When tense and aspect convey modality. Reflections on the modal uses of past tenses in Romance and Germanic languages

• Presentation of a neo-Reichanbachian formalism allowing a more thorough description of the interpretation of past tenses.
• Typology of the modal uses of past tenses based on linguistic parameters and tests.
• Identification of developmental paths from prototypical contexts to “bridging contexts” and “switch contexts”.
• Analysis of the scalar implicatures at the origin of the modal interpretations of past tenses.

This paper investigates the connection between past tense and modality in six Romance and Germanic languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, English and German). I first argue for an aspecto-temporal definition of imperfects and preterits based on the notion of ‘reference point’ (R) and I suggest that the different interpretations of past tenses (including the modal ones) reflect specific instantiations of R as ‘topic time’, ‘aspectual vantage point’ or ‘epistemic evaluation’. Second, I offer a classification and analysis of the modal uses of the imperfects and preterits observed in the languages under investigation. Finally, I expand on the idea that the modal interpretations of past tenses correspond to pragmatic inferences that are being conventionalised and mirror the stages of ‘bridging contexts’ and ‘switch contexts’ described in Heine's (2002) model for semantic change.