In this paper we examine the connection between two areas of semantics, namely thesemantics of historical databases and the semantics of natural language querying, and linkthem together via a common view of the semantics of time. Since the target applicationdomain is an historical database, we present the essential features of the Historical RelationalDatabase Model (HRDM), an extension to the relational model motivated by the desire toincorporate more quot;real worldAtilde;cent;Acirc;not;Acirc;? semantics into a database at the conceptual level. We thenpresent the essential features of QE-III, a formally defined English database query languagewhose semantic and pragmatic theory, based on a Montague-type semantics, makes explicitreference to the notion of denotation with respect to a moment of time. We demonstrate theuse of this language to query an example historical database, and discuss the issues of how toprovide both a semantic and a pragmatic interpretation for questions within a model-theoreticframework
