модальности (21)

[hgr]

passé (future) immédiat etc.

1           Temporal preference (distance)

The temporal operators of distance, that is, of temporal preference (‹1, 1, 1› type) form the following functional heads (“aspects”): retrospective, proximative, perspective, durative.

Retrospective corresponds to the immediate past (“shortly before”), proximative to immediate either past or future (“nearly in time”), perspective to the immediate future (“shortly post”). In all these three cases a comparison is implied between the two positions in time when the reference point of the comparison is Present. One of the compared positions is defined by the fuzzy distance “near,” which implies that there is another position on the distance “far”. For the fuzzy distance measures (such as “near,” “far” and so on) in the modal spatiotemporal logic see especially (Kurucz, Wolter, Zakharyaschev, 2005). It is obvious that these positions “near” to Present are privileged because of the privileged status of Present itself.

If the referential point of the comparison is arbitrary, not necessarily coinciding with Present, then, the durative is used (“for a while,” “for a long time,” etc.). Durative could operate with any kind of the fuzzy distance measures, not necessarily the shorter ones. There is no a priori privilege of shorter distances over longer ones or vice versa.