SEQUENCE OF TENSES IN ENGLISHRENAAT DECLERCK1. INTRODUCTIONComrie (1986) raises the question of why English speakersuse the preterite in the complement clauses of examples like(1) Arthur said that he was sick.The fact that we use was in the subclause, and not is (as inthe Russian equivalent of (1)), is traditionally traced back to theso-called 'Sequence of Tenses' (SoT) rule, which is claimed to beoperative in indirect speech in English. It is difficult, however, todetermine the exact nature of this rule. Is it a formal (syntactic)rule, which is applied mechanically, or is it a rule that is seman-tically motivated? And if it is semantically motivated, which isthe relevant semantic factor?As far as I know, the linguistic literature shows three differ-ent hypotheses to answer these questions. The first is that thesubclause of (1) is in the past tense because it refers to past time.Comrie (1986) calls this the 'absolute deixis hypothesis', becauseit treats was as an absolute tense form, i.e. as a tense which re-lates a situation (i.e. event, state, etc.) directly to the moment ofspeaking. The second hypothesis is that was is in the past tensebecause it expresses that the subclause situation is simultaneouswith the head clause situation, which lies in the past. Let us callthis hypothesis the "relative time hypothesis'. The third hypoth-esis is that indirect speech in English is subject to a formal SoTrule which automatically backshifts the tense forms from directspeech when the introductory verb is in the past tense. Comrie(1986) aims to prove that only the third hypothesis is consistentwith the facts of English.Folia Linguistica XXIV/3-4 0165^004/90/24-513 $ 2.(C) Mouton/de Gruyter, Berlin - Societas Linguistica Europaea514My aim in this paper is to show that Comrie's attempt fails. Iwill argue that the 'formal SoT hypothesis' does not always makethe correct predictions, and that the tense of a complement clausein indirect speech may be either a relative tense (as in (1)) or anabsolute tense.2. A THEORY OF TENSEIt is not possible to argue for or against one of the threehypotheses without incorporating them into a coherent theory oftense. Such a theory is offered in Declerck (forthcoming). Sinceexpounding a full theory of tense is obviously a major undertak-ing, only the bare essentials can be pointed out here. However, Ithink that the following brief sketch should be sufficient to ren-der it possible to evaluate the alternative answers to the questionraised in section 1.English speakers view a situation as either past or non-pastwith respect to the moment of speech. That is, they locate asituation either in the 'past time-sphere' or in the 'present time-sphere' The past time-sphere lies wholly before the moment ofspeech (i.e. it does not include the time of utterance). To locatea situation in it the speaker uses the preterite. The present time-sphere is divided into three 'sectors' by the moment of speech: theportion of the present time-sphere that precedes the moment ofspeech is the 'pre-present sector'; the portion that is centeredaround the moment of speech is the 'present sector'; and theportion that follows the moment of speech is the 'post-presentsector' The tenses used to locate situations in these three sectorsare the present perfect, the present tense and the future tense,respectively.For ease of reference we can use the term 'absolute sectors'to refer to the above three sectors plus the pa.st time-sphere. (Icall these timespans 'absolute' because they are defined in directrelation to the the moment of speech.) The four tenses that areused to locate situations in one of these four sectors can thereforebe called 'absolute tenses'When two situations are located within the same time-sphere,there are two possibilities: either both of them are represented asrelated to the time of speech, or one situation is related to the time515of speech while the second is related to the first. To capture thesepossibilities we can introduce the notion of 'temporal domain'A (temporal) domain is a time interval taken up either by onesituation or by a number of situations that are temporally relatedto each other by means of special tense forms. Consider, forexample:(2) John said that he had worked hard all day, that he wastired and that he would go to bed early.The first clause contains an absolute tense form (said) whichlocates a situation in the past time-sphere and by doing so cre-ates a past time-sphere domain (or 'past domain' for short). Thesecond clause contains a relative tense form (had worked), whichrelates the situation of working to the situation of the first clause,and not to the moment of speech. That is, the second clause doesnot establish a domain (as the first clause does) but incorporatesits situation into the already existing domain. The third clausedoes exactly the same thing, only the relation is now different:whereas had worked represents its situation as anterior to the'central situation' of the domain (said), was tired represents itssituation as simultaneous with it. The fourth clause, finally, againincorporates its situation into the domain, but the situation inquestion is now represented as posterior to the central situation.When a situation is introduced into a domain, it need notalways be related to the central situation. The 'binding situation'may also be another situation (which is itself directly or indirectlyrelated to (i.e. bound by) the central situation). For example,in (3), where the three situations referred to are again locatedwithin a single domain, the third clause represents its situationas simultaneous with the situation of the second clause, while thelatter is respresented as anterior to the central situation referredto in the first clause:(3) John said he had felt very tired when he was working.It should be noticed that in