Anmerkungen zur Referenz- und zur Topikzeit 

The paper compares two important approaches to tense. Both Reichenbach (1947) and Klein (1992 and subsequent work) assume a point of speech at which an utterance is made and an event time at which the eventuality described takes place. Reichenbach proposes as a third point the reference time that is generally understood as the point in time relative to which the event time is located. According to Klein this third point is the topic time and has to be defined as the time for which the particular utterance makes an assertion. The paper argues that both the topic time and the reference time are problematic.