Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- A Note on Transcription Conventions -- List of Figures and Tables -- Introduction -- Chapter One Situations, Times, Worlds and Contexts -- 1.1 The semantics of time and modality -- 1.1.1 The temporal dimension of verb meaning -- 1.1.2 Tense, aspect and mood as relations in temporal and modal space -- 1.1.3 Context-dependency, markedness and blocking -- 1.2 Aspect, situations and contexts -- 1.2.1 The imperfective aspect -- 1.2.2 The perfective aspect -- 1.2.3 The anterior aspect -- 1.2.4 The neutral aspect -- 1.2.5 Aspect and temporal remoteness in English and Russian -- Chapter Two Aktionsart and Morphosyntax in Early Vedic -- 2.1 Lexical semantic features -- 2.2 Telic and atelic verb phrases -- 2.2.1 Noun phrase quantification -- 2.2.2 Lexical derivation patterns -- Chapter Three The Present System -- 3.1 The Present Indicative -- 3.2 The Imperfect -- 3.3 The Non-Indicative Modal Categories of the Present Paradigm -- 3.4 The Present Participle -- 3.5 The Aspectual Reference of the Present Stem -- Chapter Four The Aorist System -- 4.1 The Aorist Indicative -- 4.2 The Non-Indicative Modal Categories of the Aorist Paradigm -- 4.3 The Aorist Participle -- 4.4 The Aspectual Reference of the Aorist Stem -- Chapter Five The Perfect System -- 5.1 The Perfect Indicative -- 5.2 The Pluperfect -- 5.3 The Non-Indicative Modal Categories of the Perfect Paradigm -- 5.4 The Perfect Participle -- 5.5 The Aspectual Reference of the Perfect Stem -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index Locorum -- General Index.