The widely used opposition between generic vs. episodic sentences should be replaced by the opposition between nonepisodic / characterizing (GB 2005) vs. episodic sentences, with nonepisodic sentences denoting omnitemporal and other (iterative, stative, and general-factual) situations. Omnitemporal situations are defined by the relation between the actional interval (the interval of the si- tuation denoted by the verb lexeme) and the reference interval (cf. Lehmann 2014): An actional interval is omnitemporal, if it can be localized relative to a (closed) random reference interval in all temporal perspectives (anterior, central, posterior perspective). This definition captures the difference to the temporal deictic orientation of present, perfect, and future (reference time = speech time) and to narrative orientation (with a definite temporal perspective relative to the reference time, which is the time of a random mental representation of the situa- tion, marked, e.g., by the past or pluperfect tense). So the temporal function of omnitemporal sentences must be equivalent to ’It always has been, is now, and always will be the case that ...‘ (cf. Hughes / Cresswell 1975).

The verbs of non taxical omnitemporal sentences in Russian are marked by the imperfective present (cf. English cats meow), the perfective and the imper- fective future (cf. English cats always will meow) and the L-preterite (cf. Eng- lish cats always have meowed). The imperfective future and the L-preterite are rare, but the omnitemporal perfective future is frequent not only in gnomic contexts. For taxical relations (i.e., temporal relations between actional situa- tions) nearly all aspect-tense forms and adverbial participles can be used. Their combinations yield the chronological relations of sequence, taxical simultaneity, anteriority, and posteriority).