Temporal interpretation and cross linguistic variation : a formal semantic analysis of temporal and aspectual reference in Hausa and Medumba This thesis investigates temporal and aspectual reference in the typologically unrelated African languages Hausa (Chadic Afro–Asiatic) and Medumba (Grassfields Bantu). It argues that Hausa is a genuinely tenseless language and compares the interpretation of temporally unmarked sentences in Hausa to that of morphologically tenseless sentences in Medumba where tense marking is optional and graded. The empirical behavior of the optional temporal morphemes in Medumba motivates an analysis as existential quantifiers over times and thus provides new evidence suggesting that languages vary in whether their (past) tense is pronominal or quantificational (see also Sharvit 2014). The thesis proposes for both Hausa and Medumba that the alleged future tense marker is a modal element that obligatorily combines with a prospective future shifter (which is covert in Medumba). Cross linguistic variation in whether or not a future marker is compatible with non future interpretation is proposed to be predictable from the aspectual architecture o…