Monotonicity properties of "before" and "until". An experimental study

Abstract

The thesis concerns monotonicity properties of two temporal operators, namely "before" and "until". Every natural language operator can be either monotone increasing, monotone decreasing or non-monotone. Usually, the first two mean that it preserves or reverses the direction of entailment. However monotonicity does not have to be defined in terms of entailment. In the paper three types of monotonicity are defined: with respect to temporal precedence, to the relation of being a sub-event, and to entailment. In this framework different definitions for before and until are proposed. These definitions allow to state exact empirical predictions. We test these predictions in an experimental study.