COMMENTS ON THE LITERATURE 165 really is something to be explained: why the progressive does not seem to

be applicable in case (25). Again, note that it must be something related to the use of the futurate progressive; it is not connected to the future tense per se as the following sentence shows

(27) (Google) The coin is going to come up heads.

The characteristic feature of the situation is of course that for all practical purposes, coin tossing is indeterministic. In the case at hand there does in- deed exist a dynamic law, which deterministically relates an initiating event (flipping the coin with a definite speed and rotational motion), the action of gravity, a trajectory and an outcome (heads). This dynamical law could even be formulated in the event calculus, but that is not the point – which is that there is no dynamical law acting at the level of granularity that we are typ- ically concerned with in ordinary life, where we can see, for example, that a coin is falling while rotating, without being able to fix the parameters for the motion in any great detail. This means that theAktionsartof ‘come up heads’ is not, as one might think at first, an accomplishment, but rather an achievement. Hence the progressive is not applicable without coercing the expression ‘come up heads’ into either an activity or an accomplishment.

4.4. Bonomi. In [9], Bonomi has tried to isolate another aspect of the intensionality of the progressive in what he calls theMultiple–Choice Para- dox, which he takes to be as central as the imperfective paradox. To solve the problem, he develops an intricate semantics for the progressive, which we shall not go into, since we believe that the paradox can be treated with the machinery developed here.

The Multiple–Choice Paradox can be illustrated by the following story: Leo, who has just left Dijon in his car, has decided to spend the

night in one of the following three cities: Besançon, Metz or Paris. He drives on the autoroute which runs in the direction of these cities (before branching into three different roads). In each of the cities he has reserved a room. However, before he has made up his mind, his car breaks down. Now suppose that Besançon, Metz and Paris are the only cities in France where there will be a concert of Baroque music that night. Then the sentence (28), uttered shortly before the car breaks down, ap- pears to be true

(28) Leo is going to a French city where today there is a concert of Baroque music.

But given that the cities mentioned are the only cities where there is a concert of Baroque music that night, we should also have that the following sentence is true

(29) Leo is going to Besançon or Leo is going to Metz or Leo is going to Paris.

166 10. GRAMMATICAL ASPECT

However, each of the sentencesLeo is going to Besançon,Leo is going to MetzandLeo is going to Parisappears to be false, hence so is the disjunction. The paradox is then that the true sentence (28) logically implies the sentence (29) which is false.

The task at hand is thus to provide formal correlates of (28) and (29) which explains their logical relation. We give an informal description of the solution, and leave the formalization to the reader as exercise 15.

Sentence (28) involves a dynamics which relates a general activitygoto the goal-state be in a city where there is a concert of Baroque music. The activity is general in the sense that no specific path to the goal has to be specified. The use of the present progressive means that

?HoldsAt(going,now)succeeds,

where the fluentgoingis derived from the use of the progressive in (28). In contrast, (29) involves three much more specific activities going to Besançonetc. which can be related to the formergoingby means of hierar- chical planning as in Section 3 of Chapter 7. That is, we may have clauses

(†)HoldsAt(going[x], t) → HoldsAt(going, t),

forx=b,morp.

It follows using (†)that if one of the queries ?HoldsAt(going[b], t) or

?HoldsAt(going[m], t)or?HoldsAt(going[p], t)succeeds,?HoldsAt(going,now)

can be made to succeed as well. Similarly for the corresponding parametrized start-evente[x], if either ?Happens(e[b], t), t <now or ?Happens(e[m], t), t <now or ?Happens(e[p], t), t < now

succeeds, then so does

?HoldsAt(going,now).

However, the latter query can be made to succeed without requiring success of the former queries if we do not avail ourselves of the clauses(_†).

In terms of planning, using(_†)means that the planning has entered its final stage, where the destination has to be chosen. Conversely, not using

(_†)means that the plan has not yet been decomposed into a more detailed plan. This would seem to be the case in the situation described by Bonomi. Therefore sentences (28) and (29) are logically unconnected in the situation described.

Now note that if the queries ?HoldsAt(going[x],now) (for x = b, m or p) neither succeed nor fail, the truth of the sentences Leo is going to Besançon etc. is similarly undecided. In fact we would doubt that Leo is going to Besançon etc. are false, as Bonomi maintains. It is correct to say these sentences are not true, but to call them false would mean that the

5. EXERCISES 167