itself, as shown below with "the sample lexical entry for a-jahu (A1SGbathe)" from Tonhauser (2011: 288):

(30) λwλt'λt [(AT (t', bathe'(sp, w, t))] (Im)Perfective viewpoint aspect is directly built into the meaning of the verb in (30) via the relation AT which constrains t' to overlap the verb's ET argument. 20 Consequently, in the absence of aspectual, mood, or mode markers, bare sentences are bare VPs denoting predicates of times (<i,t>). A special pragmatic rule is then required to apply to convert (30) into (31), by existentially binding the ET (t in (30)/(31)) and identifying t' as the reference time/TopT of the utterance (t rt in ( 31)). The matrix rule in (31) thus ensures that the property of times denoted by a root clause in Guaraní ( 30) is predicated of a contextually salient interval to yield a truth-value and, consequently, that root clauses in Guaraní denote truthvalues just as in English, not properties of times.

(31) Final translation of the matrix clause a-jahu: (2004,2014), [START_REF] Smith | Temporal in Mandarin[END_REF], [START_REF] Bittner | Future discourse in a tenseless language[END_REF][START_REF] Bittner | Time and modality without tenses or modals[END_REF], [START_REF] Bohnemeyer | Temporal anaphora in a tenseless language[END_REF], among many others. 20 The relation AT allows the temporal overlap relation between the topic (t) and eventuality (t') times to be compatible with either stative or habitual (t О t'), progressive (t ⊂ t'), or perfective (t' ⊆ t) viewpoints, depending on the lexical aspect of the verb and context. ∃t(AT(t rt , bathe'(sp, w, (Tonhauser 2011: 288) The TopT is a temporal anaphor that must be pragmatically identified with an antecedent in the discourse. Since there is no (covert) tense in Guaraní (and in the absence of any temporal adverbial), the antecedent of the TopT can in principle be any contextually given past, present or future time. This proposal, however, overgenerates: there are restrictions on future time reference in Guaraní, just as there were in the other putatively tenseless languages discussed previously ( §3.1.2), since bare sentences can describe past and present eventualities, but not future ones. Tonhauser takes this restriction to follow from the generalization that future time reference in Guaraní is always achieved by locating the ET in the future of a present TopT (in other words, the TopT never ranges over future times in Guaraní). As a consequence, "absolute future times, in contrast to past and present ones, are not contextually available in Guaraní" (Tonhauser 2011: 283) to serve as accessible antecedents for the TopT. This begs the question, however, of what in this system derives the empirical generalization that Guaraní is "a language where temporal reference is contextually restricted to non-future times…" (Tonhauser 2011: 285) in the first place. We take up the issue of future TopTs in §5, providing arguments for absolute future time reference in Chinese.

Topic-time as a temporal adverbial in the syntax

We now turn to an interesting alternative put forth by [START_REF] Thomas | Nominal tense and temporal implicatures: Evidence from Mbyá[END_REF] for Mbyá (Guaraní). In line with Tonhauser, Mbyá is analyzed as syntactically and semantically tenseless in the sense of the diagnostics given in ( 13)-( 14): no TP projection, no functional item in the lexicon encoding restrictions on the relation to the EvalT.

Thomas' analysis differs, however, not only from Tonhauser's tenseless analysis of Guaraní, but from all analyses positing a TopT variable, since the TopT is not a time variable but a covert temporal adverb merged in the highest specifier position of the extended projection of the VP. The TopT adverbial denotes a contextually salient time saturating the time argument position of the predicate that it combines with in matrix clauses. Importantly, the reference of this temporal adverbial is not unrestricted, since it can only denote non-future times, as stated in the lexical entry in (32a).

(32) Reference time adverb (Thomas 2014: 371) a. !RT" c,w is defined only if c makes available an interval t rt such that ¬(t rt > t c ). If defined, !RT" c,w = t rt .

b. … "RT is not a functional tense head, but rather a temporal adverbial that is realized in the specifier of the highest phrase in the extended projection of the verb. Since RT is not a functional head, BVCs ([Bare Verb Clauses]) are syntactically tenseless."

As Thomas (2014: 372) points out, the obligatory use of a TopT adverb in matrix clauses must be stipulated, or alternatively could be seen as "a reflection of the act of assertion".

In sum, [START_REF] Tonhauser | Nominal Tense? The meaning of Guaraní nominal temporal markers[END_REF] and [START_REF] Thomas | Nominal tense and temporal implicatures: Evidence from Mbyá[END_REF] converge on the view that Guaraní matrix VPs always denote properties of times predicated of a contextually salient TopT, but on Thomas' proposal, the TopT is syntactically instantiated (albeit not as Tense head), and encodes in its meaning the same restrictions as does the NF-tense hypothesis.

Evaluation-time only

Pancheva & Zubizarreta (2020, 2023, henceforth P&Z) offer a novel and original take on tenselessness by developing an analysis for Paraguayan Guaraní where the only time variable needed to derive temporal reference is not the TopT, but the EvalT -an analysis extended to Cantonese in Lee, Pancheva & Zubizarreta (2022, henceforth LP&Z). At the center of their proposal is a parallel drawn between the temporal constraints holding of bare sentences in Guaraní -namely, that they can describe ongoing or past, but not future, eventualities-and the so-called historical present, used to narrate past events:

(33) Narrative/Historical present Fifty eight years ago to this day, on January 22, 1944, just as the Americans are about to invade Europe, the Germans attack Vercors. (P&Z 2023: 8) Recall that present tense constrains the choice of possible values for the TopT to times that overlap/coincide with the EvalT. The use of the present in examples such as (33) to describe events unfolding in the past of the EvalT/UT is explained by assuming a mechanism shifting the EvalT backwards into the past (34), thus allowing for the ordinary meaning of the present to be maintained (cf. Schlenker 2004 a.o.). P&Z's share with the pronominal approaches the assumption that there is only one temporal coordinate represented in the syntax as a temporal pronoun, but this pronoun is not the TopT, but rather the EvalT. As such, it is not projected in the syntax as a tense head, but rather, further up in the CP domain, presumably Spec CP. P&Z thus adopt a pronominal/ referential approach to temporal interpretation in Guaraní, though crucially not to Tense per se, since there is no tense on their analysis: no Tense Projection in the syntax, no TopT variable, be it in the syntax or introduced solely in the semantics (via a special postsyntactic/post-LF semantic rule, as in [START_REF] Tonhauser | Temporal reference in Paraguayan Guaraní, a tenseless language[END_REF], see ( 31)).

The analysis makes use of two contexts: speech context (s) and narrative context (n). The temporal pronoun standing for the EvalT can thus denote speech time (t s , (34a)), or be shifted backwards from the actual speech time to a salient past time, henceforth the narrative time (t n , (34b)).

(34) a. !pro" g,s,n = t s b. !pro" g,s,n = t n (narrative present mode) (P&Z, 2023: 9) How P&Z derive the temporal reference of Guaraní bare sentences is illustrated in ( 35)-(37). Similar to the previous tenseless analyses of Guaraní ( §4.2.1), bare sentences are AspPs headed by a phonologically null (im)perfective aspectual head 21 and, as such, denote predicates of times (<i,t>). The phonologically silent Asp ∅ in (37a) takes two arguments: a VP denoting a property of events and a time t. Asp ∅ maps the VP onto a predicate of times by constraining the event's run time (τ(e) in (37a)) to overlap 22 t, which gets saturated by the EvalT pronoun (t n in (37b)), yielding (37d). 23 21 One might wonder why analyses that are parsimonious about positing silent tenses, are not about positing silent aspects. 22 As discussed in footnote 20, AT allows for imperfective, as well as perfective viewpoints. 23 P&Z do not give lexical entries for time adverbs, their syntactic position in sentences like (35) is thus not explicit. We assume here for concreteness that 'yesterday' denotes a set of subintervals of the day before the day of the UT, combining with AspP in (36) via 'Predicate Modification' [START_REF] Heim | Semantics in Generative Grammar[END_REF]. Alternative analyses of 'yesterday' are possible, but its syntactic position appears to be no lower than AspP and no higher than IP. ( 35 (P&Z 2023: 6-9)

P&Z argue that their analysis is truly tenseless since it presumes neither syntactic tense (no T(P) projection), nor lexical tense (no entry in the lexicon for a covert item encoding the relation between TopT/ET and EvalT), nor either lexically unrestricted semantic tense (no featureless TopT, be it in the syntax as in Bochnak & al. (2019) ( §3.2), or introduced by a semantic rule applying after the syntax/LF as in Tonhauser (2011) ( §4.2.1.1). In their own words:

"The broader consequence of our proposal is that tense is not a linguistic universal. [..] On the account we advance here, tense is not a linguistic universal: it is possible for a language to not have lexical tense and no tense at the level of syntax or the post-syntactic semantic component either."

(P&Z 2023: 1, 14)

P&Z's analysis is indeed tenseless in the sense of the criteria defined in ( 13)-( 14).

Importantly, however, it shares core assumptions with pronominal tense analyses. Both approaches project a single temporal coordinate in the syntax as a temporal pronoun -the EvalT for P&Z, the TopT under the pronominal tense hypothesis-that ends up saturating the time introduced by aspect and, moreover, referring to either UT or a contextually salient time, just as was the case with the semantically tenseless version of the pronominal tense hypothesis ( §3.2). The question then boils down to an empirical issue: can we indeed do without the TopT, positing only the EvalT, to account for time reference in (superficially) tenseless languages? It is beyond the scope of this paper to assess the predictions of (L)P&Z' analysis -but see [START_REF] Sun | Futurity in (superficially) tenseless languages: evidence for (Non-)Future tense in Mandarin / Cantonese[END_REF], [START_REF] Toosarvandani | Encoding time in tenseless languages: The view from Zapotec[END_REF] for discussion. We offer, however, below, an argument from Chinese, not only against a TopT-free analysis, but as we shall see, more radically, for a TopT with absolute future time reference.

On future time reference in 'tenseless' languages

Future time reference in 'tenseless' languages is at the heart of many core arguments for/against tensed/tenseless analyses.

Recall indeed that it is the generalization that future time adverbs fail to shift the time reference of bare root clauses to future times (38) that led to positing the NF-tense hypothesis in the first place ( §3.1.2).

(38) Tingjat, Laulau *(wui) sei.

(Cantonese) Tomorrow Laulau will die 'Tomorrow Laulau will die.' However, as P&Z argue, the NF-tense hypothesis predicts the availability of future-in-thepast readings -a prediction not born out, as shown by the incompatibility of camjat 'yesterday' with the modal future marker wui in Cantonese (39a). Out of the blue, a sentence with wui can be used to report an eventuality in the future of the UT but not a future in the past (i.e. a future relative to some past time). The same contrast holds in Mandarin (40a). ( 39 Lùlu say yesterday will very cold 'Last week, Lùlu said that it would be very cold yesterday.' Suppose (39a) contains a covert NF tense picking out as TopT a time preceeding the day before UT. The futurity marker wui could then order Aaming's singing in the future of this past TopT, but in the past of UT -that is, on the day before UT, thus yielding the unavailable future-in-the-past reading. This incorrect prediction is one of the reasons that leads LP&Z to argue against the covert NF hypothesis for Cantonese. Importantly, however, it's not that future-in-the-past readings are ruled out altogether: they become available in embedded contexts in Cantonese (39b) and Mandarin (40b). (L)P&Z take the distribution of future-inthe-past readings (excluded in root contexts, but neither in embedded or narrative contexts), as an argument/diagnostic for a narrative time shift over a tensed analysis (be it of Chinese or Guaraní). We offer here an alternative account for why wui/huì is compatible with a past time adverbial in subordinate contexts to describe future-in-the-past reported beliefs (39b)/(40b), but not matrix ones (39a)/(40a). Consider the paradigms in (41) (42) from Cantonese and Mandarin which show that combining wui/huì 'will' be it with a present or past time adverb leads to ill-formedness. 24 (41) *Jigaa/*Camjat wui loyu now/yesterday will rain Intended: 'Now it will rain.'/'Yesterday it was going to rain.'

(42) *Xiànzài/*Zuótiān huì xiàyǔ now/yesterday will rain Intended: 'Now, it will rain.'/'Yesterday it was going to rain.'

We argue below that wui/huì is a modal encoding absolute (as opposed to relative 25 ) future tense as part of its meaning, showing how this proposal uniformly derives the above three-way contrast: wui/huì's compatibility with clausemate future time adverbials (38)/(21b) vs. incompatibility with either past or present adverbials in main clauses (41)/(42), and the striking contrast between matrix clauses which disallow (39a)/(40a) vs. embedded clauses which allow (39b)/(40b) future-in-the-past readings.

Future Topic-times

Let's go back to the arguments supporting covert NF-tense: bare sentences with a future time adverb are ungrammatical. A futurity marker (kelh in St'át'imcets (20b), huì/wui in Mandarin/Cantonese (21b)/( 38) is required to express future time reference even in the presence of a future adverb. On Matthewson's/Sun's analysis ( §3.1.2), this asymmetry in the expression of future vs. past/present time reference follows automatically because there is a covert NF-tense restricting the TopT to times that precede/coincide with the EvalT (UT in matrix clauses). Now, by the very same token, the asymmetry in the expression of past/present vs. future time reference in (41)/(42) follows automatically if wui/huì encodes as part of its meaning a semantic future restricting the TopT to times that follow the EvalT (UT in matrix clauses).

Crucially, putting together the proposal that wui/huì encodes futurity with Sun's (2014) NF-tense hypothesis for Chinese provides an original argument from a superficially tenseless language for a two-way distinction between future and non-future where, importantly, both 24 Importantly, huì in Mandarin can have alongside its modal/future meaning (i), a lexical meaning, roughly 'be good at' (ii), which we can control for with main verbs clearly disambiguating these meanings. The paradigm below shows that huì is ungrammatical, be it with present or past time adverbs, solely on its modal future meaning: compare (iib) which is fine with (ib) which is out. [START_REF] Huang | On syntactic tense in Mandarin Chinese[END_REF] for a similar conclusion on independent grounds), as made explicit in (43a), to be contrasted with (43b) where there is only one tense: NF generated under T°.

FUT

On our proposal, Chinese has absolute future time reference in independent/main clauses, contra [START_REF] Tonhauser | Temporal reference in Paraguayan Guaraní, a tenseless language[END_REF] who puts forth the specific discourse restriction in (44) (quoted from P&Z (2020: 268)) prohibiting TopTs from having absolute (i.e. relative to UT) future reference. Our proposal also goes against the non-future analyses of [START_REF] Matthewson | Temporal semantics in a superficially tenseless language[END_REF], [START_REF] Jóhannsdóttir | Zero-marked Tense: The Case of Gitxsan[END_REF], [START_REF] Aonuki | Relative pronominal tense: evidence from Gitksan, Japanese, and English[END_REF] for St'át'imcets/Gitksan where futurity markers are forward-shifting modal operators ordering the ET in the future of a non-future TopT (43b), as would relative future tense. In other words, the NF pronominal analysis in (43b) makes the prediction in (44) since, even though it allows for a two-way future/nonfuture distinction, every tensed sentence always has NF-tense, futurity arising via a modal with a relative future tense meaning component.

(44) Absolute future reference times ([= TopT]) are not contextually available.

As a consequence, the pronominal analysis incorrectly predicts the availability of futurein-the-past readings, as pointed out by (L)P&Z: since the non-future TopT under T° in (43b) can denote a past time (relative to UT), FUT under Mod° constrains the ET to fall in the future of this past TopT (not of UT), thus allowing for a future-in-the-past construal (TopT < ET < UT), illicit in matrix (40a) but not embedded (40b) clauses. If we assume, however, that Mandarin has a two-way future vs. non-future tense distinction (43a), thus allowing for absolute future TopTs in main clauses, future-in-the-past readings will automatically be banned in (and only in) matrix contexts, as we shall now show, couching our analysis in the relational approach to tense presented in §2.1.2.

Back to the syntax of tense

We close this chapter with syntax/semantics mapping considerations, highlighting two conceptual advantages of our relational approach to tense to account for the distribution of temporal adverbials and future-in-the-past readings with wui/huì.

Recall that on the pronominal approach ( §2.1.1), "'Tense denotes the Topic Time' argument of the sentence" [START_REF] Cable | Semantics of Tense and Aspect Across Languages -Proseminar on Semantic Theory[END_REF]. In contrast, on D&UE's approach, time arguments are, just like regular individual denoting arguments, maximal projections projected in argument positions -that is, in the specifier positions of the relevant heads (T°, Asp° or V°). Their approach thus differs not only from pronominal ones that treat time arguments as heads projected under T°, but also from relational ones that treat time arguments as heads adjoined to T° (11) (and Asp°, e.g. von Stechow & Beck 2015). D&UE's proposal allows for an analysis of locating time adverbials (e.g. 'yesterday', 'on/before/after June 11th/2005', 'when/before/after Lisi left)' that captures an insight going back to [START_REF] Reichenbach | Elements of Symbolic Logic[END_REF]: "As noted by Kamp (1999[START_REF] Kamp | Deixis in discourse: Reichenbach on temporal reference[END_REF], work on the semantics of temporal locating adverbs back to (at least) [START_REF] Reichenbach | Elements of Symbolic Logic[END_REF], who proposed that they should be treated as predicates of the reference time needed in the interpretation of the tensed clause that they occur in." (Altshuler 2014: 58).

Since the TopT is a time denoting XP (ZeitP, Stowell 1993) projected as a maximal projection in A(rgument)-positions, temporal adverbials can be analyzed as temporal modifiers of the TopT. This yields the parallel between temporal and nominal modification below:

( The time-locating adverbial 'in 1964' is projected/base-generated as a temporal modifier adjoined to the TopT. In (45a-a'), the TopT is the temporal equivalent of an NP: it denotes a property of times (on a par with an NP denoting a property of entities). The PP adjoined to it combines with this property-denoting category via the rule of 'Predicate Modification' [START_REF] Heim | Semantics in Generative Grammar[END_REF], thus serving to restrict the reference of the TopT to times within 1964. In (45b-b'), the PP is adjoined to an entity-denoting category, and the P° head thus serves to relate/locate two individual denoting arguments (times in (45b), entities in (45b')). 26, 27 The distribution of temporal locating adverbs with(out) wui/huì in ( 38)-( 40) now automatically follows. In matrix/independent clauses (46), the EvalT (generated in the (highest) specifier of T°) is the UT. In the absence of wui/huì (46a), T° is headed by a silent predicate (NF) ordering the TopT (here t 2 ) either in the past or the present relative to UT (here t 0 ). The reference of this past/present TopT can thus be further restricted to fall within 26 Note that bare time adverbs cannot be analyzed as lexicalizing the TopT: in e.g. Noël was happy yesterday, the past TopT at which Noël's happiness holds is not the day before UT, but any subinterval of this day. D&UE (2004) analyze bare time adverbs as concealed PPs, headed by a silent preposition expressing central coincidence (see also [START_REF] Jespersen | A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, Book IV, Syntax[END_REF][START_REF] Kamp | From discourse to logic[END_REF]. 27 As discussed in D&UE (2004), arguments for analyzing time adverbials as (non-)restrictive modifiers come from temporal adverbial clauses where, going back to [START_REF] Geis | Adverbial Subordinate Clauses in English[END_REF], [START_REF] Larson | Extraction and multiple selection in PP[END_REF], island-effects constraining the distribution of long-distance/embedded vs. short-distance/matrix temporal construals, have been taken as evidence for a derivation involving temporal operator movement. the interval denoted by the deictic adverbs or now, but not tomorrow. Conversely, in the presence of wui/huì (46b), future tense (FUT) orders the TopT (t 2 ) in the future relative to UT (t 0 ). The reference of this future TopT can thus be further restricted to fall within the interval denoted by the deictic adverb tomorrow, but not yesterday or now.

( The idea that time denoting XPs are modifiers of the RT/TopT, and possibly also of the ET, cannot be captured within a framework where time-denoting arguments are projected in the syntax as (T°) heads or adjoined to heads (T°/Asp°) for the simple reason that XPs cannot be adjoined to X°s.

Recall furthermore that D&UE's relational approach makes syntactically visible the three temporal coordinates involved in the temporal calculus -unlike the pronominal approach which only projects the TopT, or relational approaches which do not assume an ET argument. 28 We can then straightforwardly account for the availability of future-in-the-past readings in complement clauses on the standard assumption that the EvalT in subordinate (complement/relative) clauses can shift into the past when it is syntactically c-commanded (and thus syntactically and semantically bound) by the matrix past ET [START_REF] Enç | Anchoring Conditions for Tense[END_REF][START_REF] Stowell | Syntax of tense[END_REF][START_REF] Ogihara | Tense Attitudes and Scope[END_REF], as shown in (47). ( 47 47), the embedded EvalT in Spec TP2 is bound by the matrix past ET in Spec VP1 thus denoting a past time (here t 2 ). The futurity operator wui/huì then merely constrains the embedded TopT (t 3 ) to fall in the future relative to the embedded past EvalT (t 2 ) -but crucially not in the future relative to UT (t 0 ). This allows for a future-in-the-past temporal ordering -e.g. Re. This is why, in embedded contexts, the TopT can denote a future-in-thepast time (here t 3 ) and, as such, be further restricted to fall within the interval denoted by the deictic past temporal adverb yesterday.

Recapitulating. The hypothesis that Mandarin and Cantonese show a two-way NF/FUT tense contrast, together with the assumption that not only the TopT, but also the ET and EvalT, are projected in the syntax explains why, in matrix/independent contexts, wui/huì can co-occur with clausemate future -but neither past nor present-time adverbials, thus prohibiting future-in-the-past construals. This prohibition is suspended in embedded contexts where the EvalT shifts into the past via binding by a c-commanding past matrix ET.

Conclusion: on the universality of tense

We conclude by going back to the initial question, whether tense is universal. We focussed on tenseless languages to probe this issue, since there are constraints at play on temporal interpretation even in superficially tenseless languages -in particular, on future time reference. We classified the analyses of 'tenseless' languages, according to whether or not they posit (neither) syntactic, (n)or semantic tense, to account for such constraints. Accounts which refute the universality of syntactic and semantic tense (positing neither, à la Tonhauser 2011) do so at the cost of encoding aspect (the relation between TopT and ET) directly into the meaning of bare predicates ((30), §4.2.1.1), and stipulating a special semantic rule to ensure that bare sentences denote truth-values (31). This rule guarantees that the property of times denoted by a root clause in Guaraní is predicated of a contextually provided reference time (t rt ), corresponding to our TopT. (L)P&Z also contest the universality of both syntactic and semantic tense but with a very different (indeed opposite) stance since what they contest is precisely the universality of the RT/TopT, contending that we can do without the latter: all

  -future tense (slightly adapted from Matthewson 2006: 680-1) !NF 1 " g,c = g(1); defined only if g(1) ≤ t c . c. !TP" g,c = λw.∃e[walk(e)(w) & agent(Mary)(e)(w) & τ(e) ⊆ g(1)] (where g(1) ≤ t c ). d. There is an event e of Mary walking, whose running time is included in the contextually salient NF-time g(1).

( 22 )

 22 Context: At speech time, Theresa has thrown up, and Charlie is throwing up. wat'k' kw s-Theresa múta7 s-Charlie vomit DET NOM-Theresa and

( 29 )

 29 !guo" = λP<i,t>λt Top λt 0 ∃t[P(t) ∧ IStage(t,P) ⊆ t Top ∧ t Top < t 0 ] 18

  7, 8 (8) Syntax of relational tense and aspect

	TP t
	ei T' <i,t> t c ei AspP <i,t> T°< it,it> ru Asp' t PAST λt 2 ru t 2 Asp' <i,t> AAAA AAAA ei Asp°< it,it> VP <i,t>
	PROG	ei t λt 1 ei t 1 VP <i,t>
		6 Cleo standing next to Kiya

  Context: Yesterday, Lùlu asked John for aspirin. Just now, Mòmo also asked John for aspirin. Now, Mary asked John why both Lùlu and Mòmo asked him for aspirin. John could answer:

	(23) Gǔlóng hé	Mòyán dōu chōuyān.
	Gulong and	Moyan DOU smoke
	'Gulong used to smoke and Moyan smokes.'
	(24) Tānmen liǎ (dōu)	bù	shūfu / tóu-téng.
	3PL	two DOU	NEG	feel.well / head-pain
	'Lùlu didn't feel well [yesterday], and Mòmo doesn't feel well [now].'
	'Lùlu had a headache and Mòmo has a headache.'
	Example (
					NOM-Charlie
	'Theresa and Charlie threw up/are throwing up.'	(Matthewson 2006: 681)

  !ASP∅" = λP <v,t> λt ∃e[P(e) ∧ τ(e) AT t] (t AT t′ iff t ⊆ t′ ∨ t′ ⊂ t) b. !pro" s,n = t n , t n < t s c. !AspP/IP" s,n = λt ∃e[sing(e)(kalo) ∧ τ(e) AT t] d. ! CP (35a)" s,n = 1 iff ∃e[sing (e)(kalo) ∧ τ(e) AT t n (∧t n ⊆ the day before the day of t s )]

	) Kalo	o-purahéi	{(kuehe) / # ko'ẽrõ)}.
	Kalo	3-sing	yesterday/now/tomorrow
	a. 'Kalo sang (yesterday).'
	b. 'Kalo is singing (now).' [But not 'Kalo will sing tomorrow.']
			(P&Z 2023: 9)
	(36)
		CP t
	ru pro i IP <i,t>
		ru AspP <i,t> AAAA ei Asp°< vt,it> VP <v,t>
		ASP ∅	6 Kalo o-purahéi
			Kalo sing
	(37) a.

  When he was young/At that time, Lisi was good at singing.' 25 See §2.2 (footnote 9) for discussion of absolute/relative tenses. future and non-future are tenses (see

	i) a. Míngtiān Lǐsì	huì	dào	Běijīng	(modal future huì)
	Tomorrow Lǐsì	will	arrive Beijing
	'Lisi will arrive in Beijing.'
	b. #Xiànzài/Zuótiān	Lǐsì	huì	dào	Běijīng.
	now/yesterday	Lǐsì	will	arrive Beijing
	Intended: 'Now, Lisi is/Yesterday, Lisi was going to arrive in Beijing.'
	(ii) a. Xiànzài	Lǐsì	huì		chànggē.	(lexical huì)
	now	Lǐsì	be.good.at sing
	'Now, Lisi is good at singing.'
	b. Xiǎoshíhou/dāngshí	Lǐsì	huì	chànggē.
	childhood/that.time	Lǐsì	be.good.at	sing
	'

  46) a. Matrix NF + *future adverb TP t ei T' <i,t> t 0 ei AspP <i,t> T°< <i,t>,<i,t>> ei t

	NF	AAAA ei VP <i,t> ZeitP i 6AAAA ruAdvP <i,i> λt 2 t 2 ru IN <i,<i,i>> Adv° i
		6 yesterday/now/*tomorrow
	b. Matrix FUT + *past/present adverb
	TP t
	ei T' <i,t> t 0 ei AspP <i,t> T°< <i,t>,<i,t>> ei t FUT λt 2 eiVP <i,t> AAAA ZeitP i 6AAAA ruAdvP <i,i> t 2 ru IN <i,<i,i>> Adv° i
		6 *yesterday/*now/tomorrow

  ) Embedded future + past adverb

	TP1
	ru t 0 ru AspP ru NF λt 1 ru AAAA ZeitP tyVP1 ty λt 2 ty t 1 AdvP t 2 ty 6 Lùlu ty TP2A IN last week V° ty think t 2 ty AspP T° ty FUT λt 3 ty VP2 ZeitP 5 ty t 3 AdvP
	6 IN yesterday
	In (

We adopt the following notation for types: i stands for time interval, v for event, t for truth-valueignoring for simplicity worlds of type s throughout this paper

.4 For clarity, we represent referential indices as numerals (to avoid any confusion with semantic types such as i).

Denotations throughout the paper are relativized to a variable assignment (g) and context (c).

For space reasons, we set aside a third approach: the quantificational approach (tracing back to[START_REF] Montague | The proper treatment of quantification in ordinary English[END_REF] and[START_REF] Prior | Past, present and future[END_REF]), according to which tense always involves existential quantification over times. As[START_REF] Ogihara | The Interpretation of Tense: "I Didn't Turn Off the Stove[END_REF] emphasize, what truly distinguishes quantificational from non-quantificational theories is whether tense has quantificational (existential) force on its own. Relational approaches thus count as non-quantificational if quantificational force, if any, never comes from the tense itself (that is, tenses may occur without existential closure, but may also get bound by existential closure, or quantificational elements elsewhere in the sentence). But relational approaches will count as quantificational if tense is inherently existential -that is, if there is no occurrence of tense without existential quantification over times.

D&UE assume a phrase structure with multiple specifiers[START_REF] Chomsky | The Minimalist Program[END_REF], thus allowing for both time-denoting arguments (ZeitPs) and regular individual-denoting arguments (DPs) to be accommodated in the syntax. Following[START_REF] Stowell | Syntax of tense[END_REF], the ET is the 'true' highest/external argument of the verb and, as such, base generated in the highest specifier (subject) position of VP.

The reader should keep in mind that the topic, eventuality and evaluation times are merely timedenoting arguments, referred to in the text with the labels TopT, ET, and EvalT merely for convenience, so as to readily keep track of which time(s) we are talking about.

The criterion in (13) does not distinguish so-called absolute tense (for which the EvalT is always UT and tense thus always encodes the relation of the TopT/ET relative to UT) vs. relative tense (which encodes the relation of the TopT/ET relative to the EvalT regardless of the latter's relation to UT).

For discussion of embedded tense and aspect in Mandarin, see[START_REF] Sun | Evidence against a scope analysis of temporally free readings of relative clauses in Mandarin[END_REF] and[START_REF] Sun | Time reference in Mandarin relative clauses[END_REF].

See, for instance, von Stechow & Beck (2015) who also integrate aspect as a head in their temporal architecture, but existentially close off the event variable in the lexical entry of the relevant aspectual head.

The research reported here was supported by the

we need is the EvalT (together with an mechanism) to analyze (superficial) 'tenselessness' in Guaraní or Cantonese.

We have offered here an argument from Chinese that we cannot do without the TopT, a conclusion that Toosarvandani (2021: 21) 29 also reaches in his analysis of another languagenamely, Zapotec, putting forth the putative universal stated below in (48). This paper converges with Toosarvandani providing evidence from two other tenseless languages -Mandarin and Cantonese-for the TopT Universal.

With the analysis suggested in §5.1-2, we have, moreover, gone further than arguing against a TopT-free analysis, by arguing for TopTs in Mandarin and Cantonese with absolute future reference in independent/main clauses (thus going against the prohibition in ( 41)) and, consequently, for a two-way NF/FUT tense contrast in superficially tenseless languages (thus going against the classic pronominal NF-tense analyses in (43b)).

(48) TopT Universal In all languages, finite sentences are interpreted relative to a TopT.

(49) Time adverbials are universal

We close this paper with the two putative Tense universals put forth, the TopT universal and the Time adverbial universal justified in (2). If time adverbs are modifiers of the TopT, as argued in §5.2, then these two universals should go hand in hand. That they both thus hold is not accidental, but correlated.