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Abstract Abstract: ERS theory is an important tense-aspect semantic theory abroad, but it hasn’t received much attention at home. However the two most influencing ERS models still have problems. The ERS temporal intersection model by Olsen doesn’t provide a fine-grained depiction of tense-aspect types because of the monotonous position setting of event time and reference time; the ERS derived tense structure model by Hornstein fails to account for some relevant ungrammatical or ambiguous sentences because of its coarse derivation process and the neglect of the fact that reference time may indicate a time interval. Based on the fact that both reference time and event time may be a time point or time interval, an ERS tense-aspect logical model is provided in order to make the theory more powerful and universal. Through the depiction of ERS relations across clauses, the theoretical basis of Chinese temporal adverbs “Yankan/Mashang” as aspect adverbs in different contexts and their differences and similarities in temporal-semantic function are revealed.
Key words: tense; aspect; ERS theory; inadequacy; logical model; aspect adverb
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