I was taught in college that there is no future tense in English. According to my college text, Analyzing English Grammar, by Klammer, Schulz, & Volpe, "There is no future tense morpheme in English, no affix that can be attached to a verb to indicate that the action will take place in the future. Simple future time must be expressed by other words in the sentence" (180). The following examples are given of how to express the future:
1) Modals
I shall be out of town next week.
Larry definitely will be at the party.
2) Present Tense + Adverbial Modifiers
The class ends at 11:00.
Leave a message when you call.
Susan is leaving for New York on Thursday.
It does seem odd that there is no tense marker for the future. I wonder if one reason is that you can't mark a tense for something that is yet to come or hasn't happened yet: for a time, place, and situation that is yet to be determined.
We have discussed once or twice whether English has a future tense. Here’s a link to an article titled “The Lord which was and is” by Geoffrey Pullum on Language Log that briefly reviews a considerable range of data involve “will” and other constructions and their meanings. Pullum is coauthor with Rodney Huddleston of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Langauge.
Scroll down till you find the title.
Herb
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