I don't agree with Bill McCleary that the future is OK in a subordinate
clause following a verb with 'will'. It gets rejected by my 'grammar
machine'. But, it may very well occur in speech. I'll start listening.
Now, if I hear it, is it a grammatical sentence, or a performance error
caused by online processing constraints??
 
For me, having 'will' in the downstairs clause makes the event too distant
in the future. If someone is already walking off with the silver as they
are on their way out the door, it seems a little odd to say that they
'will walk off with the silver'. I realize this is not terribly logical,
since, as long as they aren't out the door, they have not yet left with
the silver. Perhaps I am leaning towards the prototypical situations that
call for future marking. After all, we can easily say 'Stop her, or she
will walk off with the silver!'
 
As to the 'future tense' issue, it depends on what you mean by 'tense': a
verb form, or something that relates the coded event to the time that the
sentence is uttered/written? If 'tense' is restricted to modifications of
the form of the lexical verb, we clearly have no future tense, while
languages like Spanish and French do. If 'tense' means any morphological
or syntactic construction that expresses that the coded action is going to
take place _after_ the moment of speaking, then we do have a future
'tense'. I think the latter is defensible, especially in view of the fact
that English has not just a tense system, but an aspectual system as well.
The 'will' construction functions as a tense, and can combine with any
aspect:
 
Habitual                In my old age, I will take a walk every day.
Future Progressive      We will be going to the doctor tomorrow.
Future Perfect          We will have finished dinner by eight p.m.
 
English has a mixed system with respect to how it codes tense, aspect and
mood. In some cases we use variant forms of the verb, as with past tense
and subjunctive mood ('It is imperative that he arrive on time!' -- no
'-s'); in other cases we use an auxiliary verb, as in modal 'should' or
progressive 'is eating'. In a few cases we use 'suppletion', or total
replacement with another root, as in 'go - went'. Other languages might be
more consistent. But, since this area of meaning is one that is subject to
a lot of change over the life of a language, any language is likely to be
between systems at any given point in time.
 
I prefer at all times to separate form from function. We can reserve
'tense' for a verb _form_, and discuss its function separately. The
'tense' named 'present' only signals 'action in progress at the moment of
speaking' for stative verbs such as 'know' and 'resemble'. Non-stative
verbs must use the progressive for this meaning. Consider:
 
I am eating right now.
*I eat right now.
 
And in English, the past tense form is rapidly taking over in
hypotheticals where the subjunctive used to be used, as in 'I wish I was
rich'. We still interpret this as hypothetical or irrealis, we just use a
form called the 'past tense' to convey this meaning. Note that this isn't
our only option. We could use uninflected 'be' or a modal such as 'would',
but we don't. 'Would' is in fact taking over the past subjunctive, which
used to be marked by the past perfect:
 
I wish I had called him.
I wish I would have called him.
 
I frequently hear the latter from educated speakers, and probably use it
myself.
 
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Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics              ~
English Department, California Polytechnic State University   ~
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407                                     ~
Tel. (805)-756-2184  E-mail: [log in to unmask]      ~
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