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<Paper uid="P87-1021">
  <Title>THE INTERPRETATION OF TENSE IN DISCOURSE</Title>
  <Section position="6" start_page="153" end_page="153" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
5. Conclusion
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> In this paper, I have given what I believe to be a credible account of the role that tense plays in the listener's reconstruction of the events and situations a speaker has chosen to describe. I have provided support for several new ideas: (a) that tense is better viewed by analogy with definite NPs than with pronouns; (b) that a narrative has a temporal focus that grounds the context-dependency of tense; and (C/) that focus management heuristics can be used to track the movement of temporal focus. I have also identified a host of problems that require further work, including (1) how to incorporate aspectual interpretation into the model, (2) how to evaluate 'strong associations' between events and/or situations and (3) how to judge plausibility.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
class="xml-element"></Paper>