 Austinian topic situations (also referred to as “focus situations”, “described situations”, or “reference situations” in the literature) are often non-overt, but the tense of a sentence might give them away. A close look at tenses tells us that topic situations do not always coincide with the situations described by the main predication of a sentence. Klein (1994, 4) imagines a witness who is asked by a judge what she noticed when she looked into the room. The witness answered with (15):