本篇論文主要探討有關現代漢語句子時制(tense)意義的一些問題。傳統上漢語常被視為一個沒有構詞時制的語言，而語意時制則由時間副詞或上下文來決定。在文中我們指出，影響現代漢語時制意義的因素不只是時副詞或上下文，情狀類型及視點體(viewpoint aspect)和語法體(grammatical aspect)也會對時制意義產生很大的影響。除此之外，個別單字的語意或句法關係也會對時制解釋產生不同的限制，像是主要子句動詞會限制從屬子句的時制意義，具有時間關係的副詞子句的預設會影響主要子句的時制解釋，或是名詞組的有定無定會影響關係子句的時制解釋。

Chinese is traditionally considered a language lacking in morphological tenses, with temporal reference determined by temporal adverbials or from context. In addition to adverbials and context, temporal reference in Chinese may be effected by various other factors, such as situation types, grammatical aspect, verbal semantics, (in-) definiteness of the noun phrase, or temporal connectors.