This book is a thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts of the University
of Utrecht. It was prepared under the supervision of Prof. Dr. H.
Schultink. I would like to express my gratitude to him for his
criticisms of earlier versions which led to many improvements, in
particular with respect to the exposition of the argument. To my
co-referent Dirk van Dalen, reader in the Department of Philo- sophy (,
Centrale Interfaculteit') of the University of Utrecht, I am greatly
indebted for his valuable and fruitful suggestions about problems
relevant to both linguistics and logic. Several ideas developed in this
study owe their present concrete form to our many discussions. This
thesis originates in syntactic research into the Aspects carried out in
1967 under the supervision of Albert Kraak, professor at the University
of Nijmegen, who ever since gave much attention to my work in progress.
I am very grateful to him for his careful and stimulating criticism as
well as for the continuous support he gave me during these years. The
present study closely relates to the work of my colleague Wim Klooster
with regard to both its theoretical framework and its subject matter.
Our joint work on the measurement of duration in Dutch is an integral
part of the argument. I have greatly profited from the numerous
discussions we have had.